A 9-year-old patient is taken to the ICU after undergoing heart surgery in Shanghai Yuanda Hospital. Dong Jun / for China Daily

Building the brand

In addition to andrology and gynecology, the traditional preserves of private medicine, non-State hospitals have now started to home in on other departments such as orthopedics, dentistry and ophthalmology, fields that are highly profitable and have extremely low fatality rates, according to Chen Donghai.

More importantly, these sectors aren't included in the national medical insurance system, so patients tend to choose private hospitals that specialize in those categories, he said.

To build the brand, these new facilities have been publicized via new media outlets such as Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like micro-blogging platform, and WeChat, a popular mobile social networking platform.

In recent years a number of policies favorable to private hospitals have also been released.

In 2009, the State Council issued a circular to encourage private capital to set up hospitals. A year later, to promote the development of private hospitals, the government published proposals to gradually abolish restrictions on the amount of equity that foreign capital is allowed to own in each project.

In April, the State Council gave private hospitals the right to set prices for diagnoses and treatments, processes that had previously been government-controlled.

Against such a backdrop, it's unsurprising that building the brands of private hospitals and clinics has been high on the agenda of Putian's medical entrepreneurs. For example, Zhuo Chaoyang has been busy attempting to build his establishment, the Angel Hospital in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, into a high-profile hospital for obstetrics and gynecology since 2008.

Meanwhile, Chen Xinxian, another Putian-based healthcare tycoon, has been building the brand of Sacred Pearl Dental, a chain of dental clinics, since 2010. In November, Weng Guoliang, a prominent Putian player in the healthcare industry, combined with Liu Yonghao, chairman of New Hope Group, a leading Chinese agribusiness company, and Feng Lun, the chairman of the real estate company Vantone, to form The Strategic Alliance for the Medical and Healthcare Industry of China, which aims to become the nation's leading hospital and healthcare management corporation.

The alliance, which comprises eight Putian medical entrepreneurs who control about 1,000 hospitals nationwide, has recently had its 10 billion yuan credit line extended by PingAn Bank.

Xie Qilin, a researcher with the nonprofit Chinese Medical Doctor Association, said the boom in private hospitals could promote the reform of public hospitals, because a wider range of institutions will heighten competition in the healthcare sector.

When asked how he felt about the performance of his "descendants", Chen Deliang said he hoped the entrepreneurs from Putian will improve the quality of medical services nationwide, and called for their previous misbehavior to be forgiven and forgotten. "The 'page of notoriety' should be turned over now," he said.

Contact the authors at sunli@chinadaily.com.cn and humeidong@chinadaily.com.cn