Since 1972, many Western visitors, 10% of whom were physicians, have marveled at the social revolution in the People's Republic of China. With time that enthusiasm has been tempered with a more balanced view, as trained observers have been allowed into areas outside the usual Cooke's tour of China. Even so, the picture that emerges must be an incomplete mosaic of a complex, vast, and populous country still evolving. The Chinese Hospital contains insights for physicians, hospital administrators, health services researchers, and medical sociologists. Myron Cohen, an infectious disease specialist, his wife Gail Henderson, a doctoral student in sociology with