And they might well have to. The rising standards of living that allow them to buy more care bring changes to lifestyle that often requires them to seek more care.

"Whether we like to believe it or not, they're becoming more like us," Glorikian says. The average amount of meat consumed has gone up from half a pound of meat per month to seven pounds per month, according to Glorikian. Dramatic dietary changes could result in more widespread cardiovascular disease and other ailments of affluence. "All the good stuff we have here they're starting to take on," says Glorikian.

Cutthroat competition

China's largely government-run hospitals are broken into different tiers depending on size, with tier one the smallest and tier three the biggest. Tier three hospitals, with 500 or more beds, are usually found in large cities, and they will likely make the best customers for foreign companies, according to the analysts I talked with. These relatively well-off health centers will make the big-ticket event purchases: the 64-slice CT scanners, the 3T MR magnets, to attempt to attract wealthy Chinese patients. After all, these glamorous high-tech products tend not to be made locally and have IP that's harder for canny native engineers to infringe.

But further down the line, at tier one hospitals, with 100 beds or fewer, competition might be too fierce for many foreign companies, analysts say. These mostly rural hospitals, which stand to benefit the most when the government opens the sluice gates on the stimulus package, will have simpler needs.

"The stimulus plan has set aside a lot of money for development of rural facilities," Michelle Li, an analyst with Millennium Research Group in Toronto, tells DOTmed News. "It would really be low-end and basic systems that would experience a strong growth in sales," such as black-and-white ultrasound or analog X-ray machines. These sprung-up hospitals will be purchasing equipment for the first time, and much of their staff will not be able to operate or maintain expensive equipment like CT or MR scanners, according to Li.

While these health centers will be buying loads of the low-end equipment, it will be tough for foreign companies to compete against domestic vendors whose ruthless, bargain-basement prices slash profit margins to paper-thin edges.

But don't underestimate foreign companies, Li cautions. They are busily figuring out how best to take advantage of the market. GE Healthcare, for instance, is launching an X-ray machine called Linglong, a device designed and manufactured in China. "It's more compact, because space is definitely a luxury [in rural facilities], and more lightweight," she says. Though analog, it's fully upgradeable to digital. And it's relatively cheap. "These companies definitely know that rural and low-end equipment is where the growth is going to be," Li says.

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