Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 11, 2025

The Normative Connotation and Legal Protection of the Right to Health

(Abstract)

Wu Yiwen

As the normative foundation of all health-related claims, the right to health constitutes the cornerstone of the institutionalization of the Healthy China Initiative. Framed by the three key dichotomies of “right and commodity,” “state and market,” and “global and local,” the right to health has undergone complex historical transformations worldwide. While sharing these general trajectories, China’s right to health has gradually developed distinctive local features. In the Chinese context, the right to health embodies a comprehensive, hybrid right combining public and private aspects as well as negative and positive attributes. Its multidimensional legal relationships reflect both the richness and dynamism of its normative connotations. From a normative perspective, legal protection of the right to health must adhere to a “people’s health-centered” approach as the fundamental value orientation, adopt the principles of health justice and health promotion as specific value principles, and follow a dual-track path that coordinates the construction of a normative system with implementation mechanisms. Only this approach can foster a stable yet adaptive socialist rule of law system for health with Chinese characteristics, thereby systematically enhancing the practical protection of the right to health.