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Objectives – Purchasing has been promoted as a key policy instrument to improve health system performance. Despite its widespread adoption, there is little empirical evidence on how it works, the challenges surrounding its implementation, its impact, and the preconditions for it to function effectively, particularly in low- and middle-income settings. The objective of this chapter is to analyze critically the extent to which purchasing could be, and has been used strategically in China and to identify modifications that are needed for purchasing to be effective in assuring that the government's new funding for health care will result in efficient and effective health services.

Methods – We present a conceptual framework for purchasing, which identifies three critical principal–agent relationships in purchasing. We draw on evidence from secondary data, results of other research studies, interviews, and the impact evaluation of a social experiment in rural China that explicitly used purchasing to improve quality and efficiency. This information is used to examine purchasing relationships in urban social health insurance (SHI), the rural medical insurance scheme, and purchasing of public health services.

Findings – To date, use of strategic purchasing is limited in China. Both the urban and the rural health insurance schemes act as passive third-party payers, failing to take advantage of the opportunities to strengthen incentives to improve quality and efficiency. This may be because as government agencies, the extent to which the Ministries of Health and Labor and Social Security can act independently from provider interests, or act in the best interest of the population, is unclear. Other important challenges include ensuring adequate representation of the population's views and preferences and making better use of the leverage provided by purchasing to create appropriate provider incentives, through better integration of financing and improved coordination among purchasers.

Implications for policy – In designing purchasing arrangements, attention needs to be paid to all three principal–agent relationships. Successful purchasing appears to require mechanisms to mobilize and represent community preferences and more strategic contracting with providers. More research is needed to strengthen the evidence on which purchasing arrangements work, which do not work, and under what conditions different purchasing configurations can work most effectively.

The breasts are mainly fatty and connective tissues with no muscles that directly support them, so wearing sports bras is one of the most effective means of alleviating the discomfort of breast movement and potential injury during vigorous physical exercise. However, the design and development processes of traditional sports bras are time-consuming and costly. Hence, a novel method of simulating the static contact pressure between a sports bra and women’s body based on the finite element (FE) and artificial neural network (ANN) models is developed in this study to contribute to the design considerations of sports bras.

Three-dimensional FE models of a female subject and sports bras with different fabric properties are developed to determine the amount of contact pressure exerted onto the body. The FE results are then verified by measuring the amount of pressure exerted by the sports bra on the skin with pressure sensors. The Taguchi technique is used to effectively reduce the number of trials from 625 to only 25 cases. These 25 results obtained through FE modelling are then used to provide the training set for the ANNs. Finally, a comparison between the FE and ANN results is carried out.

A novel model of the static contact pressure between a sports bra and human subject based on the FE and ANN methods is presented in this paper. The root mean square error values show that there is only a small difference between the FE and ANN results.

The ANN function established in this study can be used to predict the mechanical behaviours of breasts and has a fundamental impact on the computer-aided design of functional garments in general.

The purpose of this paper is to develop initial evidence about the nature and features of crowdfunding in China, given it is largely unregulated regulatory frameworks.

The paper used extensive desk research using data collected from the public and private sectors, after which the data was analyzed parallel to existing academic literature, that is, institutional context by Bruton et al. (2014). This paper uncovered patterns of development, profiling crowdfunding platforms, examining the regulatory landscape and providing antecedents of successful crowdfunding projects in China.

When the traditional financial markets are hard to reach, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) were starved for capital. Crowdfunding can play a major role in funding and risk sharing. It is an innovative and dynamic vehicle for MSMEs as well as enthusiastic investors in China. Since its initial introduction to China in 2009, crowdfunding has gained substantial popularity in a relatively short period. Currently, there is still not an identifiable guideline on how to delineate the significance of the crowdfunding platform. The development of crowdfunding in China faces a few unresolved key issues. As researchers exploring this phenomenon in new ways, crowdfunding platforms can be enhanced in a manner that benefits the capital seeker, investors and society as a whole.

There is a dearth of information on start-up crowdfunding in Asia. With little data available to analyze, so this paper hopes to contribute to knowledge and provide valuable information to researchers and industry representations. Crowdfunding represents a potentially disruptive change in the way that new ventures are funded. This paper represents an initial analysis in the study of new ventures in China. Finally, the authors provide recommendations for entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers as well as researchers and practitioners with suggestions about yet unexplored avenues of research.