About

We publish the source, or we don’t publish the number

China Medical Cost Guide is an independent reference site about what medical treatment in China costs, written for readers who don’t read Chinese and don’t live there. We are not a clinic, not an agency, and not a booking platform. We take no money from any hospital we describe.

Last reviewed 31 October 2026 Funding Self-funded, no referral fees Corrections Public, with dates

Why this exists

The information exists. It just isn’t in English.

China publishes more about the price of medical care than most countries do. The National Healthcare Security Administration issues notices that cap a service fee, run national bulk purchases for implants or stents, and publish the resulting ranges. Hospitals post price schedules. None of it is written for a patient in Ohio, and almost none of it is translated.

What fills that gap in English is mostly written by someone with a commercial interest: an agency that books the hospital, a clinic that wants the patient, a lead-generation site that sells the enquiry. The numbers on those pages are rarely wrong in an obvious way. They are wrong in a quieter way — a 2019 figure presented as current, a clinic’s “starting from” price presented as a national average, a range built by copying another site that copied another site.

We started this site because a reader shouldn’t need to read Chinese government notices to find out whether a quoted price is normal. Translating the structure of a price — what it contains, what it excludes, who sets it — is more useful than translating a single number.

What that means you’ll see here: fewer numbers than on a typical medical-tourism site, and a reason attached to each one. Where a figure doesn’t exist publicly — and for most US dental and checkup prices, it genuinely doesn’t — the page explains how to get a comparable quote instead of inventing a comparison.

Boundaries

What we don’t do

These are not disclaimers bolted onto the bottom of a page. They decide what gets written.

We don’t diagnoseNo individual advice

Nothing here is a recommendation for your case. We can explain what a treatment involves and what a quote should contain; we can’t tell you whether you need it. That conversation belongs to a clinician who has examined you.

We don’t bookNo agency role

We don’t make appointments, arrange interpreters, or negotiate prices on your behalf. We have no commercial relationship with any clinic or hospital, so we have nothing to gain from which one you choose.

We don’t rankNo “best hospitals”

Ranking hospitals would require outcome data that is not published in a form anyone could verify. A tier (三级甲等) describes a hospital’s size and staffing requirements, not the results of a particular surgeon, so we explain the tier instead of pretending it’s a ranking.

We don’t publish testimonialsNothing unverifiable

“Sarah from California says it changed her life” is the standard furniture of this industry and it is unverifiable by design. If we ever publish patient accounts, they will be ones we can attribute and check, with the person’s consent.

We don’t take referral feesHow we’re paid

The site is self-funded. We don’t earn commission when a reader contacts a hospital. If that ever changes, the disclosure goes on the page that carries the link, not only in a footer — and this page will be updated on the same day.

Maintenance

How the pages stay true

Every price page carries a review date at the top. When we re-check a figure against its source, the date changes. When a source disappears — a notice withdrawn, a PDF taken down, a page that stops stating a year — the figure comes off the page rather than staying up on the strength of an old citation.

That has already cost us content. A widely quoted set of US cosmetic-surgery fee ranges turned out to be unsourceable to its original report, so those figures are not on this site. A page with fewer numbers is a smaller page. It is also the only kind we can defend if a reader checks.

Found something wrong? Tell us through the contact page and include the page and the figure. If we can’t verify it, we remove it. Corrections are noted in the page’s review date rather than quietly edited.

Where to start

Four pages that answer most first questions

Dental careThe only Chinese price structure published in full: capped fee, parts, crown. HospitalsHow to read the tier system and the international department. Cost comparisonWhat can be compared, and what honestly can’t. Travel guideVisas, records, payment and the follow-up problem.

Tell us what you were quoted.

Send a quote and we will tell you what it leaves out — free, with no clinic recommendation and no sales call.