Special Feature: Sina Finance 2025 Annual Conference & 18th Golden Kirin Forum The "Sina Finance 2025 Annual Conference & 18th Golden Kirin Forum" was held in Beijing on January 15, 2026, with the theme "The Start of the 15th Five-Year Plan, A New Economic Voyage – Reshaping Growth Paradigms, Co-creating Future Prosperity." Li Ling, former Vice Chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Professor at the National School of Development at Peking University, and Director of the Peking University Health Development Research Center, attended and delivered a speech.

Li Ling remarked that on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump entered the White House for a second term, full of ambition. In collaboration with Elon Musk, his first initiative was establishing a Government Efficiency Department aimed at improving governmental operations. However, less than a year later, the initiative has already faltered, and the department no longer exists. What is wrong with U.S. finances? She pointed out that the U.S. national debt has now surpassed $38 trillion and continues to grow daily, arguing that unsustainable public finances are the fundamental cause of national decline.

The U.S. balance sheet reveals that in 2025, federal revenue was $5.235 trillion. "Medicare" and "Medicaid" combined constitute the largest single expenditure, exceeding $1.6 trillion. The second largest U.S. expenditure is Social Security (pensions). The third is interest payments on its massive national debt. The fourth is defense spending. The U.S. has the highest defense budget globally, exceeding the combined spending of the next ten countries, yet it still only ranks fourth. Li Ling stated, "The U.S. government's largest expenditure is healthcare, so healthcare spending is effectively overwhelming the U.S. government. Musk's Government Efficiency Department reform was inevitably doomed to fail. Medicare and Medicaid are untouchable for the U.S., and exorbitant healthcare costs are also crippling American industry. Despite efforts from Trump's first term, through the Biden administration, and up to the present, to re-industrialize America, the proportion of U.S. industrialization is actually declining."

Simultaneously, data shows that U.S. healthcare and health expenditures account for a larger share of its GDP than the share contributed by industrial value-added. "Industry represents real, tangible value—wealth that is produced and created—whereas healthcare is a societal cost, an expense." Why is the U.S. unable to re-industrialize? Li Ling indicated that prohibitively high healthcare costs have rendered American industry uncompetitive, leading to its continual decline. In contrast, she noted that China's path to modernization is precisely one of China's advantages, stating, "When compared with the U.S., we are full of confidence."

Furthermore, Li Ling mentioned that China is now the world's most powerful industrialized nation, and recent reforms to the country's healthcare system have shown positive results. According to the latest data released by the National Health Commission, China's total health expenditure in 2024 was preliminarily calculated at 9.08955 trillion yuan. Of this, government health expenditure accounted for 24.9%, social health expenditure for 47.6%, and out-of-pocket payments by individuals for 27.5%. The per capita total health expense was 6,454.4 yuan, and the total health expenditure's share of GDP was 6.7%, falling below 7% for the first time. The growth rate of medical and health expenses is now beginning to slow, while China's industrial value-added remains very high and its quality is continuously improving.