Is Market a Hero or Villain? A Narrative Policy Framework Analysis of China's Patient‐Centred Healthcare Policy

This study applies the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) within a non‐democratic context, exploring the role of policy narratives in the implementation of patient‐centred healthcare policy in China. Drawing on a dataset of academic journal articles that reference both “market” and “patient‐centredness,” the research reveals how local implementers reframed national policy by aligning it with operative ideology. While national policy promoted socialist altruism, local actors often reinterpreted it through a market‐oriented perspective to address institutional constraints and financial pressures. Through the strategic use of narrative elements such as heroes and villains, these grassroots narratives subtly shifted the policy's intent without overtly challenging central authority and implemented the policy symbolically on the ground. The study contributes to the scholarship of Chinese health reform by examining the interpretation of national health policy from the implementer's perspective, and to the NPF scholarship by extending its applicability to authoritarian settings and by focusing on the understudied implementation phase of the policy process.