Untitled Page

Author	Ms LEI Xue
Organisation/Institution	City University of Hong Kong, School of Law
Country	HONG KONG (SAR OF CHINA)
Panel	Law and Society
Title	When Risk Cannot Be Priced: Legal Uncertainty, Government Intervention, and the Development of Medical Liability Insurance in China
Abstract	Why does medical liability insurance develop in China despite conditions that appear to make it uninsurable? This paper addresses this puzzle by examining the interaction between legal uncertainty and government intervention. Under market conditions, medical liability risks in China are difficult to insure due to barriers caused by institutional reasons. Insurers face significant barriers to risk assessment, resulting in limited supply. Yet medical liability insurance continues to expand in practice, at least in some districts in China. This paper argues that such development is enabled by government-led institutional substitution. Through a series of administrative measures, the government restructures and absorbs uncertainty, allowing insurance to function despite weak market foundations. The author conducted fieldwork in China in several cities that implement different development models of medical liability insurance. The study combined semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and the systematic collection of documentary and quantitative materials, including policy documents, contractual terms, claim-handling records (where accessible), and other relevant institutional data. Drawing on these materials and placing the empirical findings in dialogue with the literature on insurability and risk governance, the paper offers a practice-grounded account of its central claim: how medical liability insurance can continue to function, and in some settings even expand, under conditions that would ordinarily be expected to undermine insurability. The analysis suggests that insurability is not purely a function of market conditions but can be constructed through government intervention in contexts of institutional uncertainty.
Biography	Ms Leixue is a third-year PhD candidate at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong, under the supervision of Professor Ding Chunyan. Situated at the intersection of insurance law and medical law, her research examines how legal mechanisms can be harnessed to address compensation and liability challenges within the healthcare sector. Beyond this core focus, her scholarly interests encompass broader themes in insurance law, medical law, and socio-legal studies, reflecting a commitment to interdisciplinary legal inquiry.