Why is "Shared Development" the fifth and final of the Five Major Development Concepts - President Xi Jinping's guiding strategy to transform China? After all, China cannot realize its overarching goal of becoming a "moderately prosperous society" until poverty is eliminated and economic and social imbalances are reduced. Nowhere is this need more acute than in healthcare, a focus of reform.

To investigate the Five Major Development Concepts, I spent a week in Northwest China's Qinghai province - Xining the capital and Yushu in the Tibetan autonomous prefecture - meeting people, from senior provincial officials to hospital administrators to village doctors.

China still has about 50 million people living in poverty. Qinghai is one of the poorest provinces - 15 of its 48 counties are below the national poverty line. Compounding the problem, its population is less than Chicago's but its area is larger than France's, Qinghai's vast rural areas of 700,000 square kilometers are home to half of its 5.8 million people, most of whom are ethnic minorities. Many still live on the grasslands, herding cattle and horses.