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IntroductionThe Chinese government has encouraged the development of private sector in delivering healthcare, including primary healthcare (PHC) in the new round of national health reform since 2009. However, the debate about the role of the private sector in achieving universal health coverage continues with poor support from theories and empirical evidence. This study intends to compare the quality of PHC services between the private and public providers in seven provinces in China, using unannounced standardised patients (USPs).MethodsWe are developing and validating 13 USP cases most commonly observed in the PHC setting. Six domains of quality will be assessed by the USP: effectiveness, safety, patient centredness, efficiency, timeliness and equity. The USP will make 2200 visits to 705 public and 521 private PHC institutions across seven provinces, following a multistage clustered sample design. Using each USP-provider encounter as the analytical unit, we will first descriptively compare the raw differences in quality between the private and public providers and then analyse the association of ownership types and quality, using propensity score weighting.Ethics and disseminationThe study was primarily funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#71974211, #71874116 and # 72074163) and was also supported by the China Medical Board (#16-260, #18-300 and #18-301), and have received ethical approval from Sun Yat-sen University (#2019–024). The validated USP tool and the data collected in this study will be freely available for the public after the primary analysis of the study.Trial registration numberChinese Clinical Trial Registry: #ChiCTR2000032773.

Background The prevalence of diabetes and diabetic complications increased alarmingly which also brought heavy burden to patients and health system. Methods We used mix approaches to summarize evidence from published articles and policy documents on the extent and trends of diabetic complications, potential causes, and awareness and services utilization of diabetes in China. Results The annual direct medical expense per patient varied among different types of complications and increased dramatically with the number of diabetic complication and patients were exposed to great financial risk. The number of health policies and strategies on diabetes and its complications at the national level is limited. Primary and secondary preventions such as health education and early diagnosis are necessary. Conclusions With an increasingly burden of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and its complications, efforts should be invested in education, early screening mechanism and patient management programs to improve the primary and secondary prevention of diabetes and its complications. An integrated services delivery system centered on primary level is recommended to promote education, early case-detection and screening, patient management, referral and care-coordination between primary, secondary and tertiary health care providers. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6569-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.