Figure 1.

Sampling flow of community health services centers and stations in 2003 in China.

^a Five cities specifically designated in the state plan (this city is similar in size to a provincial capital) include Xiamen, Ningbo, Qingdao, Shenzhen, and Dalian, which are controlled by provincial governments politically and managed by the central government economically.¹⁹

^b Four municipalities (a municipality is roughly equivalent to a province) are directly under the jurisdiction of the central government, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing.

^c Considering level of local economic as a stratification factor, 27 provinces were stratified into 7 strata. Every stratum includes 4 provinces with similar economic levels, except 3 provinces in the last stratum. Each province was selected from every stratum by simple random sampling.

^d Seven capitals of selected provinces were selected in terms of economical and political characteristics.