China's ministry of health stated on Monday that it will seek to speed up the development of the country's medical device industry and promote wider use of local products to "effectively control unreasonable increases in the cost of medical care and reduce the burden on patients," Reuters reported.

Incentives to encourage hospitals to use Chinese-made medical devices may increase the extent of protectionism and is a potential threat to global medical device makers. The US, Europe and Japan currently dominate around three-quarters of China's medical device market, which was worth RMB212 billion (US$34.51 billion) last year.