OBJECTIVES: The prevailing view in the literature is that additional government health input has little effect on mortality and/or morbidity. In China, however, this is not an accepted consensus. Researchers and policy makers are still debating whether market or government should take more responsibilities in the health care area. In this paper, we aim to investigate the efficiency of China public health spending. METHODS: We obtain unique China provincial level panel data and use fixed effect model to test the relationship between public health spending and morbidity rate of thirteen infectious diseases. RESULTS: We find that budgetary allocation to epidemic prevention and control expenses has little impact on reducing the morbidity rate of the sample infectious diseases in China. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding the efficiency of public health spending is crucial in designing public health policy in China, especially when the health care system reform enters the deep water.   The above finding suggests that the policy maker should seriously consider the role of government in the future health care reform.