Diabetes rates continue to rise

Lifestyle changes have led to growing rates of diabetes among Chinese, and more needs to be done to reverse the trend, according to diabetes specialist Xu Zhangrong.

In the early 1980s, the prevalence of diabetes among adults in China was 0.67 percent. In 2008, it increased to 9.7 percent, says Xu, who is the director of the diabetes treatment center of the 306th Hospital of the People's Liberation Army.

In 2010, under the new diagnostic criteria, the prevalence hit 11.6 percent, the highest in the world. China now has one-third of the world's diabetic population, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2013.