Using James Scotts (2009) theoretical framework of the interaction between the state and peripheral people, we argue that the welfare state should be regarded as a pull-factor in the context of the states endeavours to project its power to distant peoples in assigned state zones. Our discussion is based on interviews in Xinyuan County in the Western part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. Presenting current policies and alternative policy options discussed at the local level for providing primary health care in rural China, we argue that decisions made in the implementation process did not respond to the special health needs of mobile pastoralists in the high plains, but were part of the central state logic of homogenising settlement e?orts and health care.
