Most countries experience major challenges to their health systems. The factors behind this global trend are increasing health costs and diminished returns on healthcare investment for ageing populations. Where the primary healthcare function is formally structured in the health system, and professionals are educated for their specific tasks, the performance of the system is improved: better primary health care leads to better population health at lower healthcare costs.1 This makes strengthening primary health care a global strategy to secure sustainable care.2 The value of international collaboration in implementing primary healthcare policy was exemplified by the I LIVE PC conference in 2011 in Washington.3 A critical feature of this is the modification and adaptation of general principles to the prevailing local conditions: primary health care must be built up from the community level where it has to operate.4 For this, a good understanding of the existing health system is important in initiating reforms. There is growing insight in primary health care in Europe and North America,3,5 but data are scarce for many countries or regions.4 To address this, the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) took the initiative to document how primary care is organised around the world, and created dialogues on how the values of primary care can be addressed within the constraints of different healthcare systems.6 A plenary symposium at the 2015 WONCA Asia Pacific regional conference in Taipei, Taiwan, offered an opportunity to compare the health systems of six member organisations of WONCA — China (Shanghai region), China (Hong Kong), Japan, Republic of Korea (South Korea), Singapore, and Taiwan — and document their experiences in the implementation of policy. The six presentations were structured on the format and method developed by the WONCA Working Party on Research. …