Soft aid for health has become an important component of China's foreign aid. Soft aid for health with a focus on human resources development reflects the core spirit and the innovative mechanism of China's foreign aid. This paper examines three different types of aid for health human resources: medical assistance teams, govern-ment scholarships for students from developing countries, and health training courses for officials from developing countries. It also argues that China's foreign aid exposes problems, including insufficient strategic planning, non-in-volvement of civil society and NGOs, and lack of research on China's soft aid practices. In this paper, we suggests that to improve the effectiveness of foreign aid, the government should improve its strategic planning for aid, ensure the full public participation, strengthen the academic research, and improve knowledge sharing.