And the PLA boasts that lots of yuan are being saved. But do they really know where those drugs are coming from and if they’re even safe? Given the state of pharmaceutical manufacturing in China, one has to wonder. There’s room for cruel irony here.

In any event, here’s the party line, no pun intended: The PLA claims that online purchasing helped cut pharmaceutical costs in 2007, when it only spent 79 million yuan, or about $11 million, out of a 100 million yuan budget for the 32 most commonly purchased drugs, the Xinhua news agency reports. The savings were achieved by soliciting large-volume online bids and dispersing purchases across provincial lines, according to Li Jianhua, the director of the health bureau of the PLA’s General Logistics Department. Wholesale prices offered online were 20 percent below the national average, Li added.

The army made a comparative analysis of pharmacy prices in 14 provinces and municipalities to ensure that military units in different locations bought the same product at the same price, Li told Xinhua. To promote fairness and transparency, the PLA has built up a pharmacy purchasing network that it used to select 2,200 suppliers worldwide for the 17,469 products that were needed, he explained.

This is our favorite part: Products were judged by quality, price, credibility of manufacturers and service, according to Li, adding that the buying panel consisted of more than 40 army pharmaceutical experts who had the final say. The network is connected to a pharmaceutical supervision database that allowed 660 inferior products to be screened out last year, Li added.

Now, where do you suppose they get their Heparin?