Maigeng Zhou and colleagues1 claimed that they had implemented the same hierarchical model setup as Christopher Murray and colleagues had in their Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD),2 in which Taiwan and China were treated at the same level in the hierarchical model. However, according to figures 3 and 4 in the Article,1 Taiwan was placed at the level under the umbrella of China. The inconsistency between the methodology and results in these figures requires clarification.The authors stated that, to ensure consistency, province-level estimates for the 32 provinces in mainland China were matched with the mainland's estimates, in which Hong Kong and Macau were not included. As Taiwan is not geographically located inside mainland China and has implemented a different data collection protocol, including Taiwan in the mainland's estimates is misleading.
