The article analyzes why Chinese life insurance companies are efficient or inefficient. Researchers used models to measure efficiency and productivity, finding that overall inefficiency in these companies is around 37.7%. Pure technical inefficiency is increasing more than scale inefficiency in Chinese-owned companies, while the opposite is true for joint ventures. Productivity and efficiency have mostly improved over time, but technical and scale efficiency have worsened in many companies. Factors like market share, claims ratio, and human capital increase efficiency, while expense ratio, underwriting profit margin, and the proportion of personal injury insurance decrease efficiency. Company size increases technical and scale efficiency but decreases pure technical efficiency.