Professor Guoqiang Dong

Rethinking the China Model of Public Health-Care from the Perspective of Global History

China launched numerous public health care campaigns during the Maoist era. Government documents and propaganda highlighted their achievements and even laid out a “China Model” characterised by government domination and mass mobilization combined with a low-investment low-tech approach. These claims were widely accepted by the WHO and many professionals in the Western world. Looking from the perspective of global history, however, the Maoist era is only a short episode. The general trend of public health development in China from the 1920s to the present has been to pursue internationalization, scientization, institutionalization and professionalization.

This project intends to re-explore this issue by utilizing both Chinese and English sources, focusing on the dramatic developments from the 1970s when China resumed contact with outside world. This kind of research will shed new light on public health issues in contemporary China and further deepen our understanding of the relationship between science and politics.