ABSTRACT
The years 1953-6 mark a crucial phase in the eventual institutionalization of TCM in China. This chapter begins at a time when Chinese medicine has just been reintroduced into Mao’s revolutionary plan, and ends with the formal institutionalization of Chinese medicine in CCP China upon the establishment of four Academies of TCM. Yet this chapter does not see the two events as a necessary consequence of each other, but rather shows that the policy of institutionalization ran at a tangent to Mao’s original revolutionary goal. This chapter will suggest that the initial drive behind the promotion of Chinese medicine in PRC China had not been to preserve the medicine in its own right, but instead had been intended to raise Chinese medicine to a scientific enough level so that it could ‘unite’ (tuanjie ), even to the point of ‘fusing’ (tongyi ), with Western medicine. This would be accomplished through a programme of ‘doctors of Western medicine study Chinese medicine’, and this chapter claims that the first government institution of TCM in China, the Research Academy of TCM ( !"), was specifically set up for that purpose. This chapter will then suggest that once the revolutionary project was under way, Mao’s attention drifted. In other words, the further promotion of Chinese medicine fell once again into the hands of interpreters. And it is perhaps in recognition of the fate of others who had allegedly ‘mishandled’ Central Committee instructions on Chinese medical policy, that Chinese medicine in this case came to be handled very favourably, leading to a moderation of official policy towards it. The most immediate consequence was the institutionalization of Chinese medicine as a body of knowledge in four Academies of TCM ( !). The institutionalization of Chinese medicine saw the creation of a ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine’ (TCM) as a valid medical system in mainland China. This chapter will therefore aim to elucidate the piecemeal process which led to the creation of a twentieth-century medicine called TCM.
