ABSTRACT
When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) overcame the Nationalists and established a new regime in October 1949, it inherited a dire medical situation. Medical resources were deplorably scarce and health indicators were extremely low, as were the administrative blueprints and experimental practices for improving the health of the people. The Communist government incorporated its political ideology and social mobilisation strategies into its medical and health work to overcome resource and personnel constraints. In 1951–52, the government established its four general principles of health work at the National Health Work Meeting, namely ‘prevention first; serve workers, peasants, and soldiers; unite Chinese and Western medicine; and combine health work and mass movements’. These principles underlay the priorities, objectives, and organisational strategies for Communist health work, including strategies regarding Chinese and Western medicine. Throughout the state-building and modernisation processes of the second half of the twentieth century, specific features emerged for Communist medicine, notably the definition of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the promotion of barefoot doctor programmes in rural China, and the rise of national medical markets.
