Yang wei Zhong yong. To serve China: Medical schooling and modernization in the People's Republic

This dissertation is a study of tertiary level medical education in the People's Republic of China, with particular attention to the modernization reforms of the 1980's. It grew out of an interest to know what socialism had made of Chinese health and what modernization was making of Chinese education.;This dissertation focuses on the ways in which China has used Western medicine to serve its own needs. This study analyzes the changes in medical curricula from 1911 to 1989 with an eye to understanding how China adapted this imported scientific knowledge base for use in Chinese universities. Through an in-depth case study of one of China's core medical universities, it analyzes educational practice. It explores the ways that modernization has affected the faculty, the student body, the hospital, and international exchange at Xian Medical University, a school with which the author has had a lengthy and many-faceted relationship. This dissertation examines the modern Chinese discourse on medical ethics by comparing its treatment of autonomy, beneficience, and justice to that in the contemporary Western medical professional ethic. It raises questions about the relationship between this modern ethic and the changing realities of medical practice.;All professions are socially, politically, and economically constructed. The medical profession in modernizing China, as viewed through its training institutions, is no exception. In China of the past and China of the present, the state has controlled medical practice, defined medical ethics, and legitimated a particular version of medical knowledge. The title of this study, "To Serve China," comes from Mao Zedong's call to "Use the West to serve China; use the old to serve the new" (Yang wei Zhong yong, gu wei jin yong). It is the aim of this dissertation to discover how this call has been answered in medical education.;The study begins by raising questions about professions and their schooling and then seeks answers in the changing realities of medical training and medical practice in China. It asserts that in China there is a particular relationship between the medical profession and the state which defines medical knowledge, educational practice, and medical ethics. It seeks to understand how each of these have been defined under the Four Modernizations.