Chinese Medicine in China of 1950s: How History Was Reversed by A Superpower Man

The history of Chinese medicine in the years of 1950s is very special. Its destination was entirely determined by politics with technical or professional factors irrelevant. The reason is simple. This is a time of a newly established communist China ruled by the most powerful leader in China's history, whose name is Mao Zedong.

Mao started to rule the country in 1949. But ever since the early 1940s, Mao had already gained his political superpower in his party and whatever he said were all viewed as the ultimate political truth with no one daring to question. His intervention determined the destiny of Chinese medicine at the time.

A Crisis to Chinese Medicine in Maoist China

As a Marxist and anti-traditional iconoclast, Mao from the very beginning had been viewing Chinese medicine as a symbol of feudalism and superstition of the old China, thus needed to be reformed with “new medicine” (Western medicine). Mao called in 1944: “Our task is to unit... old style doctors who can be used, and to help, educate and remold them”.

In the early 1950s, following Mao's words of “educate and remold”, the vice Health Ministers He Cheng 贺诚 and Wang Bin 王斌, both veteran communists and previous Western style doctors, started to work on educating the existing Chinese medicine doctors, who were requested to go through further education in Western medicine.

By early 1950s, 17 Further Education schools had been set up across China. The national curriculum with 22 courses were created in which only 2 fell into Chinese medicine (acupuncture and Basics for Chinese medicine research), all others being Western medicine courses. For acupuncture, the neurology-based acupuncture established by Zhu Lian was taught in these training schools.

The two Ministers further introduced medical licensing exam addressed to all medical doctors. The subjects under new exams included physiology, anatomy, bacteriology, herbs, prescriptions, and infectious diseases.

However, the result of the Further Education for Chinese medicine doctors was devastating. Over 90% of Chinese medicine doctors across China failed the licensing exam, thus were banned from practice. This meant the majority of the existing (around 300, 000) Chinese medicine doctors would be unable to practice Chinese medicine legally in the newly-established communist China, where at the time only 20, 000 Western doctors available national wide. Also introduced were policies that health insurance excluded Chinese medicine and hospitals were not allowed to hire Chinese medicine doctors.

The two Minsters believed that China should contribute to the world a new scientific medicine by absorbing Chinese medicine into Western medicine, which was how they interpreted Mao's thinking.

Nationalism Is the Priority

But history turned out what the two ministers did on Chinese medicine heavily costed their political life, “thanks” to Mao's intervention. In 1953, Mao removed Wang Bin from his post, further in 1956 also kicked out He Cheng, the two ministers ended up in exile not just demotion after their work came into Mao's attention (through a report from a political commissar).

Mao's uncharity against his long term comrades had a reason. After taking power in China in 1949, Mao's new political goal now was not only to reform China into a socialism society, but also to make himself the leader in the newly-emerged communism world, who could stand up against the West and guide China to become a beacon of Communism in the dark universe. Mao poetically looked down on the earth as a small ball on which were buzzing a few “imperialism” flies.

Mao wanted to build a Chinese brand communism that distinguished itself from that of Russia's Soviet. For this purpose, he first needed the readily available and inexpensive Chinese medicine to serve the vast rural population with very poor health care resources.

Being a communist, Mao was also very Chinese. To Mao, more important was that Chinese medicine could be a powerful nationalistic tool to uphold the dignity and independence of the nation, and also to resist the bourgeois tendency of many Western style medical doctors.

Mao used nationalism as his best weapon in promoting China's identity. Chinese medicine fits well to nationalism as it is “native”, “self-reliant” and “among the mass”. He did view Chinese medicine as a symbol of backwardness, but he did not want it to be eradicated.

Rather Socialism than Western Technologies

Mao was in fact in a dilemma. On the one hand, Chinese modernization needed the advanced Western technologies, but on the other hand, too much Westernization would be detrimental to the coherence of his socialism.

Partially inspired by Zhu Lian's neurology-based acupuncture book, Mao took Chinese (medical) culture as composed of “essence and dross”, Western culture as of technology and imperialism. He wanted to only keep the essence and technology. But when conflict happens with political morals, Mao would definitely choose political morals over essence or technology, even not bothering “retaining the dross”.

History Was Reversed

Instead of his earlier call for “scientizing” Chinese medicine, Mao now decided to “sinicizing” Western medicine by forcing Western style doctors to unconditionally accept Chinese medicine, skeptics not allowed. Unable understand “yin-yang and 5 elements”? No problem, just accept it now and take your time to find a way to prove it. Shut up no talk back.

The punishment against two ministers was also a warning by Mao to all educated elites in all fields but not only to medical doctors. Thus, a technical issue of medicine was turned into a political task. The scientization movement of Chinese medicine in China started making a U-turn from this point, where the birth of so-called traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) began to be seen on the horizon.

In 1954, Mao ordered that the old-style Chinese medicine texts be sort out, systematized and standardized through writing textbooks for Chinese education nation wide. This task was carried out by some herbalists in 1956 - 1960, resulting in a standardized acupuncture with a "yin-yang / 5 elements / 12 Jing-Mai vessels" frame primarily based on Yangjizhou's Zhenjiudacheng (1601). Its English version is called TCM acupuncture which would later become the needling bible in the Western world.

Epilogue

Then what happened to Zhu Lian whose neurology-based acupuncture was taught in medical education schools nationwide in early 1950s? Zhu Lian, China's founding mother of scientific acupuncture, was virtually exiled to a remote rural city near the Vietnam border with his husband in 1960. She had kept herself “shut up” about the newly standardized esoteric acupuncture through the rest of her life. She passed away in 1978. Her book “New Acupuncture” had gradually faded into oblivion.

Politics triumphs science. An unavoidable common phenomenon in human history.

References

Cheng Danan, 1931, Chinese Acupuncture Therapy 中国针灸治疗学

Han Fudong韩福东, "废止中医"争论并非始于今日, 中国新闻周刊, Nov. 27, 2006 https://www.sina.com.cn

Ren Xiaofeng 任小风, 批判贺诚同志在对待中医的政策上的错误, Dec. 20, 1955, People's Daily人民日报

Zhang Mei 张梅, Cheng Danan and Chinese Acupuncture Medicine承淡安与中国针灸医学，2018，每日头https://kknews.cc/culture/mq83x2p.html

Zhang Shu-jian 张树剑，Zhu Lian's New Acupuncture: Academic System and acupuncture science initialization, Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 中国 针灸, 2015 Nov;35(11):1199-202

Zhu, Lian 朱琏，New Acupuncture 新针灸学, 1951, People's Publish House人民出版社