Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History

By examining two case studies on how the Chinese diaspora came to shape biomedicine in China and Taiwan from 1937 to 1970, this talk makes the case for a new historical concept of "global medicine." "Global medicine" highlights the multivalent and multidirectional flows of medical practices and ideas circulating the world that shaped Chinese East Asia in the 20th century. This presentation highlights the critical intersections of scientific expertise, political freedoms, transnational connections and diasporic affect in shaping global medicine in China and Taiwan through a critical examination of these two medical encounters between the Chinese diaspora and the local Chinese and Taiwanese.
Wayne Soon is a historian of modern China and East Asia, with a particular interest in how international ideas and practices of medicine, institutional building, and diaspora have shaped the region’s interaction with its people and the world in the twentieth century. He received his BA from Carleton College, and his PhD in history from Princeton University. His book, Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History (Stanford, 2020), tells the global health story of Overseas Chinese who transformed medicine in twentieth-century China and Taiwan through the practices of military medicine, blood banking, mobile medicine, and mass medical training. His published and forthcoming journal articles and book reviews are in Twentieth Century China, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, American Journal for Chinese Studies, Asian Studies Review, Asian Medicine, Social History of Medicine, and East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal. To register, please click here.