Divergent Interests and Cultivated Misunderstandings: The Influence of the West on Modern Chinese Medicine

Abstract

Set in the first forty years of Communist Party rule in China (1949-89), this article will describe how Chinese medicine in modern China has been tailored to some degree by a Western concept of what Chinese medicine 'really' should be. After Chinese medicine was reinstated by the Chinese Communist Party as a state-sanctioned system of health care, it had to redefine its role within Chinese society. Western scholarly interest in the medicine was one force which was to leave its mark on this search for identity. The shroud of mystery in which China was enveloped for much of this time was to give rise to two fundamentally contradictory attitudes-one side was Chinese, pushing for a scientification of their medicine, and the other was Western, pushing for more information on a traditional healing method. This article will show how the Chinese medical community contributed to the Western illusion of a static, unchanging medical system, by repeated advertising of the long and rich history of their medicine, and by the use of the translation 'Traditional Chinese Medicine' (or 'TCM'). In turn, Western scholars clamoured for proof of such a tradition, and their attention was directed towards a new form of textbook, namely the 'Basic Theory of TCM', which belonged, in fact, to a sideline programme of Chinese medical education-that of teaching it to doctors of Western medicine. Just how such divergent interests and cultivated misunderstandings reinforced one another will be the topic ofthis article.