“The Persistent ‘Old Peking Union Medical College’ in the Mao Era”

Abstract

After 1950, the “Old pumc [Peking Union Medical College]” represented for many “the greatest bulwark for the American cultural aggression,” a label deeply rooted in China’s ideology of “anti-Americanism” during the Cold War. The Chinese Communist Party (ccp) advocated the carrying forward of the Yan’an spirit of populism and was determined to make the “People’s New pumc” better than the “Old pumc” before 1949, when the ccp took control of Mainland China. However, to upgrade medical care standards and promote advanced scientific research, pragmatic ccp leaders had to rely on intellectuals who received training at the “Old pumc” and retained most of its old traditions. Therefore, the persistence of the “Old pumc” mirrored the struggle between East and West, China and the United States, politics and academics, elites and masses, and urban and rural during the critical period of the Mao Zedong era. More important, this paper will demonstrate how regardless of extraordinary personal and political pressure, a small cohort of the Chinese scholars held fast to the dignity of a truth-seeking spirit, resisting the ideology of “anti-Americanism” that prevailed in the People’s Republic of China during this era.