XIAOPING FANG. Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China.

Abstract

The system of barefoot doctors was introduced during the Cultural Revolution to improve medical care in rural China. The communist regime had gradually integrated and transformed public health and medical services in rural areas since it took power in 1949. The program of barefoot doctors marked a new and more radical stage of the expansion of the state medical system, pushing it deeper into rural society. Barefoot doctors, mostly rural youths with secondary education who had received a few months of medical training, formed the frontline of the state-layered medical system. They were charged to provide basic medical care to rural Chinese. The innovation of barefoot doctors has received much attention from Western scholars since its introduction, but certain aspects of it have remained little understood. One of the main reasons is that scholars have relied mostly on printed sources such as political announcements, official publications, and medical manuals and magazines. This top-down approach has obvious limitations, and it is not surprising that we know a lot more about the ideology of the barefoot doctors program and what it was supposed to do than what actually happened on the ground, in rural villages. Fang Xiaoping's book goes a long way toward rectifying this lacuna.