BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

THE CHINA MEDICAL BOARD AND PEKING UNION MEDICAL COLLEGE
It is impossible to separate Chinese government policy from the Rockefeller Foundation and its
China Medical Board. The CMB played a key role in professionalizing medicine both in the
United States and abroad and was the primary architect of China’s model hospital and medical
school, Peking Union Medical College. 455 The First National Midwifery School, the model
institution of its kind in China, was affiliated with PUMC’s departments of public health,
nursing, and obstetrics and gynecology. With PUMC came important changes in the medical
field in China. In fact, before PUMC, there was no medical profession in China. It was not
legalized, institutionalized, or standardized. PUMC granted the first government-sanctioned
medical diplomas in China. Its physicians and administrators promoted medical professionalism
and opened careers for women. 456
A case in point: PUMC actively discouraged the hiring of male nurses, who had been
common in China before the 1920s, over female nurses. This decidedly American characteristic
enforced a gender hierarchy at PUMC, like its role model Johns Hopkins University, whereby
female nurses would be subordinate to primarily male physicians. 457 Furthermore, the China
Medical Board enforced a hierarchy of medical schools and itself acted as the archetype of
medical training throughout China. The CMB classified the preexisting medical schools,
colleges, and training programs in China according to the quality of their curricula, faculty and
staff, and facilities. Most of the schools were deemed inadequate, even those run by Western
missionaries. The Japanese schools were especially criticized. In addition, Johns Hopkins
University Medical School was the American counterpart to PUMC. Dr. J. Whitridge Williams,
455 Browning, "Notes of Cases."
456 Jiang, "Cross-Cultural Philanthropy," 166-68.
457 Michelle Renshaw, "Accomodating the Chinese: The American Hospital in China, 1880-1920" (PhD dissertation,
University of Adelaide, 2003).
186