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

CONCLUSION
Childbirth in China underwent remarkable transformations in the early twentieth century. The
development of modern midwifery was a larger part of the modernizing movement in the
Republican and especially the Nationalist eras. State control over birth is part of the
modernizing agenda in any locale, and in China there was a definite move towards state-run
midwifery after 1911. By the Nanjing Decade, modern midwifery was an integral part of
improving China’s health, and national midwifery schools and midwife examinations and
regulations were firmly in place. The First National Midwifery School, under the newly formed
Ministries of Health and of Education, was the national model for all other midwife training
programs. State-run provincial and municipal midwifery schools followed, and private schools
also flourished in the 1930s. The belief in science, in this case modern medicine, to cure China’s
ills was also prevalent among modernizing intellectuals. Popular publications devoted to public
health sprung up in urban areas. Women’s magazines exhorted their readers to utilize modern
methods of childbirth and child rearing in order to save the nation.
Philanthropy was extremely important in these improvements to public health.
Missionaries, local gentry, and warlords first contributed to bettering the maternal and child
health of China’s citizens by donating funds to build hospitals and clinics. Afterwards, the
Nationalist government welcomed assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation’s China Medical
Board and International Health Division in the creation of the First National Midwifery School
and other midwife training programs around the country. Instead of imposing a hegemonic
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