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

those trained were midwives or “young peasant boys.” In fact, one of the primary goals of the
CCP rural health movement was to reduce infant mortality by training midwives in aseptic
techniques, and by encouraging pregnant women to utilize trained midwives as their birth
helpers. Midwives and other auxiliary health personnel were encouraged to establish
cooperative training programs administered by the people (min ban 民办).
In addition, school children were taught hygenic habits like washing daily and trimming
fingernails, “lessons devoted to making the children of peasants recognize the need to be ‘self-
supporting, modern, and healthy.’” 603 This striving for modernity harks back to previous
decades with Chiang Kai-shek’s New Life Movement. This also points to the fact that traditional
Chinese physicians had long ago begun to adopt some scientific medical practices and theories,
such as anatomy and surgery. Furthermore, many of the jieshengpo, if they were utilized, must
have assumed some aseptic methods in their work, as they have today.
Although the war hindered maternal and child health work, surprisingly it was not
stopped altogether. The policies and institutions implemented in the Nationalist era and during
the Sino-Japanese War formed the basis for public health programs after the CCP gained power
in 1949. There are important continuities between the Guomindang era and the Communist era
in their plans for improving maternal and child health. The CCP’s “barefoot doctors” of the
1960s and 1970s are very similar to Yang’s para-medical personnel who had received
abbreviated training to fufill a critical and urgent need. Furthermore, the structure of the CCP’s
health care system, especially in rural areas, is comparable to the hierarchical structure in
Dingxian and other rural reconstruction experiments of the 1920s and 1930s. Wartime efforts to
improve public health may have given the CCP an even greater basis on which to build its
603 Jack Belden, China Shakes the World, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1949, p. 119, as quoted in Minden,
“The Development of Early Chinese Communist Health Policy,” 306.
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