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

efforts, rural residents largely distrusted the young new midwives. 53 Ka-che Yip has pointed out
that, aside from its successes in surgical methods, most Chinese did not have confidence in
modern medicine or its physicians. 54 As we will see, rural efforts at modern midwifery were not
far-reaching in the early twentieth century, and some rural modernizers like C.C. Chen resigned
themselves to making only a small dent in rural maternal and child health. Even today, many
rural areas are still lacking basic health care, and the Chinese government’s efforts to improve
maternal and child health continue. One study in 2002 found that 76 percent of all women in
China give birth in hospitals, including nearly all women in urban areas. 55 Rural women are still
left out of the modern midwifery movement.
It is clear that from 1900 to the 1940s and beyond, there was a concerted move from
private to public midwifery, with the state gaining more and more control over the training and
licensing of modern midwives by the 1930s. Western physicians and medical missionaries in
early twentieth-century China created public health programs that targeted women and children,
started medical schools and trained female medical workers and midwives, and sent Chinese
students to the United States to study. The Nationalist government took over this role as
midwifery moved from a private enterprise to a state-run endeavor. With state administration
came greater interference in the lives of women: old-style midwives, who were ostracized and
banned; modern midwives, who had to submit to a standardized curriculum and licensing
apparatus; and the patients themselves, whom the state encouraged to have healthy babies in
order to strengthen the nation. This state model of public health is the basis for the Chinese
53
Charles W. Hayford, To the People: James Yen and Village China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).
54
Yip, Health and National Reconstruction.
55
"Midwifery Phased out in China's Rural Areas," People's Daily Online, Monday, September 30, 2002,
http://english.people.com.cn/200209/30/eng20020930_104171.shtml#.
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