How did the Communist Party of China (CPC) redefine the social and political roles of medicine and doctors as it developed from an illegitimate or minority party to the ruling political power? From the 1930s to the 1960s, decades replete with ideological shifts, political upheavals and wars, the formula CPC developed for its anti-imperial movements and state-building enterprise changed not only the political and economic fundaments of China’s statehood, but also people’s perception of physician-state-patient relationship. The article will start with a medical dispute that signifies a nostalgic idealization of doctors’ social roles in the 21st century. Following an overview of the major shifts in medical regulations that define doctors’ roles in the early ROC and the CPC regimes, the discussion then highlights three interrelated elements in CPC’s wartime medical experiences: an extremely high standard of morality for medical practitioners; de-commodification of medical services; and mobilization of medical practitioners to support the CPC’s political agenda. The CPC’s wartime medical experiences at the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive levels are essential to our understanding of the institutionalization of medicine in the early PRC and the changing physician-state-patient relationship in contemporary China.
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In May 2012, the attempted suicide of Zhang Juan 张娟, a 4th-year physician of the Second Hospital affiliated with Nanyang Medical College (Nanyang Yizhuan 南阳医专),Footnote1 garnered nation-wide attention because it elucidates a social problem that has caused serious concerns for two decades or so in China: the erosion of the doctor-patient relationship.Footnote2 Ms. ZhangFootnote3 was the doctor in charge of an infant born on April 20 and hospitalized for symptoms of hypoxia immediately after birth. On May 2, the infant was discharged from the hospital; after an hour-long bus ride, the family arrived at their home. Before the family left the hospital, Ms. Zhang gave the uncle of the baby her cell phone number in case they had any questions.
The family did call her around 7pm May 2, reporting the baby had a fever. Ms. Zhang provided her diagnosis and instructions and reminded the family to call back within half an hour. Around 11pm, the infant still had a high fever of 40 °C. The family managed to send the infant back to the hospital. The infant died at 9:30am May 3. The next day, the family and relatives went to the hospital to file a complaint because the father and the uncle believed that the baby’s death might have been caused by problematic instructions from Ms. Zhang and the ER procedure at the hospital.Footnote4 The head of Ms. Zhang’s department proposed to pay the family RMB10,000, including a waiver of hospitalization fees; the rest was to be collected from individual employees of Ms. Zhang’s unit, including the head and Ms. Zhang. This was a gesture of “rendao zhuyi 人道主义” (humanitarianism), as an administrator of the hospital explained. But this gesture sent a wrong message to the family. They argued that if there was nothing wrong, why would the hospital want to pay? One of the relatives argued for compensation of RMB150,000.
