The Rockefeller Foundation, the China Foundation, and the development of modern science in China

Two powerful foundations, with interlocking directorates, were the most important media for transmitting American science to China and for making its development possible: In the 1920s and 1930s, the Rockefeller Foundation's China Medical Board and the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture recognized that transmission and development required much more than the transplantation of whole scientific institutions. This essay shows that, in their most mature form, the foundations' strategies were informed by a rational and coherent set of policies. Their premise was that the practice and development of advanced scientific medicine and bio-medical or natural scientific research all require an infrastructure of education, communication, physical plant, and equipment. This infrastructure did not exist before the foundations began to foster it in China. In this essay the foundations' China policies are outlined and detailed examples are given to show they built the science infrastructure amidst debate over the appropriateness of the dominant 'Johns Hopkins' institutional model and the norm of 'pure science'. In China, the 'Hopkins' model for medical training and practice featured a combination of clinical practice with sophisticated scientific laboratory research. This model and the 'pure science' norm were seriously challenged by the political and economic exigencies of the 1930s.