The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 Read Online Free PDF Page A

the incidence of cholera in the countryside, encouraged an image of unceasing progress. Health campaigns punctuated daily life, as people were mobilised at intervals to sweep the streets, remove rubbish, kill rats or fill cesspools. During the Patriotic Health Campaign in 1952, as the country was on a war footing against enemy germs, battalions of conscripted citizens had disinfected entire cities. Much of the campaign, as the Ministry of Health admitted, turned out to be wasteful, as Chapter 7 showed.
    But there were real gains. China had always had huge health-care problems, in particular in the countryside where schistosomiasis (an intestinal disease which attacked the liver and spleen), hookworm and beriberi were common. Infant mortality was high before liberation, and there were few modern doctors, except in the big cities. Some improvements of the 1950s were due to new medical breakthroughs. After the Second World War, for instance, mass production of penicillin began in many countries, bringing a steady decline in the number of bacterial infections. The end of more than a decade of war helped other aspects of public health in China. Piles of garbage that had accumulated in many cities during the civil war were removed. Streets were cleaned, trenches filled, drainage improved. Inoculation became widespread, even if it was forcibly performed by cadres keen to fill their quotas. Most of all, the one-party state mobilised its resources against devastating epidemics, many of which were brought under control soon after they appeared.
    But health care was not free. The much flaunted barefoot doctors, trained to bring basic health care to the countryside, only appeared years later during the Cultural Revolution. And much medical help that farmers would have received from non-governmental sources before liberation vanished, sometimes overnight. Hundreds of mission hospitals scattered throughout the countryside were liquidated. Taoist and Buddhist temples, along with other religious or charitable institutions, were closed down, except for a few under government control. Everywhere pharmacists, doctors and nurses had to jump through the hoops, demonstrating their allegiance to the new regime as one campaign of thought reform succeeded another. And everywhere, by 1956, the state had taken over most companies, including retail pharmacies and private clinics.
    Whatever improvements may have followed liberation, health was soon on the decline. Published reports and newspaper articles described great strides in health care, but far more critical surveys, quietly filed away in the archives, reveal a picture of chronic malnutrition and poor health. This was true not only of the countryside, where collectivisation had reduced the farmers to the status of serfs, but also of the cities. One reason was the decline in income for most workers across the country. Just as farmers had to live on increasingly smaller rations of grain, workers had to make do with dwindling salaries. But health care involved considerable costs, and medicine was expensive. The Bureau for Labour, which studied hundreds of factories in 1956, concluded that ‘over the past few years the real income of workers has followed a downward trend’. Inflation outpaced wages. About half of all workers in heavy industry failed to make even 50 yuan a month. The proportion was higher in light industry. In Beijing one in six workers barely managed to scrape a living, making less than 10 yuan a month for basic expenses. And below them, in the shadowy world of construction, dwelled an underclass of paupers who made up 40 per cent of the workforce. Health everywhere was on the decline, as disease rates inched up year after year. By 1955 almost one in every twenty workers had to take sick leave for more than six months. In some factories 40 per cent of workers suffered from a serious chronic illness, although few could afford to take rest – despite the propaganda about workers’