MEDICAL ETHICS AND THERAPEUTIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHINA: A PERSPECTIVE ON HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS, ENCOUNTERS, INTERNATIONALISATION AND CO-CONSTRUCTION

Abstract

In the Chinese context, past and present encounters between several medical traditions have transformed the health-care system including medical ethics. As a result, actual ethics show both inherited “Chinese” and international characteristics. Health-related ideas, practices and experiences offer a plural landscape. In post-Mao China (Reform Era from 1979 on), medical sciences developed within the wider framework of social and economic transition while China gained influence in R&D, basic sciences research and technology. Two sets of ethics principles—one from Late Imperial China, another from the 1980s, were selected: both of them reveal “historical turns” in medical ethics, Chinese medicine and the broader health-related field in line with drastic changes in Chinese society including the transformation of values and norms. The chapter is organized as follows: the two mentioned historical sets and their situated meanings are discussed in regard to changes and encounters. The situation in 2000s globalizing China – regarding Chinese medicine related ethics, and the process of internationalization and of (co)construction of knowledge – is then examined. In order to facilitate the reader’s understanding, details about the selected sets of principles are indicated at the end of the main text.