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The paper examines the public health strategies of segregation, isolation, and quarantine as measures to protect Hong Kong from imported diseases, as well as from the spread of diseases within the colony in the pre-war period, through case studies of cholera, smallpox, and plague. The purpose is to contextualize the discussion of these case studies in order to analyse the assumptions and rationale underlying the control measures, the way they were implemented, and their effectiveness in disease protection. The case studies illuminate some of the political, economic, social and cultural issues involved in the adoption of specific measures which the colonists deemed necessary for their physical survival and the economic well-being of the colony. That fundamental concern was reinforced by the view that since the indigenes were incapable of actively participating in disease prevention, the government had to act even without the indigenes' cooperation or involvement. The study also examines how the colonial go...

1. Introduction: National Health, International Interests Ka-che Yip and Liping Bu 2. Transition to Decolonization: the Search for a Health Policy in Postwar Hong Kong, 1945-1985 Ka-che Yip 3. The Patriotic Health Movement and China's Socialist Reconstruction: Fighting Disease and Transforming Society, 1950-1980 Liping Bu 4. Diseases, Peasants and Nation-Building in Rural China, 1950s: Social Conformity, Institutional Strengthening, and Political Indoctrination Xiaoping Fang 5. Learning from the Soviet Union: Pavlovian Influence in Chinese Medicine, 1950s Gao Xi 6. Public Health and People's Health: Contrasting the Paths in Healthcare Systems of North and South Koreas, 1945-1960 Shin Dongwon 7. Impact of Government-Foundation Cooperation: Healthcare System Development in Postwar Japan Kazumi Noguchi 8. Medicine, Philanthropy, and Nationhood: Tensions of Different Visions in India Shirish N Kavadi 9. The Campaign against the Big Four Endemic Diseases and Indonesia's Engagement with the WHO during the Cold War 1950s Vivek Neelakantan 10. A Promise of Desire: On the Politics of Healthcare and Moral Discourse in Thailand, 1950-2010 Davisakd Puaksom

1. Introduction - Liping Bu and Ka-che Yip 2. Science, Culture, and Disease Control in Colonial Hong Kong - Ka-che Yip 3. Public Health in Prewar Singapore: The Development of Hospital Services and Medical Education - Law Yuen Han 4. Hygiene and Decolonization: The Rockefeller Foundation and Indonesian Nationalism, 1933-1958 - Eric Andrew Stein 5. The Alma-Ata Declaration, Rockefeller Foundation and the Development of Primary Health Care in Sri Lanka: A Model for Health Promotion - Soma Hewa 6. "Removing the Obstacles to Public Health Work": Rockefeller Initiatives in Public Health in China and Japan and its Effects, 1925-1950 - Darwin Stapleton 7. From Race Biology to Population Control: The Rockefeller Foundation's "Public Health" Projects in Japan, 1920s-1950s - Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci 8. Beijing First Health Station: Innovative Public Health Education and Influence on China's Health Profession - Liping Bu 9. Between the State and the Private Sphere: The Chinese State Medicine Movement, 1930-1949 - Xi Gao 10. From Japanese Colonial Medicine to American-Standard Medicine in Taiwan - A Case Study of the Transition in the Medical Profession and Practices in East Asia - Michael Shiyung Liu 11. In Republican China, Public Health by Whom, for Whom? - Bridie Andrews 12. Conclusion

The SARS epidemic of 2003 that killed almost 300 people and made more than 5,000 fall ill (World Health Organization, May 15, 2003), and the lack of expeditious response and openness on the part of the government bureaucracy in dealing with the epidemic, highlight the growing failings of the Chinese Communist Party in coping with a health crisis caused by an emergent disease. Both the outbreak and response, moreover, exposed the inadequacies of China’s health system and the degree to which the health-care infrastructure has long been losing its capacity to prevent and treat diseases.

The paper studies the public health education activities of the American medical missionaries, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Nationalist government, and the Mass Education Movement in China during 1912--1937. It argues that the mission-oriented policies of the medical missionaries as well as the 'technique' approaches of the Rockefeller Foundation which were adopted by the majority of the health officials of the Nationalist government were inappropriate in an agrarian country like China. The Mass Education Movement, by combining health education with the improvement of the living conditions of the people as a whole, proved to be quite successful although it too failed to utilize the traditional medical system in public health activities.