Chinese medicine in action: on the postcoloniality of medical practice in China

Abstract

Since the early twentieth century, there has been strong opposition to Chinese medicine within Chinese society. Critics have attacked Chinese medicine as unscientific and a hindrance to the development of the nation. I argue that doctors of Chinese medicine have responded to this charge by developing a "postcolonial" form of medicine that is based on the celebrated methodology of "pattern recognition and treatment determination bianzheng lunzhi [image omitted]." I show that bianzheng lunzhi plays two contradictory roles in everyday clinical practice, distinguishing the uniqueness of Chinese medicine from biomedicine while providing a technology for integrating these two medical practices. Through the close examination of a typical medical case, I show how these dual processes of purification and hybridization have become the central dynamic in the postcolonial transformation of Chinese medicine.