Performing Western Measures in China: Qing Government’s Manchurian Plague Policy during the Third Plague Pandemic, 1910-1911

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 3. Knowledge and Politics II

Abstract

The Third Plague Pandemic was one of the deadliest global health crises in history. Manchuria was a major epicenter with nearly 60,000 deaths. Why did the Qing government who had a long tradition of utilizing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in epidemic control, nevertheless adopted plague policy claimed as "Western measures" (xifa) and excluded TCM, despite recognizing the strong local opposition and the government’s inability to implement such policy, even when Western medicine’s efficacy had not been established and was being challenged by indigenous medicine in the other parts of the world?

Challenging the prevalent explanation that the Qing’s plague policy was forced by the colonial powers (primarily Russia and Japan), I argue that the Qing initiated and persisted on Western measures because Qing elites believed in the myth of Western medicine’s progressiveness (xianjin) and intended to utilize Western epidemic measures as a medical agency to build a modern state image and legitimize their sovereignty construction facing colonial threats, suggesting the Qing’s internalized Orientalism. The Qing’s anti-plague effort was decoupled from the effective local epidemic control to the geopolitical game in the contested Manchurian borderland, as transnational measures (e.g., borderland traffic control and corpse management) were prioritized, while local measures (e.g., local quarantine and medical supplies) were poorly implemented. The Qing’s Manchurian plague policy stands as an “epidemic performance”, which, paradoxically, won broad recognition from colonial powers, including Japan and Britain, culminating in an International Plague Conference convened by the Qing in Mukden.

Reflecting on World Society Theory through the lens of colonial studies, I argue that the dominance of Western medicine, was established not because of its universal efficacy, but because of its superiority claim. Applying a subaltern point and a transnational perspective, I explore how the Western medicine hegemony was imagined, internalized, and thereby reproduced in Manchuria.

Author

• Qiong Wu, Boston University