Hundred- Year Development in Medical Education in China

Today, China has become the most favored destination of English-medium

MBBS for international students. As early as the late Ming Dynasty, foreign
missionaries have brought to China western modern Medicine and
Pharmacology. Chinese western science-based medical education has
developed for over one hundred years. Since the nineteenth century, western
medical missionaries, Protestant Christian physicians and surgeons came to
China to open Chinas first modern clinics, hospitals and medical schools.
Shandong University.
As early as 1886, the first western medicine academic group in ChinaChina
Medical Missionary Associationwas set up in Shanghai. In 1921, the
Rockefeller Foundation funded Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), which
played a crucial role in developing modern nursing in China in the first half of
the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, numerous western
medical colleges of advanced education level were established by foreigners,
Chinese government or Chinese businessmen, such as Hsiang-Ya Medical
College, Peking Union Medical College, Medical School of Cheeloo University
etc. Among them, mission schools emulated American and British medical
education systems and offered lessons in English. Meanwhile, many medical
books were translated into Chinese. Owing to these medical institutions, a
great number of medical professionals were trained and medical teaching
experiences were accumulated, which paved the way for modern development
of medical education in China.
Chinese Governments Effort in Booming Medical Education.

From 1949 to 1965, Chinese government had attached great importance to the
medical education to train abundant medical professionals to develop Chinas
Healthcare network. During the following ten years Cultural Revolution,
Chinas medical education suffered some losses, but it recovered soon and
has made great progress under the later construction and support from the
Communist Party of China.
Qingdao University.
Since 1978, the outward-looking policy has greatly promoted Chinese

international education exchanges and cooperation, through which medical

schools in China have learned and borrowed from abroad a lot of advanced
experiences in medical education.
In 1980s, President Deng Xiaoping reassigned the highest priority to education
to restore and further improve the medical education system.

In 1995, the Ministry of Education of the Peoples Republic of China initiated

the Project 211 (the abbreviation of the 21st century and approximately 100
universities respectively) and then President Jiang Zemin put forward Project
985 (code-named after the date Year 98 Month 5), aiming to promote the
Chinese higher education system so as to raise their influence and reputation
in the world and cultivate high-level elite for national economic and social
development strategies. Both projects sponsored national key higher
educational institutions, including about 40-50 medical universities. Owing to
Chinese governments economic support, medical education in China booms
with more advanced teaching facilities and more qualified teachers.
In 1999, medical universities or medical colleges in China were free-standing
and eleven of them reported to the Ministry of Health. Later, to adapt to the
international trend of the integration development of modern science and
technology, Chinese medical universities were merged with non-medical
universities to create "comprehensive universities". Consequently, all of the
institutions are now operating under the Ministry of Education with the
exception of Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) which continues to report
to the Ministry of Health. Many of these comprehensive universities have
reached to the highest level of international standard and are recognized by
WHO, USMLE and so on.
Weilcome to study in China.