China and the Cholera Pandemic: Restructuring Society Under Mao - Paperback

by Xiaoping Fang (Author)

Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward campaign organized millions of Chinese peasants into communes in a misguided attempt to rapidly collectivize agriculture with disastrous effects. Catastrophic famine lingered as the global cholera pandemic of the early 1960s spread rampantly through the infected waters of southeastern coastal China. Confronted with a political crisis and the seventh global cholera pandemic in recorded history, the communist government committed to social restructuring in order to affirm its legitimacy and prevent transmission of the disease. Focusing on the Wenzhou Prefecture in Zhejiang Province, the area most seriously stricken by cholera at the time, Xiaoping Fang demonstrates how China's pandemic was far more than a health incident; it became a significant social and political influence during a dramatic transition for the People's Republic.

Author Biography

Xiaoping Fang is assistant professor of history at the School of Humanities of the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests focus on the history of medicine, health, and disease in twentieth-century China and the socio-political history of Mao's China after 1949.