Dr Mary Brazelton (Cambridge University): Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China

This talk will survey immunology and mass vaccination programs in the People’s Republic of China, arguing that the Chinese Communist Party promoted vaccination as a means by which the central state asserted competence and capacities in public health administration. The success of these campaigns therefore helped bolster the legitimacy of the central government at a key moment in its consolidation of power. The PRC subsequently promoted the control of infectious diseases to which vaccination programs had contributed as a major administrative success alongside its much more well-known barefoot doctor and rural health care programmes. This rural health care system became a model broadly championed in communities of global health, but was also connected to regional and global Cold War politics. 

Dr Mary Brazelton is the author of Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China