The People’s Republic of China (PRC) today has emerged as one of the key funders of and participants in the World Health Organization.1 Although a comprehensive history of PRC global health involvement in the contemporary era has yet to be written, recent monographs by Mary Augusta Brazelton, Rachel Core, Xiaoping Fang, and Yi-Tang Lin illuminate the path toward a greater understanding of China’s place in global health histories, especially in the PRC’s tumultuous years of nation building, revolutionary fervor, and high socialism and their aftermath. Brazelton and Lin shed critical light on how the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan sought to bolster its presence in global health, particularly when it represented China in the WHO. Fang argues that possible security threats from the ROC in Taiwan also invoked a strong sense of medical urgency in the PRC’s responses to cholera in the coastal Wenzhou region of China. Rachel...

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