Diseases, Politics And State-Building

Disease is one kind of the most daily experiences, also is one kind elementary affair highly associated with the human live. When the disease developed the metaphor of "Sick Men of East Asia" in weaker and weaker modern China, there accordingly happened a shift from concern and cure for disease to a mass political campaign and then it got a lasting response. The article may be seen as the first step to study disease politics.The article takes the metaphor of disease as its logical foundation and contemporary nation—state construction as its center, describing and interpreting such affairs as "abolishing traditional Chinese medicine", "the patriotic health campaign" and "Cooperative Medical Service". Through mainly analyzing how disease problem was politicized and then incorporated into governmental supervisory sequence, double health indoctrination, legitimate political construction, reconstructing national and expanding the commonality of state, this article intends to reveal the basic logic of Chinese disease politics development in light of the changes in nation—national structure.The article comes to the conclusion that the way of contemporary Chinese disease politics development is from national to people and then from people to citizen. In other words, it transformed from risk politics, mobilizing politics to day-to-day politics and common politics; meantime, nation develops in the direction of rationalization and institutionalization, gradually removing non-conventional approaches such as arousing public emotion, mass mobilization and ideological compulsion.