I don't know where you're getting your information, but nearly everything you say here is incorrect. I've mentioned before on ArmyRanger.com that my closest comrade from Vietnam is novelist Ken Miler. Ken speaks fluent Mandarin and spent ten years teaching at the National University of Taiwan. He married a Chinese woman, the air force Chief of Staff's sister. Ken's son Dennis is an MD who just spent two years traveling and practicing medicine in mainland China. His experience was diametrically opposed to the one you believe exists.bulldogg wrote:Hobbit, there are still some people who use acupuncture for surgical anesthetic in China but it is really rare now. During the Cultural Revolution all the trained doctors were rounded up and re-educated... the art was lost. In the 1980's Chinese travelled to overseas Chinese communities and the back country of China to re-learn that which was lost. China's medical system is an exact replica of the Soviet medical system from the medical colleges to the hospitals. Even the new private hospitals are mimics and anesthesia is inadequate and Rx's for pain control are non-existant.
Remember that there are two Chinas. There is one China that populates the industrial cities near the coast. That accounts for 10% of China's population. These are the people that may or may not have access to Western medicine. The other China composes 90% of the population: rural peasants flung out over a vast and often very remote landscape. To these 1.1 billion people, Western Civilization can still be a dark and foreboding mystery. Folk medicine and acupuncture have reigned supreme here for 5000 years, and still do.
To assume that the Cultural Revolution had any real or lasting effect on anyone in China other than a few communist party functionaries, is folly. Though I’m loathe to admit as much, left-wing jorunal, “The Nationâ€