The People's Needle: The Transformation and International Promotion of Chinese Acupuncture in Socialist China and Beyond, 1931-1991

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation traces the dramatic transformation of Chinese acupuncture from a marginal, stigmatized practice before the mid-twentieth century into a globally recognized emblem of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) by the late Cold War era. It argues that modern acupuncture should be understood as a globally constituted and continuously negotiated form of medical knowledge. Its remarkable rise was neither linear nor inevitable, but shaped both by the political and diplomatic agendas of socialist China under Maoism, and by shifting global health priorities - especially within the World Health Organization (WHO) and postcolonial states in the Global South - that increasingly embraced alternative therapeutic systems like acupuncture. Through socialist China’s sustained intervention and strategic international engagement, acupuncture was systematically reconfigured from a lowstatus local therapy into “the People’s Needle” - a politically potent symbol of China’s “socialist medicine,” embodying Maoist ideals of anti-elitism, rural accessibility, universal healthcare and self-reliance. From an epistemic perspective, this dissertation reconstructs how modern Chinese acupuncture selectively integrated Japanese reformist models from the 1930s, Soviet physiological paradigms in the 1950s, and biomedical standardization through increasingly frequent transnational exchanges in the 1960s and 1970s. Exemplified by the case of acupuncture anaesthesia during this latter period, China’s proactive integration of TCM with modern medical practices embodied, from the outset, the socialist state’s ambition to position it as a significant contributor to global medical advancement. Situated at the intersection of Cold War politics, global health initiatives, and medical modernization, acupuncture served as the centrepiece of what this dissertation calls “acupuncture diplomacy” - the deliberate promotion and adaptation of Chinese medicine to socialist allies, postcolonial states, and transregional institutions such as the WHO, as a means of enhancing the international influence of China’s socialist model. Utilizing textual publications, archival documents and oral histories from China, the Soviet Union, Tanzania, and WHO repositories, the dissertation reveals how acupuncture functioned internationally to contest biomedical dominance, assert ideological legitimacy, and reshape frameworks of global health practice. In this transnational process, acupuncture continuously negotiated and challenged biomedical dominance, and came to symbolize a self-reliant model of health care delivery - one that drew on locally available resources and resonated with the needs of many countries in the Global South. Ultimately, the dissertation demonstrates that China’s socialist-era transformation and global dissemination of acupuncture widened medical pluralism in global health. Although acupuncture became gradually divorced from its original socialist aspirations after the 1980s - evolving into a commodified wellness practice primarily serving middle-class consumers - its legacy continues profoundly within today’s global medical landscape. This dissertation offers the first comprehensive historical analysis of acupuncture’s international trajectory under socialism, and contributes broadly to understanding the complex ways in which marginal medical practices can be politically and epistemically mobilized to challenge biomedical hegemony, pluralize therapeutic options, and reframe key debates in twentieth-century global health history</p>