In the conclusion to Global Medicine in China, Wayne Soon compares the 1911 Manchurian plague with the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan. At first glance, the two diseases appear to have much in common: both were spread through aerosolized transmission, and both were stymied through compulsory quarantine. But whereas the hero of the Manchurian plague, the Malaysia-born physician Wu Lien-teh (1879–1960), drew on his international connections and overseas education to support plague-fighting measures in North China, the Chinese government in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak largely adopted a go-it-alone attitude—one that impeded the dissemination of necessary information and likely facilitated the spread of the virus itself. The juxtaposition of these two examples provides a compelling bookend to Global Medicine in China, an impressively researched volume that adds a much-needed transnational dimension to the history of biomedicine in early twentieth-century China.

Across five chapters, Soon argues that the development of biomedicine in China and Taiwan crucially depended on Chinese diasporic populations in the United States, Canada, and Southeast Asia. Through their connections to overseas Chinese communities, their participation in multinational medical organizations and institutions, and their diasporic identities, these individuals played a pivotal role in shaping biomedical knowledge, education, and treatment in the period between 1910 and 1970. While Soon introduces a diverse cast of characters to support these points, arguably his protagonist is the Singaporean Robert Lim (Lin Kesheng, 1897–1969), a University of Edinburgh–trained physician who relocated to China to assume a position at the American-funded Peking Union Medical College. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Lim became head of the Chinese Red Cross Medical Relief Corps and, upon the outbreak of civil war, immigrated to Taiwan to direct the National Defense Medical Center. As a result of his many international connections and his own globally inflected identity, Lim was able to radically transform the nature of wartime health delivery. Emphasizing preventive care, mobility and adaptability to local conditions, and an educational curriculum that stressed practical drill-based training, Lim's contributions to biomedical development in China aided the wartime efforts of both the Nationalists and the Communists and played a significant role in the later postwar reconstruction of biomedicine on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Global Medicine in China makes several important contributions to the history of medicine in modern China. As its subtitle suggests, Soon is most concerned with documenting the role played by diasporic Chinese actors in establishing biomedical protocols and institutional standards within China proper. In contrast to studies that primarily highlight the activities of intellectuals born and raised in China or Western philanthropists like the Rockefellers, Soon shows how diasporic actors strategically used their unique combination of overseas connections, language abilities, and cultural identities to move across national borders and mediate between different groups of people. As the discipline of medical history continues to advance along transnational lines, Soon's emphasis on the global foundations of biomedicine in China serves as a necessary reminder that national developments often transgress national boundaries, and that flows of knowledge do not always move linearly from West to East.

Soon also makes the case for the centrality of the wartime period to Chinese biomedical development. In recent years, historians have begun to pay more attention to the immediate and long-term significance of military medicine, particularly insofar as it continued to shape medical practice after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.Footnote ¹ Soon convincingly argues that the activities of people like Robert Lim helped lay the foundation for a postwar medical infrastructure; for example, Lim's decision to spearhead the establishment of the first Chinese blood bank in 1944 set in motion a new type of care centered on blood donation that extended far past the 1949 divide. It is worth remembering, however, that the Communists imbued such activities with radically new meanings than the ones Lim had intended. Therefore, I was less persuaded by Soon's assertion that the Chinese Communist Party drew on Lim's wartime innovations in their subsequent efforts to encourage mass mobilization of medical personnel, shorten and simplify medical training, and implement basic universal healthcare.

Finally, a less theorized but equally important contribution of Soon's study is the way it highlights the role of institutions, financial resources, and personnel networks in directing biomedical research and practice. As Soon rightly notes, biomedicine in China was “not impervious to the ebbs and flows of global political economy and individual contingencies” (p. 56), and “fundraising, management, and networking strategies of Overseas Chinese were critical in shaping the outcomes of their biomedical interventions” (p. 20). The visions of donors structured how biomedical practice in China would proceed, and when fundraising stalled, scientific progress did as well. These observations both complement and add a transnational dimension to scholarship that has considered how geographical spaces, institutions, and networks shape scientific study and make certain outcomes possible.Footnote ²

Global Medicine in China draws on research undertaken at a remarkable number of archives and libraries in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. While the amount of detail could be overwhelming to nonspecialist readers, it unquestionably testifies to Soon's breadth of knowledge and wide-ranging expertise. This is an important and timely contribution to the fields of modern Chinese history, medical history, and diasporic studies.