China Medical Board of New York

The board originally provided support for the Peking Union Medical College, but later extended its efforts to all countries in Asia. It provided grants for medical and nursing schools for visiting professorships, fellowships, books and journals for medical libraries, and equipment for laboratories.

The China Medical Board, Inc. began in 1914 as the unincorporated China Medical Board, a division of the Rockefeller Foundation (RG 4) (NYRV86-a8) which cared for the developing interests of the Foundation in China. In 1915, The Rockefeller Foundation purchased and assumed support for the Union Medical College in Peking, which had been founded in 1906 by a group of protestant missionaries. The institution was renamed the Peking Union Medical College. Its reconstruction, development and support gradually became the primary, though not the exclusive, interest of the China Medical Board. At formal dedication ceremonies held in Peking in 1921, the objectives of the PUMC were outlined by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

These can be sumamrized as: 1. To develop in China a medical school and hospital comparable to a leading institution of Western civilization and to offer training in scientific methods, 2. To stimulate the creation of similar institutions in various parts of China, 3. To provide graduate instruction in the form of short courses in subjects for which the need is great, 4. To prosecute research, 5. To permeate the work of the institution with the finest idealism and to interpret to China the best of the West, not only in medical science, but in mental development and spiritual culture, 6. To make permanent on Chinese soil the best in scientific medicine that the world can offer, with the realization that what it may have to offer will be of little avail ot the Chinese people until it is taken over by them and becomes a part of the national life.

In 1928, the China Medical Board was incorporated under the Membership Corporations Law of the State of New York. The Rockefeller Foundation transferred to the new organization the ownership of the land and the buildings occupied by the PUMC and endowed it with the sum of $12,000,000, agreeing to provide additional grants toward the college budget. Until the oputbreak of the war with Japan in 1941, the CMB, Inc. devoted its entire income to the college.

While the PUMC was occupied by the Japanese, the CMB, Inc. carried on a program of aid to medical institutions in unoccupied China. At the same time, it assisted undergraduate students of the college to conmtinue their studies elsewhere and helped maintain the College nursing school in Chentu.

The PUMC was recovered from the Japanese at the close of the war, but was used as the Executive Headquarters of General Marshall's Peace Commission until April 1947. CMB, Inc. then resumed its annual grant to the PUMC. By May, 1948, the medical school, nursing school and the hospital were once again in operation, though not at the same level as before the war. In January 1951 the PUMC was nationalized by the People's Republic of China.

As Funds could no longer be sent to the PUMC or the mainland, the China Medical Board, Inc. embarked on a new program and enlarged its field within the geographical limits permitted by its charter. Under this program, the CMB, Inc. provides assistance to medical, public health, and nursing schools in many Far Eastern countries, and to a lesser degree, to medical, public health and nursing schools in the United States.