This is the first systemic investigation of the various efforts to promote the expansion of American culture via major religious, social, political and governmental institutions. Christian missionaries, secular cultural elite, and the government have served as three major forces pushing American cultural values and political idealism abroad, although each has emphasized different elements of Americanism--Christian beliefs, individualism, democracy, and free enterprise--in championing American leadership. In the course of American ascendance as an international power and a superpower,...

This book examines the encounter between western and Asian models of public health and medicine in a range of East and Southeast Asian countries over the course of the twentieth century until now. It discusses the transfer of scientific knowledge of medicine and public health approaches from Europe and the United States to several Asian countries - Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Japan, Taiwan, and China - and local interactions with, and transformations of, these public health models and approaches from the nineteenth century to the 1950s. Taking a critical look at assumptions...

This book, based on extensive original research, traces the development of China s public health system, showing how advances in public health have been an integral part of China s rise. It outlines the phenomenal improvements in public health, for example the increase in life expectancy from 35 in 1949 to 73 in 2010; relates developments in public health to prevailing political ideologies; and discusses how the drivers of health improvements were, unlike in the West, modern medical professionals and intellectuals who understood that, whatever the prevailing ideology, China needs to be a...