Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.9, 2019

The Change of Disease Spectrum in Chinese Rural Areas and Its Interpretive Framework

(Abstract)

Yu Chengpu

From the early 20th century back to the early days of the founding of New China in 1949, rural residents were deeply plagued by infectious diseases and malnutrition ones. Thanks to a series of interventions, the incidence of infectious diseases in rural areas has declined since the late 1970s, and maintained a low prevalence level to this day; since the 1990s, the prevalence of chronic diseases in rural areas has risen rapidly, and chronic diseases have become a major health problem that plagues rural residents. From the perspective of life cause research, with reference to the emphasis on bio-social-cultural holism in medical anthropology, chronic diseases can be divided into chronic diseases with excessive loss and chronic diseases with excessive intake. The former are mainly chronic diseases represented by arthritis and intervertebral disc disease, which are the imprints of “hardships” in the early years; the latter are a sign of physical inadaptability, including hypertension and diabetes which occur when the bodies that had suffered from hunger and fatigue for long fail to fit for the sudden enrichment of material resources and reduction of physical exertion after the life became better. Fundamentally speaking, chronic diseases with excessive intake seem to originate from the current “sweetness of life,” but in fact it is the physical reproduction of early experience. Clarifying the complex relations between social system, livelihood model, cultural mentality, physical habits, as well as health and disease, and being aware of the transformation of disease spectrum in Chinese rural areas and its internal logic, will contribute to the rational formulation and precise implementation of the policies that promote health in rural areas.