A Perpetual Search: Mary Brown Bullock and American Philanthropy and Education in China

Few scholars (and perhaps historians in particular) are capable of conducting in-depth research while simultaneously playing a major leadership role in academic organizations and institutions. Mary Brown Bullock is one of those rare academics who has done precisely that. In her half century career as a historian of modern China, Professor Bullock has been a leading scholar of the history of US–China relations in the realm of philanthropy, medicine, education and, most of all, the Rockefeller Foundation in China. She has taught courses on these subject at Johns Hopkins University and Emory University. At the same time, Professor Bullock has presided over several national organizations that have played key roles in promoting China and Asia-related research in the United States and US– China scholarly exchange. Being a “scholar-official,” if I may use an old expression apropos of the Chinese civil service examination system, is by no means a small achievement, especially in an environment where women were often excluded from leadership positions. For decades following her graduate studies at Stanford, Bullock immersed herself in research on the Peking UnionMedical College (PUMC, founded in 1906) and the Rockefeller Foundation’s activities in China in the early twentieth century, which helped the country establish a modern system of education and medical science. These activities can be seen as part of America’s “intellectual investment” in modern China, a subject that, given the legacy of Western imperialism, tends to be controversial. But it is undeniable that the American presence in education, medicine, and public health, among other things, in war-ridden China served the people. By the early twenty-first century, Bullock became a key figure in an endeavor that bears similarities to what the Rockefeller Foundation did a century ago: to established a Chinese-American partnership between Duke University and Wuhan University to develop a 200-acre campus in Kunshan, a town in Jiangsu about forty miles northwest of Shanghai. As the first vice-chancellor of Duke Kunshan The Chinese Historical Review, 28. 1, 68–82, May 2021