The Rise of Mask-Wearing in Republican China: Colonialism, Epidemics, and Issues of Governance (1912-1949)

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government celebrated face masks as symbols of modernity and national pride. This project hypothesizes that face mask's authoritative position in China's epidemic control today is rooted in Chinese history, specifically the semi-colonial period, when foreign powers and internal political forces were competing for control of China. This project argues that this narrative, of mask-wearing as an integral part of Chinese culture and politics today, is a modern myth. To unpack this myth, this study explores the parallel policies of the British and Japanese Empires, and China's Nationalist and Communist Parties, in promoting mask-wearing as a form of epidemic control. This project will produce a comprehensive account of the social history of medicine on mask-wearing in the semi-colonial Republican period (1912-1949) in which it asks, 'How did British and Japanese colonialism, and China's domestic politics, contribute to masks' authoritative position in semi-colonial China?' To answer this central question, the project is structured chronologically around four themes: 1) Masks, race, and epidemics in the 1910s Shanghai International Settlement; 2) The national recommendation of mask-wearing in the 1929; 3) Japanese military promotion of masks in Manchuria (1930s-1940s); and 4) Chinese Communists' wartime mask-wearing campaigns.