Abstract

This paper explores the contribution of China’s aging politburo, danwei labor organization, and shifting Deng Xiaoping era foreign policy aims to the genesis of multiple decades of research collaboration between Chinese and Western institutions dedicated to exploring the links between diet, environmental factors, disease, and mortality. In the US, the culmination of this research relationship, is known best to the public as The China Study, published in 2006, as an update to the ever larger body of popular nutritional science self-help guides, but the history of this particular work provides a unique and characteristic look at gaige kaifang’s impacts upon research institutions, and the ability of Chinese researchers in this era to become for the first time, a part of an international academic community. Beyond the impacts of Chinese research institutions opening up to collaboration with the world, this paper also explores the reception and response of preeminent Western biomedical researchers upon receiving access to what Oxford University epidemiologist, Sir Richard Doll referred to as “the last medical frontier.”

Keywords: China, Global Health, Cross-Cultural Scientific Collaboration, Biomedical Science, Nutritional Science

How to Cite:

Marikos, C. G., (2025) “The China Study: Three Decades of Transnational Research”, Footnotes: A Journal of History 7, 104-118.