Medical Missions in Colonial and Post-Colonial Hong Kong

Ann Gillian Chu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to conferenceConference paperpeer-review

Abstract

Britain’s policy for its crown colonies was to benefit the British Empire. With this principle in mind, they invested little in the betterment of colonial Hong Kong society since it was first ceded in 1842. As such, faith-based organisations, including Christian ones, filled the gap in colonial Hong Kong, providing social welfare, education, and medicine to the general public. For example, the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Charity Fund, founded in 1887, is a Christian institution that focuses on medical involvement in Hong Kong, as they wish to demonstrate the Christian belief of whole-person treatment. Christian involvement shaped how medicine is imagined in Hong Kong society, even after its handover to China in 1997.

Christianity has been influential in colonial and post-colonial Hong Kong. As Christianity came alongside colonial governance, how do Hong Kong medical practitioners, hospital chaplains, and Hong Kong people at large consider the good and the harm that medical missions have done? How do they respond to ethical concerns of saving lives under colonial oppression, especially in what constitutes as being a well-lived life? How do they reconcile with Western medicine being associated with being scientifically sound and Christianity being the faith of reason, while traditional Chinese medicine has been labelled as backward, as Chinese folk religion being seen as illogical? In this chapter, I analyse the Hong Kong-Macao Baptist Mission papers related to Baptist Hospital and Baptist Clinic, which are stored in Hong Kong Baptist University’s archival and special collections, secondary data analysis on oral history interviews on Christian medical service in Hong Kong conducted by Timothy Man-kong Wong, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with a selected group of hospital chaplains in Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital, Ruttonjee Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and Hong Kong Adventist Hospital. By gathering the different archival materials and drawing on the lived experiences and perspectives of hospital chaplains on the legacy of medical missions in Hong Kong, I aim to illustrate how medical missions entered Hong Kong, and how they have made a lasting impact on Hong Kong’s society.

By analysing the case study of medical missions in colonial and post-colonial Hong Kong, this chapter aims to provide an example of how medical missions manifest in colonial and post-colonial societies and their pervasive and fundamental effects. I hope to reflect global Christian movement, beyond what is commonly known in Europe and North America, and wrestle with theological bioethics that are specific to local social context and structure, and how that can resonate with those in other situations.

Conference

Conference中華神學人協會2024第二次研討會──「醫療、健康與基督宗教」
Country/TerritoryHong Kong
Period13/12/2413/12/24
Internet address

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