Xun Zhou – författare

In 1949, the Communist Party of China pledged that its approach to health care would differ markedly from that of the former Nationalist government and the 'imperialist' West. For the next thirty years under Mao's leadership, the People's Republic of China made improving the health of the entire population a central pillar of its policy. International health stakeholders came to view it as a statistical outlier in its ability to achieve better health outcomes with limited resources.The People's Health is the first systematic study of health care and medicine in Maoist China. Drawing on hundreds of files from rarely seen party archives and oral testimonies from experts, local cadres, and villagers across China, Zhou Xun shifts her historian's gaze away from official statistics towards the records of local institutions and personal memories that reflect and give voice to lived experiences. Through the everyday interactions of policy makers, national and local administration, and communities, Zhou illustrates the dynamic relationship between politics and health, and between individual lives and the political system. Presenting case studies of the two internationally acclaimed public health initiatives in the PRC – the anti-schistosomiasis campaign and the Barefoot Doctor program – this book offers the first thorough, politically neutral analysis of their background, execution, and national and international repercussions.Opening a unique window into the lives – and health care – of individuals living under communism, The People's Health examines the links between local interest, cultural sensibilities, resources, and abilities, exploring the often unforeseeable consequences of political planning and social engineering.

In 1949, the Communist Party of China pledged that its approach to health care would differ markedly from that of the former Nationalist government and the 'imperialist' West. For the next thirty years under Mao's leadership, the People's Republic of China made improving the health of the entire population a central pillar of its policy. International health stakeholders came to view it as a statistical outlier in its ability to achieve better health outcomes with limited resources.The People's Health is the first systematic study of health care and medicine in Maoist China. Drawing on hundreds of files from rarely seen party archives and oral testimonies from experts, local cadres, and villagers across China, Zhou Xun shifts her historian's gaze away from official statistics towards the records of local institutions and personal memories that reflect and give voice to lived experiences. Through the everyday interactions of policy makers, national and local administration, and communities, Zhou illustrates the dynamic relationship between politics and health, and between individual lives and the political system. Presenting case studies of the two internationally acclaimed public health initiatives in the PRC – the anti-schistosomiasis campaign and the Barefoot Doctor program – this book offers the first thorough, politically neutral analysis of their background, execution, and national and international repercussions.Opening a unique window into the lives – and health care – of individuals living under communism, The People's Health examines the links between local interest, cultural sensibilities, resources, and abilities, exploring the often unforeseeable consequences of political planning and social engineering.

Beginning soon after the implementation of the policies of the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1961, when the drive to collectivize and industrialize undermined the livelihoods of the vast majority of peasant workers, China’s Great Famine was the worst famine in human history. In addition to claiming more than 45 million lives, it also led to the destruction of agriculture, industry, trade, and every aspect of human life, leaving large parts of the Chinese countryside scarred forever by human-created environmental disasters. Drawing on previously closed archives that have since been made inaccessible again, Zhou Xun offers readers, for the first time in English, access to the most vital archival documentation of the famine. For some time to come this documentary history may be the only publication available that contains the most crucial primary documents concerning the fate of the Chinese peasantry between 1957 and 1962. It covers everything from collectivization and survival strategies, including cannibalism, to selective killing and mass murder.

A powerful account of China’s Great Famine as told through the voices of those who survived itIn 1958, China’s revered leader Mao Zedong instituted a program designed to transform his giant nation into a Communist utopia. Called the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s grand scheme—like so many other utopian dreams of the 20th century—proved a monumental disaster, resulting in the mass destruction of China’s agriculture, industry, and trade while leaving large portions of the countryside forever scarred by man-made environmental disasters. The resulting three-year famine claimed the lives of more than 45 million people in China. In this remarkable oral history of modern China’s greatest tragedy, survivors of the cataclysm share their memories of the devastation and loss. The range of voices is wide: city dwellers and peasants, scholars and factory workers, parents who lost children and children who were orphaned in the catastrophe all speak out. Powerful and deeply moving, this unique remembrance of an unnecessary and unhindered catastrophe illuminates a dark recent history that remains officially unacknowledged to this day by the Chinese government and opens a window on a society still feeling the impact of the terrible Great Famine.

The first two editions of the encyclopedia are comprehensive in the coverage of established GIS concepts, applications, and platforms. However, the field is growing quickly and there is a need to cover recent trends and developments. The goal of the third edition is to cover the recent trends since the second edition(2017). It will divide the trends into three areas namely GIS concepts, methods and theories (e.g., Geographic Knowledge graphs, convolutional and spatial variability aware neural networks), GIS use-cases and applications (e.g., Geo-AI, Contact Tracing, spatial pathology), and GIS platforms (e.g., nano-satellites, UAVs, microscopes) and datasets (e.g., Multiplexed immunofluorescence imagery and cell level maps).The new edition will cover novel and interesting GIS use-cases and applications which are being developed in the area of pandemic management, smart cities, electric vehicles, and so on to address emerging societal needs. For example, there has been a rapid development of contact-tracing apps to assess COVID-19 spread across geographic regions. Similarly, the development of digital twins allows a virtual look ahead into future city infrastructure, operational management,etc. Further, GIS support is critical for optimal placement of charging stations and real-time determination of optimal routing operations amongst others. Beyond these there are other relevant applications being developed in the field of autonomous vehicles, spatial pathology, etc.The new edition also covers novel emerging applications which support infrastructure such as IoT and embedded spatial computing platforms, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), nano-satellite constellations, edge computing, and so on. For example, devices like OAK-D can perform real-time collision detection of bicycle riders. Similarly, rapid development of software libraries helps UAV devices in real-time imagery collection, etc and perform other operations such as geo-fencing, etc. Further, with a significant increase in the number of space-borne nano-satellites, commercial access to large-scale geospatial imagery is increasing rapidly. This has led to the emergence of multiple commercial geospatial cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS Earth, Google Earth Engines, NEX). Besides these, trends such as location-aware edge computing, geo-collaboration via volunteered geographic information systems are also emerging.Finally, this edition will cover novel GIS and spatial computing trends which advance fundamental GIS. For example, with an increased reach of spatial technology and computational tools across society there are calls for responsible spatial data science to develop methods, processes, and algorithms which do “no harm” tosociety. Further, deep-spatial aims at developing spatially-explicit deep learning based models. To enable efficient and accurate spatial data search and  management the semantic relationship between different spatial entities (e.g., point of interests) are being modeled as spatial knowledge graphs. Besides these, fundamental GIS developments are taking place in 3D positioning and orientation (for VR, UAV/aircraft navigation, brain surgery), differential privacy and quantum spatial computing.Scope: The new edition will not cover topics where we may not find field editors. Moreover, we will not cover GNSS and satellite systems from countries other than the US. Finally, we will not cover controversial geo-political topics (e.g., gerrymandering, role of maps in warfare).