John D. Rockefeller was a Baptist who practiced tithing throughout his life, known for his frugality. Public statistics indicate that he donated approximately $540 million during his 97-year life (not adjusted for inflation). He established the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 with an initial donation of $35 million, followed by an additional $65 million the next year.

The predecessor of Peking Union Medical College was the Union Medical College. In 1915, the Rockefeller Foundation's China Medical Board began acquiring and rebuilding it according to the Hopkins model, negotiating a price of about $200,000 with the London Missionary Society, along with purchasing land and constructing hospitals and laboratories. In 1916, the property rights were transferred to the China Medical Board. The unveiling ceremony was held in Beijing in September 1921, with a total investment of about $8 million for the buildings and equipment, including a medical college, a hospital with approximately 250 beds, a nursing school, and a preparatory school.

Present at the event was John D. Rockefeller Jr., not the elder Rockefeller himself. He traveled to China aboard the Canadian Pacific Railway's Empress of Asia, representing the foundation's trustees at the ceremony on September 20, where he read a congratulatory telegram from his father. The New York Times reported at the time that the college was designed to be the core of scientific medical training in China, where medical practice had previously relied more on tradition than on science. The campus retains a photograph of him with the board of trustees.

The China Medical Board also sent Welch, Flexner, and others to set standards for the reconstruction, with Hopkins physicians and nurses entering management and teaching roles. The Union Medical College was later described by both internal and external narratives of the foundation as one of the largest overseas investments with the longest duration, producing figures like Lin Qiaozhi, Zhang Xiaoqian, Wu Jieping, and Zhu Futang. The foundation transplanted scientific medicine into cities with highly uneven industrial infrastructure, using hospitals and educational systems instead of one-time disaster relief checks.

In market mechanisms, the buyer is a Baptist capitalist looking to convert oil wealth into replicable systems, while the seller is the church hospital real estate and the medical network willing to rebuild according to Hopkins standards. The event was driven by the transformation of a union medical college into a center capable of awarding scientific training from 1914 to 1921. Funds flowed from Standard Oil dividends into the foundation, then into land, buildings, and personnel of the China Medical Board. Beneficiaries included doctors and patients who later specialized within the Union Medical College system; the pressure was on the old structure that kept medical practice within traditional apprenticeship systems. The donations here purchased not naming rights, but a functioning hospital-medical school coupling.

Source: Public Information