George Hatem (1910–1988), an American doctor, came to China in 1933 and arrived in the Communist-controlled area of northern Shaanxi in 1936. He served as a medical consultant for the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) during the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and joined the CPC. As the first foreigner to join the Chinese nationality after the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), he devoted himself to the health programs of the newly found republic and made world-renowned achievements in the treatment of venereal diseases, skin diseases and leprosy control.

Determined to stay in China

George Hatem was born to a family of Arab immigrants of Lebanese ancestry on September 26, 1910, in Buffalo, New York, US. He spent his childhood in poverty. In 1918, a pandemic with a high death rate swept through the East Coast of the US, infecting him, his parents and all of his three siblings, and causing his mother to develop asthma because she could not afford medical treatment. Seeing the tragic fate of many poor people facing the plague, Hatem aspired to become a doctor from a young age, hoping to cure the poor.

In 1933, Hatem received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Geneva. After graduating, he took a ship from Europe to Shanghai in order to study the epidemic of tropical diseases in China, where he practiced medicine in a charity hospital and opened a clinic with his former classmates. In Shanghai, the "adventurers' paradise," he saw the desperate sights of old China: foreign warships cruising the Huangpu River, fat Western businessmen and their fashionable wives dancing in clubs in evening dresses, and the police officers blatantly and wantonly beating up rickshaw drivers in the Concessions. In winter, the bodies of those who froze to death were carted away like firewood on garbage trucks. The poor people were starving and cold, were squeezed by the foreigners, the authorities and the gangs and struggled make ends meet. Hatem originally planned to stay in China for only one year, but as a young man of conscience and passion, he decided to stay after seeing the imperialist invasion of China, the dark rule of the Kuomintang government and the deep disaster suffered by the people. In a letter to a friend, he wrote, "Life is not only for an individual and his family. The whole world is suffering, and the problems you face yourself are secondary now. At this moment, I will do what I can to help the people here."