Before 1949, there were only a number of charity hospitals on the Chinese mainland. One was the Shanghai Union Hospital, which was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation in the United States and there were Red Cross hospitals in some areas.

After 1949, all hospitals became State-owned and there were no charity hospitals on the Chinese mainland until 2007, when Operation Smile, opened a charity hospital in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. The hospital is supported by 40 foreign experts and 20 full-time doctors and it can do six operations at the same time.

Founded in the US in 1982, Operation Smile a medical charity that provides free reconstructive surgery for children born with facial deformities, conducted its first medical mission to Hangzhou, where, in cooperation with Municipal Plastic Hospital of Hangzhou, volunteers performed reconstructive surgery on more than 150 children who had cleft lips, cleft palates or burns in 1991.