This article bridges the history of statistics and the studies of international governance to answer questions about how the World Health Organization (WHO) decided what was to be collected as statistics and how it approached the standardization of the data collected during its initial years. In between science and policy-making, the WHO’s use of statistics serves as a salient example of its ideal of using science to resolve health problems around the world. Through a case study of the Republic of China, this article demonstrates how the WHO’s ideal was implemented and adapted at the local level.