Humanistic education, as the “internal structure” of medical education, attempts to cultivate medical students’ humanistic knowledge, ability, and comprehensive quality as well as makes adjustments with the evolvement of medical education. The global medical education reform has undergone three stages: expert medicine, clinical practice medicine, and public service medicine. Public service medicine, which took place in the 21st century, is a system-based and competency-oriented education, highlighting the construction of a health service system with medical and educational cooperation as well as the cultivation of medical students’ comprehensive quality. China’s medical education started late and has a weak foundation with many twists and turns. Through the rapid development of reform and opening-up, China has narrowed the gap with international medical education and established a perfect medical curriculum system. China has successively promulgated a number of documents, such as the “Outline of Reform and Development of Medical Education in China” and the “Opinions on Strengthening the Collaboration between Health Departments and Education Departments to Implement the Doctor of Excellence Education Training Program 2.0,” with the goal of cultivating high-quality excellent medical talents. Medical students in colleges and universities are senior talents in medical training, health care services, and medical research. Their humanistic quality is not only related to the growth of medical talents, but also the quality of medical services. This paper analyzes and discusses the problems encountered in improving humanistic education and looks forward to providing reasonable as well as effective solutions to the difficulties faced by humanistic education in the new era through comparative research.