Eugenics in Republican China

EUGENICS IN REPUBLICAN CHINA[l] by Frank Dikotter Eugenics arose at the end of the 19th century in England. Interest in the improvement of the race reflected a concern about the biological standards of the nation. Civilized society, it was argued, inhibited the action of natural selection: unfit people proliferated at the bottom of society. Insalubrious slums generated hordes of deficient elements that drained the race of its vitality. It was believed that breeding,_. principles such as selective mating and artificial selection coula· be applied to the human race in order to check further degeneration. Eugenics rapidly extended to most industrialized countries in the beginning of this century. In China, the first references to eugenics appeared at the turn of the century, a stirring period of intellectual ferment during which reform-minded scholars began to be attracted by Western ideas. During this period, "race" became the representation of a higher collect! vity to which most reformers were dedicated. The wor 1d was i ncreas ingl y interpreted in terms of racial warfare. China, it was claimed, was threatened with racial extinction. Reform was necessary for the survival of the race. Blood was a major key to reform. Though no specific work on eugenics had been translated into Chinese, the idea of race improvement guided by science was broached by some reformers. Kang Youwei, for instance, considered the "amelioration of the race" as the first requisite for an ideal society. The government should build pleasure hostels situated in agreeable surroundings where young people could me'et. Pregnant women should then be led to a public pre-natal education hospital (taijiaoyuan), where qualified doctors would prescribe their food and supervise their activities. The disabled , the mentally diseased, as well as people suffering from a hereditary deficiency should be sterilized by medicament.[2] Tan Sitong briefly mentioned the science of race improvement in his "Study of Humanity" (Renxue): Nowadays, electricity is able to transmit heat and force without a wire and to take a photograph of the liver and the lungs. It can also test the material force of the brain: in the course of time, it must be possible to eliminate its heavy nature and to preserve its lightness,to decrease the body and to increase the mind. By also paying attention to the science of race advancement ( 11nzhong zhi xue), each generation wi 11 be superior to the other: through endless transformations, it 1 will give birth to another race, which purely uses its intelligence and not its strength, having only a spirit and no body."[3] Tan incorporated eugenics into his own cosmological philosophy , mainly derived from Confucian and Taoist teachings. Eugenics were merely a means to realize an ideal spiritual wholeness. By controlling the evolution of the race, the body could be dissolved and the mind transcended: spiritual unity with the cosmos could then be achieved. Eugenics also caught the fantasy of the revolutionaries. Zhang Binglin, for instance, mentioned that "the superiority or· in'feriority inherent to heredity is responsible for intelligence or stupidity: the purity or impurity of the blood is responsible for strength or weakness". He noted that elements belonging to a poor racial stock could be drastically improved by interbreeding for several generations with a superior strain of blood: "After eight generations, the inferior blood will be no more than 1/128th, which corresponds almost to a superior race". [4] It was only with the New Culture Movement, however, that eugenics would be approached in a systematic way. The New Culture Movement, which started in 1917 and lasted for several years, advocated a critical re-evaluation of China's cultural heritage. It invited the youth to part with the stagnant elements of tradi tiona! culture and to accept foreign democracy, science and culture as the founding elements of a new order. In this turbulent period of intellectual change, eugenics were briefly introduced to the reading public by Professor Chen Yinghuang , author of the first Chinese account of human races. The last chapter of his work was dedicated to eugenics, a science "yet unheard of in China."[5] Chen presented eugenics as a science capable of curing society by expelling its diseased elements: it was called...