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Chapter 7 Mapping Science and Nation in China NANCY N. CHEN The mandate of heaven (tianming) is a Confucian notion that anyone who is successful in seizing the reins of power retains the rightful authority to rule over China. Across the centuries, many imperial rulers and their contestants invoke tianmingto declare each other as morally bankrupt while legitimizing their own form of hierarchy as better. In this chapter, I argue that the mandate of science operates as a particular formation in late socialism to anchor and legitimize state authority. Such a strategy offered bureaucrats the opportunity to define themselves as modern protectors of ordinary people from the influences of evil (xie) cults or superstition. The alliance of officials with scientists also facilitated the embrace of expert knowledge as the basis of governmentality. On December 9, 1999, television broadcasts on China Central Television (CCTV) showed PresidentJiang Zemin visiting the bedside of Qian Xuesen, renowned scientist and father of China's missile system, who was ailing and needed to be hospitalized. The following day Health News Daily and China Daily devoted front pages to this visit in the manner of official receptions. The veneration given to "Uncle" Qian reflected the status accorded to Chinese scientists and how their projects are linked to the progress of the nation. How did scientists become such eminent state figures? Like medicine, science became integral to state formation and nation building especially during the socialist era. In the recent moment of market reforms under socialism, however, science has increasingly been utilized in the regulation of Chinese medicine. This chapter shows how science has been used to articulate national agendas and define the boundaries of contemporary Chinese medicine. Over the past decade, qigongcirculated in transnational contexts as a form of "traditional ' Chinese healing. However, within China, certain forms of qigong were deemed "superstitious" or pathological, while scientific forms were considered to be more acceptable. The state regulation of qigong with science generated an obsession with pseudoscience which 108 Nancy N. Chen continues into the twenty-first century. The goals of Chinese socialist modernization relied heavily upon discourses of scientific rationality and civilization. Science was embraced by both bureaucrats and qigong masters as a legitimating strategy for their own purposes. An engagement with scientific discourses is crucial to understanding the mobilization of allegiances between bureaucrats, scientists, physicians, and qigong masters in the formation of "scientific" or medical qigongthat would be politically correct and sanctioned over more charismatic forms of healing. Following Laura Nader's (1996) insight that an anthropology of science can reveal the boundary-making tendencies and ideological constraints of technoscience, my discussion will differentiate among the positions of masters, scientists, and officials. The roles of officials were ambiguous, as they not only represented the state but also avidly participated in the practice for their own health-seeking purposes. Chinese scientists were far more outspoken about the need to define clear boundaries between authentic qigongversus the more contaminated category of pseudoscientific qigongpromoted by masters. Policing the newly constructed categories would eventually co-evolve with a state campaign for social order. Bureaucrats faced with forging socialist order in the post-Tiananmen period, framed by rapid transformations, were also aware that the fragmentation of social life and the appeal of multiple nonstate alternatives were spawned by state-sponsored economic reforms. The emergence of unofficial players and of cultural icons of power made the issue of defining political order, relying on scientific rationality rather than subjective knowledge, all the more important. Through science, bureaucrats reordered the classifications of qigong with scientists at the helm rather than qigong masters without scientific credentials. The first half of this paper documents the renewal of scientism and the widespread application of scientific discourse in this process. In the 1990s, a loosely organized web of government representatives became galvanized in a campaign for the regulation of qigong. Official state discourses about qigong began to be situated apart from popular qigong debates. While testimonial accounts of qigong healing continued to abound informally and in popular press, there were calls to differentiate between "real" (zheng) and "false" (jia) qigong by state bureaucrats through internal memos and state media. This was an attempt to separate out those individuals who claimed to be masters and healed for lucrative purposes versus those with "true" abilities. The state appointed bureau to regulate qigong invoked the new category of scientific qigong (kexue de qigong) as a means to cleanse and discipline the ranks of "false" masters. Such categories were quite porous and difficult...

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