6

Race as Seed (1915–1949)

Background

Eugenics comes from a combination of the Greek words for ‘good’ and ‘generation’.¹ Proponents of eugenics believed that the biological qualities of the human species as a whole or a population group in particular could be improved by a variety of methods. Advocates of ‘positive eugenics’, a term coined by Francis Galton (1822–1911), hoped to ensure that individuals with beneficial traits would reproduce at a higher rate than the rest of the population. ‘Negative eugenics’ aimed to restrict the reproduction of people with less desirable features. In extreme cases, those defined as suffering from particularly severe disabilities were singled out for segregation, sterilisation or even euthanasia. Eugenics reached its greatest popularity between the two World Wars, when governments around the world promoted eugenic policies, supported by medical institutions and influential thinkers as varied as Winston Churchill, H. G. Wells, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, Theodore Roosevelt and Linus Pauling. The most infamous example is Nazi Germany, where groups as diverse as the blind, the mentally ill, the deaf, homosexuals and promiscuous women were defined as ‘unfit’. Entire categories of people, including the Roma and Jews, were targeted for mass murder.

Although eugenics never achieved a significant degree of institutional organisation in republican China, ideas about race improvement were widespread and pervasive. Some of these ideas predated Charles Darwin and his cousin Francis Galton. Already by the Song dynasty, China had developed a sophisticated body of knowledge about selection and breeding, in particular in botany. Wang Guan wrote about peonies during the tenth century: ‘Herbaceous peonies grow with the breath of Heaven and Earth. Their size and colour can be controlled by changing their nature, born of Heaven and Earth, so that rare shapes and colours are produced in our human world.’² Natural variations and their use to cross-breed new varieties through artificial selection were well understood.

The use of selective breeding was also common with goldfish. The Illustrated Book on Goldfish, dated 1848, explained that ‘in choosing fish for mating, select a male of excellent variety that complements the female in colour, type and size.’

On the other hand, traditional medicine focused on reproductive health well before the appearance of eugenics. Medical writers in late imperial China interpreted conception as the union of male semen and female blood and directly attributed the innate abilities of offspring to the quality of their parents. A child conceived with thin blood or weak seed could cause a broken skull, retardation, a soft neck, weak limbs, uneven teeth, difficulties in mobility, discolouration of the hair and other defects, according to one sixteenth-century medical practitioner.³

In a number of rice-growing societies, including China, there is a semantic isomorphism between ‘seed’ (zhong) and ‘race’ (zhong, zhongzu), which stands in contrast to the vocabulary of animal breeding that was behind early notions of eugenics in Europe.⁴ The male bestowed, the female received, much as the seed was planted on fertile soil. Metaphors taken from rice cultivation supported a protean vision of human conception in which the quality of offspring could be nurtured and improved at every stage. The selection of seed, the preparation of soil, the use of fertilisers, even the elimination of sickly seedlings were common practices in agriculture, and these found an echo in medical descriptions of human reproduction. ‘One can hardly expect rice and wheat to grow on gravel: how could one hope that a women of poor blessings would bear a son?’, wondered one scholar.⁵ Gestation was understood as a malleable process which could be positively influenced from the moment of conception to the point of delivery. The timing of intercourse, the regulation of emotions, the supervision of a pregnant woman’s diet were all seen as important factors which could contribute to the health of the foetus. Menstrual blood was thought to nourish the foetus. After birth, it was transformed into breast milk, which was believed to transmit the moral and physical qualities of the mother.⁶

Medical publications in the late imperial period presented human reproduction as a potentially dangerous process that should be carefully regulated in order to safeguard the lineage’s future. A progenitor was seen as a key element in a patrilineal line of descent, an indispensable link connecting past ancestors and future descendants, and both men and women were enjoined to regulate and administer their reproductive behaviour for the sake of their offspring.

Traditional medicine demanded that great attention be paid to diet, emotions and even gestures, all of which had an impact on foetal health. A child conceived by inebriated parents was marked by mental retardation: ‘Scholars and government officials in the Jiangnan region often wallow in women and song. When taking a wife or concubine, they search for young and pretty ones, although the children they conceive are all weak and disease-ridden, dying at an early age. These gentlemen even enter the bedroom completely drunk, with their minds dazed and confused, hence their offspring are slow-witted.’⁷

A concern for moderation was even more vital for pregnant women, whose bodies lived in close affinity with the environment. Diet was crucial, and symbolic meanings were assigned to certain types of food, weaving a close network of correlations between macrocosm and microcosm. Eating rabbit meat could cause a hare-lip in the new-born baby, while food contained sheep’s blood could lead to albino eyes. Many health manuals extended their dietary restrictions to crabs, tortoises, sparrows and shellfish, as well as spices like ginger, pepper and garlic: beyond its heating properties, ginger could cause polydactylia in the foetus. According to one nineteenth-century manual, weird combinations of food, such as eel with frog, could lead to a variety of strange deformities in the foetus.⁸

Pregnant women were seen to be capable of releasing violent passions and fits of anger that could bring about a physical lesion. Excessive joy caused damage to the heart, anger harmed the liver, while fear destroyed the kidney: physical retribution followed every form of emotional excess. The consequences of these emotions were portrayed in stark medical terms, as the child could be born ‘blind, deaf and mute, retarded and epileptic’.⁹ Some medical writers also believed that the very shape of the foetus underwent change according to the objects seen by the mother, who should avoid looking at ugly and deformed people. The influential medical expert Wan Quan, for instance, observed how women who often watched puppet theatre and monkey shows during pregnancy later gave birth to children with simian features. On the other hand, a pregnant mother who listened to words of wisdom or to scholarly texts being read aloud had a greater chance of conceiving a son.¹⁰

Most of these medical texts were concerned about the production of healthy offspring for the lineage, but in late imperial China a few scholars also established a more general link between the health of the individual and the state of the country. The seventeenth-century philosopher Yan Yuan (1635–1704), for instance, commented how ‘An active body is a strong body, an active home is a strong home, an active country is a strong country’.¹¹ Xu Guangqi (Paul Xu, 1562–1633), a leading Christian convert who collaborated with Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), developed a theory of birthrates (shengren zhi lü) at the beginning of the seventeenth century: ‘The law of birth of people is that generally they double every thirty years.’¹² Hong Liangji (1746–1809) took these observations further and wrote about the danger of overpopulation five years before Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).¹³

The ‘peril of overpopulation’ (renman zhi huan) became a cause for concern in the course of the nineteenth century. Tang Peng (1801–44), a scholar-official from Hunan province, devoted much attention to the problem of vagrancy in his Fu Qiuzi, and identified overpopulation as a major cause of the empire’s decline.¹⁴ Xu Naiji (1777–1839), a high official in Beijing who was against opium prohibition, suggested that in view of the demographic pressure, it was unnecessary to feel concerned for addicts, described as being no more than ‘vagrants, lazy, without ambition or old’.¹⁵ Starting with Gong Zizhen (1792–1841), a growing number of prominent scholars commented on the alarming increase in population,¹⁶ although most conservative scholars continued to believe that the country should be densely populated in order to achieve wealth and power. Xu Zi (1801–1862), for instance, blamed economic decline on the circulation of silver money, explicitly denying the existence of demographic pressure.¹⁷

But the most astonishing vision of state control over people’s reproduction was expressed in the privacy of a secret journal by Wang Shiduo (1802–89), preceptor of the Imperial Academy and adviser to the governor of Hubei province.¹⁸ Here he outlined a theory of state power based on the limitation of births and the regulation of sexuality. In this journal which he wrote during the turbulent years of the Taiping rebellion (1850–64) he observed: ‘There are too many women, hence there are too many people; because there are too many people, they are poor and there is not enough available land to support them.’ Distressed by the growing number of paupers, he proclaimed: ‘Heaven has its material for slaughter. Among animals they are the sheep, the pigs, the chickens and the ducks; among humans they are the short and puny, ugly, mean-eyed, short-stepped, garrulous, effeminate and stupid people.’¹⁹ Wang confided to his journal that taxes should be imposed on the female population to implement a thorough infanticide policy: all female children born of poor parents and sons who were physically abnormal or did not have handsome features should be drowned; temples, nunneries, ‘institutes for virgin women’ and ‘halls of chastity’ should be constructed in large numbers; people should be encouraged to become monks or nuns or remain unmarried; and women with one living child should be compelled to take abortifacient drugs to terminate their pregnancies. Wang Shiduo was certainly a marginal thinker, but his writings reflected a mounting interest in demographic issues which surfaced in the writings of other nineteenth-century scholars.

Concern over human reproduction and its effects on the strength of the state culminated in the reform movement in the last decade of the nineteenth century. In formulating their racial theories, a number of reformers directly referred to eugenics. Tan Sitong, for instance, mentioned the ‘science of race advancement’ in his Study of Humanity (Renxue):

Nowadays, electricity is able to transmit heat and power without a wire and to take a photograph of the liver and lungs. It can also test the material activity of the brain: in the course of time, it will be possible to eliminate its heavy nature and preserve its lightness, to decrease the body and increase the mind. If we also pay attention to the science of race advancement [jinzhong zhi xue], each generation will be superior to the other; through endless transformations, it will give birth to another race, which uses solely its intelligence and not its strength, having only a spirit and no body.²⁰

Tan Sitong, like the other reformers, was still steeped in a world of traditional learning, and despite many references to foreign thinkers he viewed the issue of ‘race advancement’ from the point of view of his own cosmological philosophy, which was based mainly on Confucian and Daoist teachings. Eugenics, from Tan’s perspective, was but a means to realise an ideal spiritual wholeness. Controlling the evolution of the ‘race’ would permit the body to be dissolved and the mind to be transcended, finally achieving spiritual unity with the cosmos.

Kang Youwei’s ideas about eugenics were part of his utopian philosophy of the One World, examined in Chapter 3. The ‘amelioration of the race’ was an intrinsic part of his ideal society. Kang suggested that women with desirable traits be selected to be impregnated in a Foetal Education Institute (taijiaoyuan) for the propagation of the species. Qualified doctors would prescribe their diet and supervise their activities, nurses would take care of the delivery, census officers would record new births, and the population office would name successfully selected infants, who would be placed in special institutions. The disabled and the mentally deficient would be sterilised.²¹

Yan Fu, on the other hand, proposed a ban on early marriage, referring to the wretched conditions in which the poor had to live: ‘Children feed on coarse food and live in filthy places; they are not properly educated, growing up amid disease and distress: the body becomes weak and the mind turns muddled. When they grow up, lust appears but intelligence stays dormant; they are anxious to take a wife, thereby spreading the wrong seed [zhong, ‘race’] from one generation to the next.’²² Liang Qichao also expressed his concern about the proliferation of unhealthy elements in China, proclaiming his admiration for the Spartans, who used to cast out babies considered unfit.²³

Eugenics also caught the attention of some revolutionaries. Zhang Binglin boldly claimed that ‘the superiority or inferiority inherent in heredity is responsible for intelligence or stupidity; the purity or impurity of the blood is responsible for strength or weakness.’ He believed that people with undesirable features could be improved by interbreeding 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.’²⁴

Expansion

Interest in eugenics exploded with the New Culture Movement. Professor Chen Yinghuang, author of one of the first anthropological textbooks in China, briefly mentioned how eugenics was a science capable of improving society by expelling its diseased elements, a process he called renzhong gailiang, ‘improvement of the race’, or youshengxue, ‘science of superior birth’.²⁵ The term youshengxue would rapidly become mainstream. It resonated with evolutionary views of the world as an arena of struggle between races, bringing to mind the expression ‘struggle for survival’ (yousheng liebai, literally ‘the superior win, the inferior lose’). It was homophonous with ‘science of how the superior win’.

A further call for racial improvement appeared in the journal New Education in 1919. Xia Yuzhong, the editor of Beijing Normal University’s textbooks and a professor of Chinese literature, deplored the fact that modern civilisation, despite all its material progress, was marred by a proliferation of unfit elements. ‘Society is still crammed with all the evil, the ugly, the false, the wicked, the scrambling, the base, the stupid, the brutish and the vexing elements of the human race, filled with all the bad phenomena that could lead a superior person to commit suicide.’ Medical experts, Xia recommended, should strictly distinguish between healthy individuals to be preserved and unfit elements to be eliminated. Each province should have a specialised eugenics laboratory, while breeding villages should be established for people with perfect brains and ideal bodies in order to generate the future ‘model race’.²⁶

Articles introducing a broad readership to the Eugenics Laboratory of Sir Francis Galton, the Eugenics Education Society of Leonard Darwin and the work of American eugenists such as Charles Davenport soon followed.²⁷ One of the first comprehensive treatises on eugenics written for the general reader appeared in 1923. The slim volume was coauthored by Zhou Jianren, the science editor of the Commercial Press in Shanghai and brother of Lu Xun, and Chen Changheng, a specialist in demography.²⁸

Evolution and Eugenics rapidly became a best-seller. The authors started by pointing out that progress in human societies had always been hampered by racial degeneration. Great civilisations such as Babylon, Greece, Rome, Spain and Turkey had collapsed as a consequence of racial decrepitude, and China, they warned, would soon go the same way. Eugenics would empower the state to direct the course of social evolution. Following the reformers, Chen harped on the theme of racial extinction. He described how Western countries were actively engaged in eugenic policies and how they had succeeded in progressively raising the vitality of the ‘race’. Whereas the ‘races’ of the West were becoming increasingly strong and vibrant, ‘national subjugation and racial extinction’ (wangguomiezhong, a concise and frequently used epigram) were thought to pose a threat to a Middle Kingdom in decay.²⁹

Zhou Jianren explained the principles of evolution and the mechanisms of heredity. Statistics proved that not only physical characteristics, but also mental traits could be inherited: parents suffering from low intelligence could not produce bright children.³⁰ As was explained in Chapter 4, belief in the inheritance of mental characteristics was essentially non-Darwinian, and was related to the Lamarckian paradigm of unilinear evolution. But belief in biological determinism gained further influence with the rediscovery of hereditary principles by Mendel at the turn of the century. ‘Science’ demonstrated how one’s character was determined by Mendelian factors. The Mendelian revolution, by claiming that nature could not be overcome by nurture, led to the belief that the spread of unfit characters should be prevented for the sake of ‘progress’.

In republican China, many popular writers exploited the Mendelian idea that genetic factors determined the character of an individual. Zhou Jianren asserted that the proliferation of ‘unfit’ elements drained the race’s resources and endangered society. He went on to advocate the speedy limitation of their reproduction: ‘If one wants to restrict the reproduction of the unfit, one can only segregate them. An active method would be to attempt to remove their reproductive capacity, and only after that can they be released.’³¹

Historians of medicine have demonstrated the existence of a close link between eugenic theories and Mendelian genetics, in particular in countries like England and Germany. Neo-Lamarckian approaches to inheritance, however, were not incompatible with eugenic discourse, as is clearly reflected in the case of Russia and Brazil, two countries which also harboured strident advocates of eugenic sterilisation.³² Proponents of neo-Lamarckism claimed that undesirable characteristics like alcoholism were acquired in one generation and passed on to the next: the belief in the inheritance of acquired features did not need to be based on a genealogical analysis to demonstrate that a trait followed Mendelian laws. Environmental determinism, rather than biological determinism, was used to advocate the sterilisation of particular categories of people. France has been characterised as the ‘home of neo-Lamarckian eugenics’, an emphasis which is explained partly because of the pronounced concern over the declining birth rate and fears of underpopulation. While eugenists in France did not support Mendelian laws, they still called for the elimination of dysgenic elements, although they generally preferred to encourage the propagation of the ‘fit’ and the improvement of the health of the ‘unfit’. In contrast to researchers in Germany and Britain, French eugenists did not produce significant biological research or statistical studies. As in China, eugenics was part of the everyday vocabulary of most political groups, from far left to extreme right, as many intellectuals shared a concern over modernity, a sense of nationalism and an expectation that the government would reform society. But in France, widespread reluctance to interfere in the private lives of families, opposition from religious and liberal groups, and a strong sense among family doctors of their professional duty to respect the confidentiality of their patients combined to marginalise eugenic proposals.³³

Republican China combined Mendelian genetics with neo-Lamarckian approaches to inheritance in a holistic approach which stressed the interdependence of nature with nurture and the subordination of the individual to the nation. Just as the absence of a clear boundary between body and mind characterised medical discourse, few clear distinctions were made between socially undesirable features and genetic disorders.

A year after the appearance of Evolution and Eugenics, the Commercial Press published a study of heredity written by Liu Xiong. Like Zhou Jianren, Liu represented the worst current of eugenics. He subscribed to the belief that intellectual capacity was inherited, drew a rigid line between people defined as ‘inferior’ and ‘superior’ and advocated for the restriction of the reproduction of the ‘unfit’. Liu maintained that it was the responsibility of eugenics to eliminate ‘inferior elements’ in order to preserve the race’s superior strain.³⁴ Two themes of Liu’s work in particular should be noted, since they were popular in other writings on eugenics in republican China.

First, there was the concept of class. In Liu Xiong’s view, eugenics should be targeted toward specific classes. The health of the lower classes should be raised in order to dissolve the class system that had prevailed in the past: only then could social harmony be achieved. Intellectuals were defined as a ‘class’ (jieji) of their own, opposed to elements ‘without intelligence’ that propagated at the bottom of society. Whereas Chen Changheng’s theories were still dominated by the idea of racial extinction (baozhong), in tune with the reformers’ racial thinking, Liu advanced a different vision: the lower classes had to be elevated to the level of the superior class. Racial uniformity within the nation, instead of racial superiority among nations, would ensure the survival of the country. The focus was shifted from racial differences between nations to racial differences between classes. By shifting the myth of superiority from ‘race’ to ‘class’, Liu envisage intellectuals as a privileged genetic group, the repository of racial purity.

Secondly, there was the concept of individualism. ‘The limit of individual liberty is that it should not infringe upon others and that it should not harm the development of the race.’ In the special paragraph that Liu devoted to the interaction of individual and race, it was explained that the freedom of the individual had to be restricted when it threatened the welfare of the race as a whole. The foremost duty of the citizen was to contribute actively to the race: ‘When one assumes the task of protecting the race’s superior characteristics, one cannot consider only individual liberty and comfort.’ The subordination of the individual to the group was a concern that often emerged in eugenic writings, in China and elsewhere.

Until the mid-1920s, however, the idea of race improvement remained confined to a narrow group of intellectuals. It was only with Pan Guangdan (1898–1967) that eugenics would become a household word in China. Although Pan had had one leg amputated after an athletic injury, he was to become China’s most popular eugenist.³⁵

Pan Guangdan became interested in eugenics as a student at Qinghua University. On graduation from Dartmouth, he and several fellow students founded the first eugenic organisation in China, ‘The Chinese Eugenics Institute’ (Zhongguo yousheng xuehui), which put forward proposals for the enactment of eugenic laws. The following year, Pan wrote an introduction to the international eugenics movement. He described the general principles of eugenics and listed the name, address, date of founding and principal publications of each of the most important institutions.³⁶ In this early article, Pan called for the ‘citizenisation’ (gongminhua) of the movement, as eugenics could not be considered the responsibility of scientists alone: race improvement was closely related to the politics of the state. The emergence of the nation coalesced with the rise of the race.³⁷

Pan also tackled the problem of race improvement in China. In The Eugenic Question in China, he described two mutually exclusive processes of selection: natural selection (tianran xuanze or tianze), which was the evolutionists’ object of investigation, and cultural selection (wenhua xuanze or huaze), the concern of the eugenists.³⁸ The spread of foreign culture had interfered dramatically with the process of natural selection in China. The purpose of Pan’s short study was to analyse the effects of this new cultural influence on the ‘Chinese race’. The first section focused on different aspects of cultural selection in China prior to the country’s opening to the West:³⁹

(1)Familism (jiazuzhuyi), as opposed to Western individualism (gerenzhuyi), was viewed as a positive factor in the preservation of the race’s vitality. The traditional family stressed the duties of its members more than their rights. ‘Individual liberty and happiness have to recede into the background or be sacrificed entirely in the struggle for survival of the race.’

(2)Chinese religions supported healthy marriages. The Confucian emphasis on filial piety and wholesome procreation was compatible with ‘racial order’ (zhongzu zhi’an).

(3)The traditional matrimonial system was compatible with ‘racial hygiene’ (zhongzu weisheng), as the individual’s role was effectively minimised to ensure collective harmony. Arranged marriages and low rates of divorce were valued positively by Pan. Even bigamy was not seen to be a negative factor in eugenics, since it was practised only by noble and wealthy families, whose blood was generally seen to be superior to that of ordinary people. Although he admitted that concubinage had a negative influence on racial health, Pan Guangdan judged that traditional Chinese marriage customs were altogether sound.

(4)Population growth had so far remained free from any kind of cultural interference. The reproduction rate was high, but it had always been counterbalanced by a high mortality.

(5)Rural life maintained the race’s vitality. The urban style of life only stimulated a decadent individualism that contributed nothing to the race.

Pan concluded that the negative influence of cultural selection had never been significant in China. ‘Westernisation’, however, had already begun to affect social organisation in a number of ways. First, medical hygiene had wiped out the process of natural selection, allowing inferior people to proliferate; secondly, modern matrimonial practices emphasised romanticism, advocated a late marriage age, espoused ideals unattainable for many young people and put undue emphasis on the financial independence of the female partner; thirdly, the upper classes, motivated by individualism, tended to limit their offspring; and finally, urbanisation led to the dissemination of deleterious practices throughout the country.⁴⁰ Pan Guangdan called for a critical re-evaluation of Western civilisation. Foreign cultural penetration had upset the country’s social organisation and undermined its racial health; cultural selection had disturbed a delicate balance that could be redressed only by eugenics.

In this early article, Pan Guangdan had laid out what were to become the dominant themes of his thought, namely faith in the inherent superiority of the intellectual class, distrust of individualism and confidence in the family as the basic unit of the nation-race. Pan spent much of his time teaching and writing on the concepts of eugenics that he had elaborated during this early period. His ideal family, for instance, was conceptualised in Chinese Family Problems (1928). This study presented the results of a survey on attitudes towards marriage of readers of the Shanghai newspaper Current Events. The introduction equated family with xuetong, ‘stock’, ‘breed’ or ‘strain’:⁴¹ this constituted the biological unit of the race. The genetic inheritance of the family should be improved, for only then could it become an ‘instrument for struggle and survival’.⁴² Pan was opposed to birth control, late marriage and female independence, pointing instead to the positive aspects of the traditional marriage system.

His faith in the racial superiority of intellectuals, shared by many eugenists, was expressed in his work on blood kinship among Chinese stage actors. Inspired by such outdated works as Galton’s Hereditary Genius (1869) and Havelock Ellis’ A Study of British Genius (1904), it analysed the clan records of famous acting families in order to demonstrate that the assortative mating intuitively practised by certain families had produced a large number of famous actors. Actor families had succeeded in preserving the desirable genetic qualities: theatrical talent, Pan believed, had been transmitted through the genes.⁴³

Apogee

Pan was an outspoken advocate for eugenics and for many years crusaded for its adoption. Together with the Chinese Committee for Racial Hygiene, he initiated the publication of a Eugenics Monthly, which contained essays, short stories and reviews.⁴⁴ The spread of a eugenic discourse, however, cannot be ascribed to the activity of one scholar. Many intellectuals in the late 1920s were actively engaged in the promotion of racial betterment. Pan’s concern with the family converged with the preoccupations of Yi Jiayue, one of the most respected writers on family problems. Yi believed that the family could strengthen the country’s ‘racial organisation’ and was beneficial to the ‘struggle for survival’.⁴⁵ Popular textbooks on heredity explained the principles of eugenics and the dangers of racial degeneration on the strength of Mendelian genetics.⁴⁶ A doctrinaire ABC of Eugenics was published in 1929,⁴⁷ and an Introduction to the Science of Race Improvement in 1932.⁴⁸ The Student’s Magazine urged university students to undertake research in eugenics for the advancement of the race, the state and the individual.⁴⁹

After 1930, the casual use of eugenic arguments became increasingly common in scholarly circles. ‘Race improvement’ and ‘racial hygiene’ became the catchwords of the day. Medical journals, for instance, regularly debated issues pertaining to ‘racial biology’.⁵⁰ In his Racial Hygiene, Dr Jin Zizhi explained how the future of the nation was dependent on the physical condition of the race.⁵¹ One eugenist even warned that masturbation would endanger the racial health of the nation.⁵²

Eugenic discourse was also pervasive in more popular publications. Marriage guides anticipated that beautiful, superior men and women would marry one another to ‘regenerate’ the race.⁵³ An influential manual for women emphasised how the ‘superiority’ or ‘inferiority’ of children depended on their parents; it described hereditary diseases as the ‘germs of race betterment’ which menaced the race with degeneration and final extinction. Physical education was exalted; strength and fitness replaced Confucian values of delicacy and frailty. The profound sense of threat which pervaded republican China led to an obsession with physical prowess and military power. Versions of pastoral also intruded into racial discourse: rural life was thought to invigorate the individual and maintain biological vitality.⁵⁴

By the mid-1930s, discussions on race improvement began to appear regularly in newspapers. In 1935, the imminent breeding of ‘scientific babies’ by eugenic methods was heralded in one daily.⁵⁵ The same year, eugenic laws were explained in the Xinwenbao by Yan Duhe, a popular author of ‘mandarin ducks and butterfly’ literature.⁵⁶ The Central Daily devoted two pages to the ‘Question of Race Improvement’,⁵⁷ while the New China Times introduced heredity and eugenics to its readers.⁵⁸ Pan Guangdan wrote on ‘Eugenics and Racial Health’ in the Beijing Morning,⁵⁹ which a month later published a paper analysing the eugenic content of Chinese proverbs⁶⁰ and an article urging philanthropists to pay more attention to questions of race improvement.⁶¹

But not everybody in China believed in the regenerating virtues of eugenics. Most opponents were population specialists. In 1928, a heated debate occurred between Sun Benwen, who had been awarded a PhD at New York University and was professor of sociology at Fudan University, and Pan Guangdan. Sun stood firmly on the side of nurture, refuting Pan’s biological determinism.⁶² Four arguments emerged from his scathing critique: first, humans were not mere animals; secondly, culture could not be reduced to a mere gene; thirdly, IQ tests were not indicative of inherited intelligence; and fourthly, wealth and position did not reflect one’s inherent abilities.⁶³ Sun found it difficult to gauge ‘intelligence’, and doubted whether qualities such as ‘superiority’ and ‘inferiority’ existed at birth.⁶⁴ As eugenics had proved capable only of limiting the so-called ‘unfit’ elements of society, Sun drily referred to it as a ‘science of inferior birth’ (lieshengxue, as opposed to youshengxue, or ‘science of superior birth’). Despite his critical attitude, Sun Benwen still professed a belief in the future possibility of breeding people like cattle.⁶⁵

Chen Tianbiao, another expert of demography, judged that nature and nurture played equally important roles, and frowned on the idea of a dominant heredity.⁶⁶ Chen was nevertheless eager to subscribe to the idea of a marriage ban between people with contagious diseases, the mentally disturbed, the feeble-minded and the maimed (sic); he also advocated increased eugenic activities in China.⁶⁷ Xu Shilian, a specialist in population theories, contrasted euthenics (youyexue), the science of environmental improvement, to eugenics (youshengxue).⁶⁸ Xu was critical of the scientific basis of eugenics, and disputed the idea that a relationship existed between social position and intellectual capacity.⁶⁹ His critique was based mainly on Herbert Jennings’ Biological Basis of Human Nature (1930), a study that had exposed the fallacies of eugenics.

On the other hand, Chen Da, one of the most respected sociologists of the republican era,⁷⁰ drew imperturbably upon Goddard’s Feeblemindedness and Tredgold’s Mental Deficiency,⁷¹ the epitome of eugenic bigotry. These works had been discredited in Europe and the United States by a growing body of anti-eugenic research, but were still used by the author to validate his vision of race improvement. Chen Da invited Pan Guangdan to lecture at Qinghua University in eugenics and sociology. Incidentally, both Chen Da and Pan Guangdan were closely related to Liang Qichao, who was also based at Qinghua.

In the West, scholarly attacks on eugenics had proliferated since the First World War. Leading scientists like J. B. S. Haldane, Julian Huxley, Lancelot Hogben and Herbert Jennings turned against eugenics and denounced the race and class prejudice it cultivated. G. K. Chesterton’s collection of essays from the early 1920s, Eugenics and Other Evils, became a ‘staple of the anti-eugenic arsenal on both sides of the Atlantic’.⁷² Apart from some isolated specialists active in the social sciences, this trend found few echoes among Chinese scientists. In his Race improvement (1936), Yu Jingrang voiced his concern about the declining birth rate of the higher classes, while distancing himself from eugenic policies.⁷³ It was only in the revised edition of his book published in 1947 that the author publicly denounced Nazi eugenics, sterilisation policies and marriage restrictions on the so-called lower classes.⁷⁴

Only a few authors openly opposed eugenics. Indeed, many gave free rein to class prejudice in expounding the most utopian visions of race improvement. Zhang Junjun’s Reform of the Chinese race, first published in 1935, was an exercise in race dissection. The original superior Han bloodstream had been submerged by successive strains of worthless barbarian blood; intermarriage and migration had led to the progressive degeneration of the Chinese race. Zhang diagnosed the race’s illness by analysing its height, weight, infant mortality, life expectancy, vitality, feeding patterns and ‘spiritual defects’. When compared to other countries situated between the 20th and 33rd parallels, it appeared that the Chinese were quite superior in intelligence, though not in physical strength.⁷⁵ Statistics revealed that at least 50 per cent of the 13,485 students tested were in poor physical shape.⁷⁶ To remedy the feebleness of the race, the author prescribed a stable nation with a strong central government.⁷⁷ Eugenics was central to the reform of the race: dysgenic marriages had to be proscribed, whereas selective mating with ‘superior elements’ of other ‘races’ should be encouraged.

A ‘Draft for the Implementation of Shenxi’s Race Reform’ was appended to Zhang’s study. It included a plan for an Institute of Race Reform, in which the eugenics department would be responsible for enacting racial laws. It would register and investigate marriages, including family pedigrees, and could be consulted on matrimonial matters. It would reward spiritually and physically ‘healthy’ marriages and otherwise encourage ‘superior births’. Finally, it would be responsible for preventing ‘unhealthy’ marriages. These were defined as unions in which one of the partners was feebleminded, mentally disordered, afflicted with a communicable disease, physically weak, tubercular or ‘criminally inclined’. The department in charge of IQ tests was expected to classify citizens as ‘intelligent’ (shangzhi) or ‘stupid’ (xiayu), a sharp distinction characteristic of the author’s rigid approach to questions of heredity. The very terminology Zhang applied revealed the direct influence of the classics: ‘superior intelligence’ (shangzhi) and inferior stupidity (xiayu) cannot be changed,’ or so it was written in the Analects.⁷⁸

Zhang Junjun’s list of genetically defective elements matched the worst of Western eugenic theories in vagueness. The term ‘feeble-minded’ (dineng) was used indiscriminately for almost any type of learning disability. ‘Mentally disordered’ (shenjingbing), a favourite term of abuse to this day, was left undefined, whereas ‘physically weak’ (shenti xuruo) was nothing more than a convenient term to apply to any type of person judged deleterious to society. The perception of criminality as a biological flaw reflected the popular belief in the inheritance of behavioural traits: social pathology was rooted in the genes, not in society. In imperial China, families with a psychotic member were often excluded from the marital pool, as society emphasised the hereditary basis of mental disease.⁷⁹

In the West, the gradual reification of the spiritual sphere of life had transformed intelligence into an entity that was thought to be measurable. Belief in the measurement of intelligence was translated into the use of a strict terminology for all the ‘levels’ of intelligence that researchers were thought to have discerned. Eugenics in republican China, in comparison, remained rather vague. Drawing upon the traditional distinction between the uneducated masses and the cultured elite, the dichotomy between ‘stupidity’ and ‘intelligence’ was often sufficient. Those who made the effort to distinguish various levels of intellectual deficiency were rare. Ke Xiangfeng, for instance, classified the ‘unfit’ into ‘morons’ (benzi), ‘imbeciles’ (daizi) and ‘idiots’ (chizi), each corresponding to a different IQ level. Ke was an exception: he advocated the ‘rationalisation’ of all population problems, and wanted ‘rational’ criteria for the classification of ‘inferior’ elements.⁸⁰

Zhang Junjun championed drastic measures—segregation, exile and castration—to prevent the procreation of people he had so vaguely classified as ‘unfit’. Exile was a long-standing traditional means of isolating criminals by sending them to the edges of the empire, far away from the civilised centre. Castration was the cruellest form of sterilisation. The majority of eugenists who eventually came to find virtue in sterilisation prescribed vasectomy, which left the patient sterile but did not affect his sexuality. Zhang’s study concluded with extracts from correspondence expressing admiration and support for his eugenic project. Shao Lizi, governor of Shenxi province from 1933–36, endorsed Zhang’s ‘Draft for the Implementation of Shenxi’s Race Reform’. Other enthusiastic supporters included Zhang Xueliang, once the most powerful warlord in the north of China, then deputy commander-in-chief of operations against the communists in the north-west; Pan Gongzhan, an influential journalist and publisher, member of the Central Executive Committee of the Guomindang and future vice-minister of information; Cai Yuanpei, founder and president of the prestigious Academia Sinica; Chen Lifu, head of the organisation department of the Guomindang, and other high-ranking officials. Eugenic ideas were fostered by the Guomindang, whose own New Life Movement was partly inspired by a preoccupation with a ‘strong race and a strong nation’.⁸¹

Pan Guangdan also planned a book on the New Life Movement and eugenics (Xinshenghuo yu youshengxue). It never appeared, presumably because of the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The Japanese invasion plunged the country into a prolonged war that pushed plans for race reform into the background. The Second World War, followed by the civil war between the Communist Party and the Guomindang from 1945 to 1949, was the main reason why eugenic ideas did not achieve institutional expression. The Committee for the Study of Population Policies, organised by the Ministry of Social Affairs in 1941, was the first official attempt to approach population problems in a systematic way. It recommended the segregation of physically and mentally handicapped people from the normal population for what was called ‘cultural advancement and racial rejuvenation’. As people were recognised to be unequally endowed, the report advocated a differential birthrate: ‘Thus viewed’, said the report, ‘some individuals may have children, others not.’⁸² The committee—whose members included Chen Changheng, Chen Da and Pan Guangdan—also encouraged the use of sterilisation for the racial improvement of the country.

Zhang Junjun and other eugenists cited Hitler and Nazi racial policies as a positive example for China.⁸³ Wei Juxian, the author of the substantial article on the origins of the Han people analysed in the preceeding chapter, claimed in 1933 that if eugenic policies were not adopted immediately, the ‘Chinese race’ was doomed to imminent extinction.⁸⁴ A eugenic laboratory (renzhong gailiangsuo) would have to be established in every county. Young men and women reaching marriageable age would be selected by a qualified doctor who would allow the strong and the healthy to have sexual intercourse. Expectant mothers would remain under medical control until parturition, at which stage ‘weak’ offspring would be eliminated. Superior babies would be called ‘model person’ (mofanren). On the other hand, products bred without supervision would be labelled ‘elimination person’ (taotairen): reproduction by such individuals would be strictly prohibited as soon as model persons made up twothirds of the population. Wei Juxian’s eugenic discourse was directly inspired by the Nazi experience.⁸⁵ His article explained in detail how eugenic laws in Germany decreed the ‘forceful elimination’ of entire categories of people judged deficient, such as sex criminals, the incurably sick, the feebleminded and those afflicted with hereditary diseases. Wei regretted only the Nazis’ lack of determination, for their laws were not always carried out in a ‘thorough way’. Although such wavering could be tolerated in the German case, a much firmer hand would be required in China to resist the cultural, economic and military invasions of other nations.

According to William Kirby, who has studied the relations between Republican China and Germany, most Chinese admirers of National Socialism actually had few reservations about Nazi racism.⁸⁶ Anti-Semitism received relatively little attention, whereas the German preoccupation with race was hailed as an example worthy of emulation. In the West, Nazi eugenics drew little criticism until the mid-1930s. It was the extreme nature of German policies that eventually led to a strong reaction, supported by a longstanding and influential anti-eugenic coalition among people of both secular and religious backgrounds.⁸⁷ Paul Popenoe, then a leading eugenist, later admitted that Nazism had been the major factor accounting for the decline of interest in race and eugenics from the mid-1930s onwards.⁸⁸

In China, however, the fortune of eugenics suffered less from the Nazi example. After 1945, a small number of eugenists continued to toy with outdated genetic concepts such as the inheritance of behavioural traits. Hao Qinming, for instance, concluded his university textbook on heredity with a paragraph entitled ‘The Urgent Need for Race Improvement’.⁸⁹ Idiots (chiyu), demented people (kuangdian), epileptics, those afflicted with ‘loathsome’ diseases, the malformed and those suffering from hereditary diseases would not be allowed to marry. Intervention of a coercive nature was not imperative for people with minor infirmities like deafness, dumbness, blindness or baldness: education would convince them of the necessity of voluntary sterilisation. Moral principles also guided the idea of rewarding ‘superior’ parents who bred ‘intelligent’ children. The author further expounded a theory on the differential birth rates of ‘idiots’ and ‘intellectuals’; idiots proliferated rapidly and threatened to outbreed intellectuals, thereby upsetting the fragile balance of society. Only mass sterilisation could ward off the menace of racial cretinism. As an exercise, Hao’s students were asked to draft a plan for the implementation of eugenic policies on the provincial level. They were also required to produce a letter advising the legislative court to legalise sterilisation.⁹⁰

A final example is Hu Buchan’s widely read Eugenics and Human Heredity, first published in 1936 and reprinted several times until 1959 without textual alterations. Hu gave a succinct description of the various methods of race improvement.⁹¹ The Spartan method of physically eliminating unfit infants was cruel and contradicted the spirit of eugenics. Both neo-Malthusianism and laissez-faire policies were categorically rejected by the author. General education and marriage restrictions were invaluable methods of improving the nation’s racial stock, but could have only a limited impact. Polygamy was effective with farm animals, but was immoral and illegal when applied to human society. This left segregation and sterilisation as the only reliable eugenic techniques. Hu Buchan, whose textbook provided a balanced account of the intricate mechanisms of human heredity, resisted the temptation of defining those he referred to as ‘unhealthy’. His class bias, however, emerged in a chapter concerning birth control. Hu deplored the declining birth rate of intellectuals. Although he admitted that there was no definite criterion for determining the superiority of the elite and the inferiority of the lower class, he argued that most statistics had clearly demonstrated a higher IQ among the former. Hu’s class bias rested on social anxiety. His encounters with the lower classes filled him with apprehension: ‘The streets are full of beggars, carrying each other on their backs, tramping around hand in hand; for it is true that the poorer people are, the higher their rate of reproduction.’⁹² Hu carried the contrast between China’s social classes a step further by comparing them to Rome: the ancient city had declined because the pure-blooded Romans had voluntarily limited their births, whereas slaves and foreigners had multiplied without restriction. The author somehow equated intellectuals to a pure-blooded nobility, downgrading other classes to the status of slaves.⁹³

We have seen how social perceptions of skin colour and physical characteristics existed in traditional China and how racial stereotypes emerged gradually during the nineteenth century. At the turn of the century, the reformers rationalised these stereotypes and forged a racial discourse which portrayed the Chinese as a distinct biological group. During the first decade of the twentieth century, the revolutionaries narrowed down their racial definition of the nation to the Han, seen as the descendants of the mythical Yellow Emperor. After the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty and the foundation of the Republic in 1912, however, the fear of racial extinction continued to preoccupy many social thinkers. Some rejected the idea of a united Han nation and instead focused upon differences within the ‘race’: intellectuals were designated as ‘superior’, the lower classes as ‘inferior’. The popularity of eugenics among the educated classes reflected both a concern with national revival and a search for group identity. The adoption of the pseudo-science was facilitated by a distrust of individualism, disbelief in democracy, and the absence of a religion which disregarded bodily attributes in favour of a paramount spirit. A traditional social hierarchy, which distinguished sharply between educated scholars and uneducated peasants, also contributed to the emergence of eugenics during the 1920s and 1930s. Eugenics, however, remained narrowly confined to the realm of ideas. It achieved organisational expression only rarely, and did not affect government policies. Its defenders, as well as its critics, tended to be ideologues, not scientists. But eugenics did make a comeback in the communist era, briefly discussed in the next chapter.