Notes

PREFACE TO THE REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

1.Marek Kohn, The race gallery: The return of racial science, London: Jonathan Cape, 1995; see also Kenan Malik, Strange fruit: Why both sides are wrong in the race debate, London: Oneworld, 2008.

2.Nikolas Rose, ‘Intoduction to the discussion of race and ethnicity in Nature Genetics’, BioSocieties, 2006, no. 1, pp. 307–311.

3.Joanna L. Mountain and Neil Risch, ‘Assessing genetic contributions to phenotypic differences among “racial” and “ethnic” groups’, Nature Genetics, 36, no. 11 (2004), p. 52.

4.Armand Leroi, ‘A family tree in every gene’, New York Times, 14 March 2005.

5.Edouard Machery and Luc Faucher, ‘Why do we think racially?’ in Henri Cohen and Claire Lefebvre (eds), Handbook of categorization in cognitive science, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005, p. 1014.

6.Ron Mallon, ‘Was race thinking invented in the modern West?’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, part A, vol. 44, no. 1 (March 2013), p. 83.

7.Jan J. L. Duyvendak, China’s discovery of Africa, London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949, p. 24.

8.Xu Jiyu, Yinghuan zhilüe (A brief survey of the maritime circuit), Osaka: Kanbun, 1861, juan 4, p. 7b.

9.Jim Mann, ‘Peking denies racism caused clashes between Chinese and African students’, Los Angeles Times, 8 June 1986.

10.Frank Dikötter, ‘Reading the body: Genetic knowledge and social marginalisation in the PRC’, China Information, 13, nos 2–3 (Dec. 1998), pp. 1–13.

11.Zhang Zhenbiao, ‘Zangzu de tizhi tezheng’ (The physical characteristics of the Tibetan nationality), Renleixue xuebao, 4, no. 3 (Aug. 1985), pp. 250–7.

PREFACE

1.Some notable exceptions include Julia Blackburn, The white men: The first response of aboriginal peoples to the white man, London: Orbis, 1979; Gustav Jahoda, White man: A study of the attitudes of Africans to Europeans in Ghana before independence, London: Oxford University Press, 1961, an anthropological inquiry based on interviews; V. Gorog, Noirs et blancs. Leur image dans la litterature orale africaine, Paris: SELAF, 1976, based on the textual analysis of 161 documents of oral literature. Pathbreaking is Kwame Anthony Appiah, In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture, Oxford University Press, 1992.

2.Han perceptions of national minorities have already been extensively treated. For an introduction, see Thomas Heberer, China and its national minorities, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989; June T. Dreyer, China’s forty millions: Minority nationalities and national integration in the People’s Republic of China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976, and Jonathan N. Lipman, ‘Ethnicity and politics in Republican China’, Modern China, 10, no. 3 (July 1984), pp. 285–316.

1. RACE AS CULTURE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

1.Harold R. Isaacs, ‘Group identity and political change: The role of color and physical characteristics’, Daedalus, Spring 1967, p. 367.

2.For a general introduction to the traditional Chinese world view and the tributary system upon which relations with foreign countries were often based, see John K. Fairbank (ed.), The Chinese world order: Traditional China’s foreign relations, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

3.Hsiao Kung-chuan, A history of Chinese political thought, Princeton University Press, 1979, p. 24.

4.James Legge, The Chinese classics, London: Henry Frowde, 1860–72, vol. 5, part 1, pp. 354–5.

5.Yang Lien-sheng, ‘Historical notes on the Chinese world order’ in Fairbank, The Chinese world order, p. 24. This quotation from the Zuozhuan has not been translated by James Legge.

6.See Lionello Lanciotti, ‘“Barbaren” in altchinesischer Sicht’, Antaios, 6 (March 1968), p. 573.

7.See Clae Waltham, Shu ching, book of history: A modernized edition of the translation of James Legge, London: Allen and Unwin, 1971, pp. 39–54.

8.Ruth I. Meserve, ‘The inhospitable land of the barbarian’, Journal of Asian History, 16 (1982), p. 54.

9.See C. C. Muller, ‘Die Herausbildung der Gegensätze: Chinesen und Barbaren in der frühen Zeit’ in Wolfgang Bauer (ed.), China und die Fremden. 3000 Jahre Auseinandersetzung in Krieg und Frieden, Munich: Beck, 1980, p. 62.

10.Romila Thapar, ‘The image of the barbarian in early India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13 (1971), p. 411.

11.G. H. T. Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages, London: Methuen, 1938, p. 24.

12.The following examples are taken from Rémi Mathieu, Etude sur la mythologie et l’ethnologie de la Chine ancienne. Traduction annotée du Shanhai jing, Paris: Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1983, pp. 89, 414, 389, 397, 445, 451–2.

13.Meserve, ‘The inhospitable land’, p. 55.

14.Ibid., p. 56.

15.Frank M. Snowden, Before color prejudice: The ancient view of Blacks, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 46 ff. and 63.

16.On the Yin-Yang school, see Alfred Forke, The world conception of the Chinese: Their astronomical, cosmological and physico-philosophical speculations, London: Probsthain, 1925.

17.Wang Chong, Lun-heng, transl. A. Forke, New York: Paragon Book Gallery, 1962, vol. 1, p. 390.

18.James Legge, The Li Chi, Hong Kong University Press, 1967, p. 228.

19.Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist conquest of China: The spread and adaptation of Buddhism in early medieval China, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1959, p. 265.

20.David McMullen, ‘Views of the state in Du You and Liu Zongyuan’ in Stuart Schram (ed.), Foundations and limits of state power in China, London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1987, p. 64.

21.Legge, Li Chi, p. 229.

22.See Claude Lévi-Strauss’s classic Mythologiques: Le cru et le cuit, Paris: Plon, 1964.

23.Jan J. L. Duyvendak, China’s discovery of Africa, London: Probsthain, 1949, p. 24; I have replaced Duyvendak’s translation of ‘people’s language’ (renyan) by ‘human speech’.

24.Henri Maspero, La Chine antique, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1955, p. 13; see also Richard Wilhelm, ‘Chinesische Frauenschönheit’, Chinesisch-Deutscher Almanach, 1931, p. 23.

25.James Legge, The Chinese classics, 4:i, The She king, London: Frowde, 1860–72, p. 95; see also p. 77.

26.Arthur Waley, ‘The fall of Loyang’, History Today, 4 (1951), p. 8, quoted in Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese history, Stanford University Press, 1959, p. 31.

27.Bret Hinsch, Passions of the cut sleeve: The male homosexual tradition in China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp. 65–6.

28.A. Soper, ‘Hsiang-kuo-ssu, an imperial temple of Northern Sung’, quoted in Wright, Buddhism, p. 98.

29.Pierre Huard, ‘Depuis quand avons-nous la notion d’une race jaune?’, Institut Indochinois pour l’Etude de l’Homme, 4 (1942), p. 40.

30.Zhang Xie, Dong Xi yang kao (Geography of south-east Asia), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981, p. 67.

31.See Shih Lun, ‘The black-headed people’ in Li Yu-ning (ed.), First emperor of China: The politics of historiography, New York: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1975, pp. 242–58.

32.Edward H. Schafer, The vermilion bird: T’ang images of the south, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, p. 16; see also p. 73.

33.J. Takakusu, ‘Le voyage de Kanshin en Orient (742–754)’, Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient, 28 (1928), p. 466.

34.Wang Gungwu, ‘The Nanhai trade: A study of the early history of Chinese trade in the South China Sea,’ Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 31, no. 182 (1958), p. 75.

35.Almut Netolitzky, Das Ling-wai tai-ta von Chou Ch’ü-fei. Eine Landeskunde Süidchinas aus dem 12. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977, p. 49; on the kunlun people and Africans in imperial China, see Julie Wilensky, The magical kunlun and ‘devil slaves’: Chinese perceptions of dark-skinned people and Africa before 1500, Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 122, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2002.

36.Jane G. Mahler, The Westerners among the figurines of the T’ang dynasty of China, Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1959, p. 84.

37.Zhao Rugua, Zhufanzhi (Records on the various barbarians), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956, juan 2, pp. 10b, 16a and 34a.

38.Ma Huan, Yingya shenglan jiaozhu (Annotated overall survey of the ocean shores), edited, with notes, by Feng Chengjun, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1955, pp. 23, 59, 63, 69.

39.Zhang Xinglang, ‘Zhongguo renzhong Yindu-Riermanzhong fenzi’ (Indo-Germanic elements in the Chinese race), Furen xuezhi, 1, 1928, p. 180.

40.Zhang Xie, Dong Xi yang kao, p. 93.

41.Jin He, ‘Shuo gui’ (About ghosts) in A Ying (comp.), Yapian zhanzheng wenxue ji (Collection of literary writings on the Opium War), Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1957, p. 44.

42.See the pathbreaking study of Africans in ancient China by Don J. Wyatt, Blacks of premodern China, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010, p. 131; Zhang Xinglang, ‘Tangshi Feizhou heinu shuru Zhongguo kao’ (The importation of African black slaves into China during the Tang), Furen xuezhi, 1, 1928, pp. 101–19.

43.Duyvendak, China’s discovery, p. 13.

44.Netolitsky, Ling-wai tai-ta, p. 49.

45.Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua: His work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the 12th and 13th centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chi, St. Petersburg: Printing Office of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911, p. 149.

46.See Paul Wheatley, ‘Geographical notes on some commodities involved in Sung maritime trade’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 32, no. 186 (1959), p. 54.

47.Zhu Yu, Pingzhou ketan (Anecdotes and stories), Changsha: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1935–6, juan 2, p. 2b.

48.Lo Jung-p’ang, ‘The emergence of China as a sea power during the late Sung and early Yuan periods’, Far Eastern Quarterly, 14, no. 4 (1955), p. 500.

49.William C. Hunter, The ‘fan kwae’ at Canton before the treaty days, 1825–1844, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1911, p. 148.

50.Charles R. Boxer, Portuguese society in the tropics: The municipal councils of Goa, Macao, Bahia and Luanda, 1510–1800, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965, p. 65.

51.Charles R. Boxer, ‘Macao as a religious and commercial entrepot in the 16th and 17th centuries’, Acta Asiatica, 26 (1974), p. 65.

52.Austin Coates, A Macao narrative, Hong Kong: Heinemann, 1978, p. 35.

53.Jonathan D. Spence, The memory palace of Matteo Ricci, London: Faber and Faber, 1985, p. 209.

54.Legge, Classics, 2, pp. 253–4.

55.Kenneth Ch’en, ‘Anti-Buddhist propaganda during the Nan-Ch’ao’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 15 (1952), p. 172.

56.Zürcher, Buddhist conquest, p. 265.

57.Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A historical survey, Princeton University Press, 1964, pp. 137–8.

58.Herbert Franke, ‘Sung embassies: Some general observations’ in Morris Rossabi (ed.), China among equals: The Middle Kingdom and its neighbors, 10th-14th centuries, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, p. 121.

59.Tao Jing-shen, ‘Barbarians or Northerners: Northern Sung images of the Khitans’ in Rossabi (ed.), China among equals, pp. 71–6.

60.Tao Jing-shen, Two sons of heaven: Studies in Sung-Liao relations, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988.

61.Hoyt C. Tillman, ‘Proto-nationalism in twelfth-century China?’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 39, no. 2 (Dec. 1979), p. 404.

67.Ibid., p. 408.

68.The following is based on Winston Wan Lo, The life and thought of Yeh Shih, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1974.

69.Ibid., p. 141.

65.See Elizabeth Endicott-West, Mongolian rule in China: Local administration in the Yuan dynasty, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 142, n. 51.

66.Fu Lo-shu, ‘Teng Mu, a forgotten Chinese philosopher’, T’oung Pao, 52 (1965), p. 43.

67.Frederick W. Mote, ‘Confucian eremitism in the Yuan period’ in Arthur F. Wright (ed.), The Confucian persuasion, Stanford University Press, 1960, p. 202.

68.Chan Hok-lam, Legitimation in imperial China: Discussions under the Jurchen-Chin dynasty, 1115–1234, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984, p. 129.

69.John W. Dardess, Confucianism and autocracy: Professional elites in the foundation of the Ming dynasty, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

70.John D. Langlois, ‘Introduction’ in John D. Langlois (ed.), China under Mongol rule, Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 17.

71.On censorship, self-censorship and the editing of Song loyalism, see Jennifer W. Jay, ‘Memoirs and official accounts: The historiography of the Song loyalists’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 50, no. 2 (Dec. 1990), pp. 589–612.

72.John Fincher, ‘China as a race, culture and nation: Notes on Fang Hsiao-ju’s discussion of dynastic legitimacy’ in D. C. Buxbaum and Frederick W. Mote (eds), Transition and permanence: Chinese history and culture. A festschrift in honour of Dr Hsiao Kung-ch’üan, Hong Kong: Cathay Press, 1972, p. 59.

73.Ibid., p. 60.

74.Mi Chu Wiens, ‘Anti-Manchu thought during the early Ch’ing’, Papers on China, 22A (1969), p. 8.

75.Paolo Santangelo, ‘“Chinese and barbarians” in Gu Yanwu’s thought’ in Collected papers of the XXXIXth Congress of Chinese Studies, Tubingen, 1988, pp. 183–99.

82.On this campaign, see the biography of Zeng Jing in A.W. Hummel (ed.), Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing period (1644–1912), Washington, DC: US Govt. Printing Office, 1944, pp. 747–9.

83.See Thomas S. Fisher, ‘Accommodation and loyalism: The life of Lü Liu-liang (1629–1683)’, Papers on Far Eastern History, 15 (March 1977), p. 102.

84.Ian McMorran, ‘Wang Fu-chih and the Neo-Confucian tradition’ in William T. De Bary, The unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1975, p. 438.

79.Ernstjoachim Vierheller, Nation und Elite im Denken von Wang Fu-chih (1619–1692), Hamburg: Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, 1968, p. 30.

80.Ibid., p. 124, n. 5.

81.Mi Chu Wiens, ‘Anti-Manchu thought’, p. 11.

82.Vierheller, Wang Fu-chih, p. 34.

83.Ian McMorran, ‘The patriot and the partisans: Wang Fu-chih’s involvement in the politics of the Yung-li court’ in Jonathan D. Spence and John E. Wills (eds), From Ming to Ch’ing: Conquest, region, and continuity in seventeenth-century China, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, p. 157.

84.V. G. Burov, Mirovozzrenie Kitaiskogo myslitelya XVII veka Van Chuan’-shanya, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1976, p. 197, n. 20.

85.Vierheller, Wang Fu-chih, pp. 29 and 37.

86.I am indebted for information on late Ming ethnology to P.K. Crossley (personal communication, 16 Dec. 1990).

87.Peng Yingming, ‘Guanyu woguo minzu gainian lishi de chubu kaocha’ (Preliminary investigation with respect to the history of the concept of nation in our country), Minzu yanjiu, 1985, no. 2, pp. 5–7.

88.Michael Banton, Racial theories, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 2.

2. RACE AS TYPE (1793–1895)

1.On the development of the evidential research movement, see Benjamin A. Elman, From philosophy to philology: Intellectual and social aspects of change in late imperial China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.

2.Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, politics, and kinship: The Ch’ang-chou school of New Text Confucianism in late imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

3.See James L. Hevia, ‘A multitude of lords: Qing court ritual and the Macartney embassy of 1793’, Late Imperial China, 10, no. 2 (Dec. 1989), pp. 72–105.

4.Joshua A. Fogel, Politics and sinology: The case of Naito Konan (1866–1934), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984, p. 135.

5.See Joseph Fletcher, ‘The heyday of the Ch’ing order in Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet’ in Dennis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds), The Cambridge history of China, Cambridge University Press, 1978, vol. 10, part 1, pp. 375–85.

6.Paul A. Cohen, Discovering history in China: American historical writing on the recent Chinese past, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, p. 125.

7.Pamela K. Crossley, ‘The Qianlong retrospect on the Chinese-martial (hanjun) banners’, Late Imperial China, 10, no. 1 (June 1989), pp. 63–107; see also her ‘Thinking about ethnicity in early modern China’, Late Imperial China, 11, no. 1 (June 1990), p. 20, Orphan warriors: Three Manchu generations and the end of the Qing world, Princeton University Press, 1990, and Translucent mirror: History and identity in Qing imperial ideology, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

8.Mark C. Elliott, ‘Bannerman and townsman: Ethnic tension in nineteenth century Jiangnan’, Late Imperial China, 11, no. 1 (June 1990), pp. 36–74; see also his The Manchu way: The Eight Banners and ethnic identity in late imperial China, Stanford University Press, 2001.

9.Yuji Muramatsu, ‘Some themes in Chinese rebel ideologies’ in Arthur F. Wright (ed.), The Confucian persuasion, Stanford University Press, 1960, p. 253; see also V. Y. C. Shih, ‘Some Chinese rebel ideologies’, T’oung Pao, 44 (1956), pp. 150–226, and V. Y. C. Shih, ‘The ideology of the T’ai-p’ing t’ien-kuo’, Sinologica, 3 (1953), pp. 1–15.

10.See Banton, Racial theories, ch. 2.

11.The idea of circularity between different cultural levels was first formulated by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and his world, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

12.Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge, New York: Doubleday, 1966, p. 129.

13.Frederic Wakeman, Strangers at the gate: Social disorder in south China, 1839–1861, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966, p. 79.

14.Hunter, The fan kwae’, p. 63.

15.Hao Yen-p’ing and Wang Erh-min, ‘Changing Chinese views of Western relations, 1840–1895’ in Dennis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds), The Cambridge history of China, Cambridge University Press, 1980, vol. 11, part 2, p. 186.

16.The Wanguo gongbao, in 1882–3 alone, published several articles on humans and devils: ‘Renguibian’ (Distinguishing men from devils), 8 July 1882, pp. 421b-22; ‘Bianzheng rengui lun’ (About properly distinguishing men from devils), 2 Dec. 1882, pp. 146–7; ‘Lun rengui yi bian’ (On the difference between humans and devils), 26 Aug. 1883, and others.

17.Natalie Z. Davis, Society and culture in early modern France, Stanford University Press, 1975, p. 181.

18.For a discussion of this religious demonology and references to the relevant literature, see T. H. Barrett, ‘History writing and spirit writing in seventeenth-century China’, Modern Asian Studies, 23, no. 3 (1989), pp. 606–7.

19.Xu Shidong, Toutouji (Notes on stealing a head) in A Ying, comp., Yapian zhanzheng wenxue ji (Collection of literary writings on the Opium War), Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1957, p. 836.

20.Jin He, ‘Shuo gui’ (About ghosts) in A Ying, Yapian zhanzheng, p. 44.

21.Quoted in A Ying, Yapian zhanzheng, p. 967.

22.Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese eyes, London: Allen and Unwin, 1958, pp. 163–4.

23.Author unknown, ‘Waiguo yangren tan shi sheng’ (The foreigner sighs ten times) in A Ying, Yapian zhanzheng, p. 253; the original text has been lost, and some parts of the poem remain obscure.

24.Wang Zhongyang, ‘Gengzi liuyue wenzhou shanjing’ (Alarm at hearing the foreign ships beyond the mountains in the sixth month of 1840) in A Ying, Yapian zhanzheng, p. 191.

25.Zhu Kuizhi, Miao jixiangshi shichao (Collected poems from the wonderfully propitious room) in A Ying, Yapian zhanzheng, p. 171.

26.Lu Song, ‘Jiangzhou shugan’ (Relating impressions from Jiangzhou) in A Ying, Yapian zhanzheng, p. 143.

27.Wang Wentai and Huang Pengnian, Hongmaofan Yingjili kaolüe (A short study of the English red-haired barbarians) in A Ying, Yapian zhanzheng, p. 757.

28.Hao and Wang, ‘Changing Chinese views’, p. 153.

29.Qi Sihe et al. (eds), Yapian zhanzheng (The Opium War), Shanghai: Shenzhou guoguangshe, 1954, vol. 4, p. 466.

30.For instance the prominent Manchu bannerman, Gangyi; see Tang Zhijun, Wuxu bianfa renwu zhuangao (Draft biographies of leading figures of the reform movement), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982, p. 530.

31.Esther Ying Cheo, Black Country girl in red China, London: Hutchinson, 1980, p. 32.

32.Hao and Wang, ‘Changing Chinese views’, p. 154.

33.See Manfred Porkert, Die chinesische Medizin, Düsseldorf: ECON Verlag, 1982, p. 41.

34.The last recorded dissection dated from the Song dynasty. It described the vivisection of fifty-six political prisoners (Sugimoto Masayoshi and D. L. Swain, Science and culture in traditional Japan, A.D. 600–1854, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978, p. 379). Basic elements of anatomy introduced by the missionaries in the seventeenth century remained virtually unnoticed. Adam Schall (1591–1666), a German Jesuit, had presented a treatise on anatomy to an inquiring scholar from Shandong named Bi Gongchen. It was translated by Jean Terrenz as Renshenshuo (On the human body) and published at the instigation of Bi in 1635, entitled Taixi renshen shuogai (Elements of the Westerner’s body) (see A.W. Hummel, ‘Pi Kung-ch’en’ in Eminent Chinese, pp. 621–2). A second source was provided by the Jesuit Dominique Parennin (1665–1741). The emperor Kang Xi (1662–1722), after having been relieved of a malignant fever by French Jesuits in 1692, showed a genuine interest in European medicine. Responding to an imperial edict, Parennin compiled a text on anatomy in the Manchu language, complete with ninety drawings of human organs (see F.R. Lee and J.B. Saunders, The Manchu anatomy and its historical origin, Taipei: Li Ming Cultural Enterprise Co., 1981).

35.K. Chimin Wong and Wu Lien-teh, History of Chinese medicine, Tianjin: The Tientsin Press, 1932, p. 223. The Japanese had reached the same conclusion half a century earlier. Some physicians discovered by the mid-eighteenth century that traditional Chinese medical texts differed from what they had actually seen. They concluded that there had to be some physiological differences between Chinese and Japanese. Dr Sugita Gempaku (1733–1817) witnessed a post-mortem dissection of an old woman in 1771, and found out that his observations agreed with a Dutch textbook of anatomy, which he subsequently undertook to translate; see Donald Keene, The Japanese discovery of Europe, 1720–1830, rev. edn, Stanford University Press, 1969, pp. 21–2.

36.Yen Chung-nien, ‘A Chinese anatomist of the nineteenth century’, Eastern Horizon, 15, no. 5 (1976), p. 50.

37.Keith McMahon, ‘A case for Confucian sexuality: The eighteenth-century novel, Yesou puyan’, Late Imperial China, 9, no. 2 (Dec. 1988), p. 38, n. 22.

38.Li Ao, Dubai xiade chuantong (Tradition descended as a monologue), Taipei: Wenxing shudian, 1988, p. 4.

39.Jerome Ch’en, China and the West: Society and culture, 1815–1931, London: Hutchinson, 1979, plate between pp. 224–5.

40.Paul A. Cohen, ‘Christian missions and their impact to 1900’ in Dennis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds), The Cambridge history of China, Cambridge University Press, 1978, vol. 10, part 1, p. 569.

41.Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The missionary movement and the growth of Chinese antiforeignism, 1860–1870, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 91.

42.Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian impact: A conflict of cultures, Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 250, n. 12.

43.Waley, The Opium War, pp. 68–9.

44.Zhigang, Chushi Taixiji (Notes on the first mission to the West), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 374.

45.Xu Jiyu, Yinghuan zhilüe (A brief survey of the maritime circuit), Osaka: Kanbun edn, 1861, juan 4, p. 7b.

46.Zhang Deyi, Suishi Faguo ji (Notes on following the mission to France), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 450.

47.One foreigner travelling in the interior of China during the 1870s reported how his abundantly bearded but exceedingly short companion was consistently taken to be his wife. He overheard one observer explain to bystanders that ‘in their country the women have beards exactly the same as the men’; Chester Holcombe, The real Chinaman, New York: Dodd and Mead, 1895, p. 173. Misconceptions were of course rife on both sides: Zhang Deyi complained that in Russia many people mistook him for a woman because of his queue (pigtail) and his gown; Zhang Deyi, Hanghai shuqi (Travels abroad), Beijing: Yuelu shushe 1985, p. 553. Chinese diplomats used to ride ladies bicycles because of their long gowns, thereby reinforcing their female appearance to Westerners; see W. W. Yen, East-West kaleidoscope 1877–1946: An autobiography, New York: St John’s University, 1974, p. 21.

48.Zhang Deyi, Suishi Faguo ji, p. 395; see also p. 424.

49.See A Ying, Zhongguo lianhuan tuhua shihua (History of the picture-story book), Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1984.

50.Yin Guangren and Zhang Rulin, Aomen jilüe (Notes on Macao), 1751 edn, juan 2, ten plates.

51.See for instance the Dianshizhai huabao, a pictorial published by the highly popular Shenbao in Shanghai from 1884 to 1898.

52.John A. Turner, Kwang Tung, or five years in south China, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988 (1st edn 1894), p. 136.

53.Cohen, China and Christianity, p. 50.

54.G. G. Barnes, Enter China! A study in race contacts, London: Edinburgh House Press, 1928, p. 104.

55.E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at home, London: Fisher Unwin, 1907, p. 325.

56.These examples are taken from the new edition of the Guangdong provincial gazetteer edited under Ruan Yuan in 1819–22; see John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig, East Asia: The modern transformation, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965, pp. 126–7.

57.Xu, Yinghuan zhilüe, juan 4, p. 7b.

58.Fred W. Drake, China charts the world: Hsu Chi-yü and his geography of 1848, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975, p. 66.

59.Jane K. Leonard, Wei Yuan and China’s rediscovery of the maritime world, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984, p. 109.

60.Xu, Yinghuan zhilüe, juan 8, pp. la, 5b, 17a.

61.Cui, Chushi, pp. 154, 179, 225, 294.

62.Tan Sitong, Tan Sitong quanji (Collected writings of Tan Sitong), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981, vol. 1, pp. 231–6.

63.John S. Schmotzer, ‘The graphic portrayal of “all under heaven” (t’ien-hsia): A short study of Chinese world views through pictorial representations’, unpubl. doctoral thesis, Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 1973.

64.Evelyn S. Rawski, Education and popular literacy in Ch’ing China, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979, pp. 114–15.

65.Sakai Tadai, ‘Mindai no nichiyō ruishu to shomin kyōiku’ (Ming popular encyclopedias and popular education) in Hayashi Tomoharu, Kinsei Chūgoku kyōiku shi kenkyū (History of modern Chinese education), Tokyo: Kokudosha, 1958, p. 119.

66.W. C. Milne, Life in China, London: Routledge, 1857, pp. 113–14.

67.Holcombe, The real Chinaman, pp. 172–3.

68.E. H. Parker, Chinese account of the Opium War, Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1972, pp. 35 and 138; Wang Zhi, Haike ritan (Notebooks of a journey to England), Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1969, p. 261.

69.Zhang Deyi, Ou Mei huanyouji (Notes on travelling around Europe and America), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, pp. 649–50.

70.Zhang Deyi, Suishi Ying E ji (Notes on following the mission to England and Russia), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 570.

71.Binchun, Chengcha biji (Travels abroad), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 101.

72.Ch’en, China and the West, p. 217.

73.Zhang, Ou Mei huanyouji, pp. 654–5.

74.Qi Zhaoxi, You Meizhou riji (Diary on my travels in America), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 225.

75.Li Gui, Huanyou diqiu xinlu (New records on my travels around the world), Beijing: Yuelu shushe, 1985, p. 333.

76.Binchun, Chengcha biji, p. 125.

77.Zhigang, Chushi, p. 325.

78.Xue Fucheng, Chushi siguo riji (Diary in four countries), Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1981, pp. 192–3.

79.Taiping yulan (Song encyclopaedia), quoting the Later Han work ‘Fengsutong’, Taipei: Xinxing shuju, 1959, p. 1693 (360: 5a). See also Zhou Jianren, ‘Renzhong qiyuan shuo’ (Legends about the origins of human races), Dongfang zazhi, 16, no. 11 (June 1919), pp. 93–100.

80.Nieuhof, Het gezantschap, p. 56.

81.The following is based on Huard, ‘Depuis quand avons-nous la notion d’une race jaune?’, pp. 40–1; besides the pioneering article of Huard, one should also read, on the origins of the notion of a ‘yellow race’ in Europe, Walter Demel, ‘Wie die Chinesen gelb wurden. Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der Rassentheorie’, Historische Zeitschrift, 255 (1992), pp. 625–66, and Michael Keevak, Becoming yellow: A short history of racial thinking, Princeton University Press, 2011.

82.Robert H. Graves, Forty years in China, or China in transition, Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1972 (1st edn 1895), pp. 37–8.

83.‘Ren fen wulei shuo’ (The theory of dividing people into five races), Gezhi huibian, 7, no. 2 (1892). For later examples, see the Wanguo gongbao, 185 (June 1904).

84.Wolfgang Eberhard, A dictionary of Chinese symbols: Hidden symbols in Chinese life and thought, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, p. 322.

85.An official history for foreigners still mentions that by the end of the ‘primitive clan society’, ‘the Huanghe (Yellow River) valley was inhabitated by many tribes, among which the one headed by Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) was very powerful with its culture highly developed’; see Chinese history, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1987, p. 2.

86.Magdalen D. Vernon, The psychology of perception, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971, p. 70.

3. RACE AS LINEAGE (1895–1903)

1.On the comprador group, see Hao Yen-p’ing, The comprador in nineteenth century China: Bridge between East and West, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.

2.Lloyd E. Eastman, ‘Political reformism in China before the Sino-Japanese War’, Journal of Asian Studies, 21, no. 4 (Aug. 1968), pp. 695–710.

3.I have drawn freely on Marianne Bastid’s ‘Currents of social change’ in Dennis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds), The Cambridge history of China, Cambridge University Press, 1980, vol. 11, part 2, pp. 535–602.

4.See Samuel C. Chu, ‘China’s attitudes toward Japan at the time of the Sino-Japanese War’ in Akira Iriye, The Chinese and the Japanese: Essays in political and cultural interactions, Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 74–95.

5.Roswell S. Britton, The Chinese periodical press, 1800–1912, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1933, p. 93; see also Natascha Vittinghoff, ‘Unity vs uniformity: Liang Qichao and the invention of a “new journalism” for China’, Late Imperial China, 23, no. 1 (June 2002), pp. 97–143.

6.See Hao Chang, Chinese intellectuals in crisis: Search for order and meaning (1890–1911), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

7.Quoted in Leo O. Lee and Andrew J. Nathan, ‘The beginnings of mass culture: Journalism and fiction in the late Ch’ing and beyond’ in David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan and Evelyn S. Rawski (eds), Popular culture in late imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, p. 368.

8.The expression ‘lowest’ reflects widespread belief in environmental determinism, and thus had a geographical as well as an evolutionary connotation. The 1959 Beijing edition explains how this was part of the ‘persistent vilification of the black race by the capitalist and imperialist countries’. Yan Fu, Yan Fu shiwen xuan (Selected poems and writings of Yan Fu), Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1959, p. 39, n. 78.

9.Ibid., p. 20.

10.Liang Qichao, ‘Xin shixue’ (New historiography) in Yinbingshi wenji (Collected writings of Liang Qichao), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1941 (hereafter YBSWJ), 4, 9: 11; see also another important article entitled ‘Lun minzu jingzheng zhi dashi’ (About the general trend of racial struggles) in YBSWJ, 4, 10: 10–35.

11.On shangzhan, see Wang Ermin, ‘Shangzhan guannian yu zhongshang sixiang’ (The idea of commercial warfare and the importance attached to commerce), Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo jikan, 5 (June 1966), pp. 1–91.

12.The following is mainly based on Hu Hsien Chin, The common descent group in China and its functions, New York: Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, 1948.

13.See Harry J. Lamley, ‘Hsieh-tou: The pathology of violence in south-eastern China’, Ch’ingshih Wen-t’i, 3, no. 7 (Nov. 1977), pp. 1–39.

14.The belief in the polygenist origins of humanity was shared by racial theorists in Japan, a country which had much in common with China. The first Japanese mission abroad stopped in Angola in 1860 on its way to the United States. The natives were thought to resemble the Buddhist images and it was concluded that ‘the natives of India and Africa both belong to one and the same tribe, of whom that Buddha must have been a chieftain’. The diarist of the mission regretted that his country had worshipped such ‘primitive people’ for so long; see Marius B. Jansen, Japan and its world: Two centuries of change, Princeton University Press, 1980, p. 47. For a study of the importance of skin colour in Japan, see Hiroshi Wagatsuma, ‘The social perception of skin color in Japan’, Daedalus, Spring 1967, pp. 407–43, the classic John W. Dower, War without mercy: Race and power in the Pacific War, New York: Pantheon, 1986, as well as Michael Weiner, Race and migration in imperial Japan, London: Routledge, 2004 and Frank Dikötter, (ed.), The construction of racial identities in China and Japan: Historical and contemporary perspectives, London: Hurst; Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.

15.Cohen, China and Christianity, p. 25.

16.Liang, ‘Xin shixue’ in YBSWJ, 4, 9: 12.

17.For a more detailed discussion of Lacouperie’s thesis, see Chapter 4, below.

18.Jiang Zhiyou, Zhongguo renzhong kao (Inquiry into the Chinese race), Shanghai: Huatong shuju, 1929 (1st edn 1910).

19.See Hu Bingxiong, ‘Lun Zhongguo zhongzu’ (About the Chinese race), Dongfang zazhi, 4, no. 8 (Aug. 1908), pp. 361–85.

20.Quoted in Hardy, John Chinaman, pp. 321–2.

25.Yan, Yan Fu shiwen xuan, p. 22.

26.Liang Qichao, ‘Shengjixue xueshuo yange xiaoshi’ (Short history of the evolution of the science of livelihood) in YBSWJ, 5, 12: 4.

27.Liang Qichao, ‘Xin dalu youji’ (Travel notes on America) in Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi zhuanji (Writings of Liang Qichao), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1941 (hereafter YBSZJ), 5, 22: 99.

28.Liang Qichao, ‘Xiaweiyi youji’ (Travel notes on Hawaii) in YBSZJ, 5, 22: 196.

25.Liang Qichao, ‘Lun Hunan ying ban zhi shi’ (About the affairs Hunan should handle) in YBSWJ, 2, 3: 41.

26.Liang, ‘Xin dalu’ in YBSZJ, 5, 22: 86.

27.Xiangxue xinbao (The Hunan news), 1, no. 1 (1897), reprinted, Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1966, p. 8.

28.Yan, Yan Fu shiwen xuan, pp. 20–2.

29.Greene, The death of Adam, p. 222.

30.Tang Caichang, Juedianmingzhai neiyan (Essays on political and historical matters), Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1968, p. 141.

31.Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Wenxiang gong quanji (The complete papers of Zhang Zhidong), Beijing, 1937, juan 103, p. 16a.

32.Tang, Juedianmingzhai, p. 472.

33.See John Fryer, Gezhi congshu, 1901, ce 1, juan 12, p. 2a. A compendium of Western science published in Hong Kong in 1897 also briefly mentioned the five races; see Xixue gezhi daquan (Compendium of Western science), Hong Kong: Xianggang shuju, 1897, ce 1, ‘dili’, p. 6a.

34.Liang, ‘Xin shixue’ in YBSWJ, 4, 9: 12.

35.John B. Henderson, The development and decline of Chinese cosmology, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, p. 8.

36.Wright, Buddhism, p. 37.

37.Tang Caichang, when mentioning the ancient Chinese tribes, often used these symbolic colours; see for example Tang, Juedianmingzhai, p. 525.

38.Ibid., p. 501.

39.See Jing Junjian, ‘Hierarchy in the Qing dynasty’, Social Sciences in China, 1 (1982), p. 166; see also Ch’u T’ung-tsu, Law and society in traditional China, Paris: Mouton, 1965, pp. 128–35.

40.See Anders Hansson, Chinese outcasts: Discrimination and emancipation in late imperial China, Leiden: Brill, 1996.

41.James H. Cole, ‘Social discrimination in traditional China: The To-min of Shaohsing’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 25, part 1 (1982), p. 103.

42.See Derk Bodde, ‘Types of Chinese categorical thinking’ in Essays on Chinese civilization, Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 141–60.

43.Tang, Juedianmingzhai, p. 468.

48.Ibid., p. 563. The macaque, mihou, had first been assimilated to the ‘blue-eyed, red-bearded barbarians’ during the Han; see above, Chapter 1.

49.Liang Qichao, ‘Lun Zhongguo zhi jiangqiang’ (About the future power of China) in YBSWJ, 2, 2: 13.

50.Liang Qichao, ‘Lun Zhongguo renzhong zhi jianglai’ (About the future of the Chinese race) in YBSWJ, 2, 3: 52; see also 2, 3: 41; 3, 4: 8; 5, 22: 87.

51.Liang, ‘Xin dalu’ in YBSZJ, 5, 22: 87.

52.Young Lung-chang, ‘Regional stereotypes in China’, Chinese Studies in History, 21, no. 45 (Summer 1988), pp. 32–57.

49.Liang, ‘Lun Zhongguo renzhong zhi jianglai’ in YBSWJ, 2, 3: 52.

50.Liang Qichao, ‘Zhongguoshi xulun’ (About Chinese history), YBSWJ, 3, 6: 6; ‘Lun Zhongguo xueshu sixiang bianqian zhi dashi’ (About the general trend of the changes in Chinese scientific thought) in YBSWJ, 3, 7:4 for example.

51.Liang, ‘Lun Zhongguo renzhong zhi jianglai’ in YBSWJ, 2, 3: 52–4.

52.Liang Qichao, ‘Lun Zhongguo guomin zhi pinge’ (About China’s national quality) in YBSWJ, 5, 14: 5; see also 3, 6: 44.

53.Shiwubao (Current affairs), reprinted, Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1967, vol. 1, pp. 361–2; see also p. 311.

54.Liang Qichao, ‘Xinminshuo’ (About renewing the people) in YBSZJ, 3, 4: 7–8; see also ‘Ouzhou dili dashi lun’ (About the general trend of European geography) in YBSWJ, 4, 10: 101–6.

55.Liang, ‘Xin shixue’ in YBSWJ, 4, 9: 19.

56.Liang Qichao, ‘Yuenan zhi wangguo shi’ (The history of Vietnam’s national subjugation) in YBSZJ, 4, 19: 24–6.

57.Liang Qichao, ‘Lun Mei Fei Ying Du zhi zhanshi guanxi yu Zhongguo’ (About the effects of international conflicts on China) in YBSWJ, 4, 11: 2. See also Liang Qichao, ‘Mieguo xinfa lun’ (About a new way of exterminating a country) in YBSWJ, 3, 6: 38.

58.Liang, ‘Lun Zhongguo zhi jiangqiang’ in YBSWJ, 2, 2: 13.

59.Philip Huang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and modern Chinese liberalism, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972, p. 47. For the influence of Japan on Liang, see Huang’s third chapter; for an account of Liang’s translation of Shiba Shirō’s pan-Asian novel Jiaren qiyu (Strange encounters of elegant females), see pp. 49–52.

60.Liang, Qingyibao in YBSWJ, 2, 3: 31.

61.Liang, ‘Lun xue Ribenwen zhi yi’ (About the advantage of learning Japanese) in YBSWJ, 2, 4: 82.

62.Liang Qichao, ‘Qingyibao zhi xingzhi’ (The nature of the Qingyibao) in YBSWJ, 3, 6: 54.

63.Liang Qichao, ‘Yazhou dili dashi lun’ (About the general trend in Asian geography) in YBSWJ, 4, 10: 76.

64.Liang, ‘Lun Zhongguo xueshu’ in YBSWJ, 3, 7: 4.

65.Ibid., 3, 7:4.

66.Yi Nai, ‘Zhongguo yi yi ruo wei qiang shuo’ (China should take its weakness as strength) in Xiangbao leicuan (Classified compilation of articles from the Xiangbao), Feb. 1898-April 1898, Taipei: Datong shuju, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 23–4.

67.Wu Tingfang, America through the spectacles of an Oriental diplomat, New York: Stokes, 1914, p. 185, with stylistic changes.

68.The following is based on Tang Caichang, ‘Tongzhongshuo’ (About racial communication) in Tang Caichang ji (Works of Tang Caichang), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980, pp. 100–4.

69.Kang Youwei, Datongshu (One World), Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1956, p. 122.

70.Ibid., p. 118.

71.Ibid.

72.Ibid., p. 121.

73.Ibid.

74.Ibid., p. 122.

75.Xue Fucheng, Chushi Ying, Fa, Yi, Bi siguo riji (Diary in four countries), Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1966–7, p. 28. This part has been deleted in the 1981 edition; Xue Fucheng, Chushi siguo riji, Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1981, p. 20; see also p. 14.

76.Jing is a traditional term for a fundamental substance maintaining the body; qi is the energy of life.

77.Xue, Siguo riji, p. 29.

78.Liang Qichao, ‘Dili yu wenming zhi guanxi’ (The relation between geography and civilization) in YBSWJ, 4, 10: 106–7.

79.Shu Xincheng, Jindai Zhongguo liuxue shi (A history of Chinese students abroad in recent times), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1933, p. 177.

80.Lou Tseng-Tsiang, Souvenirs et pensées, Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1945, p. 44.

81.Ch’en, China and the West, p. 166.

82.Ding Wenjiang, Liang Rengong xiansheng nianpu changbian chugao (A first draft chronological biography of Liang Qichao), Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1959, p. 15.

83.Tang, Juedianmingzhai, pp. 558–62.

84.Ibid., p. 467.

85.Chinese sources, besides contemporary material, also included the Suishu (622), the Liangshu (629), the Jinshu (645), the Mingshi (1735), Du You’s (732–812) Tongdian, Ma Duanlin’s Wenxian tongkao (1317), Gu Yanwu’s (1613–82) Tianxia junguo libing shu and Wei Yuan’s (1734–1856) Shengwuji (1842).

86.Liang Qichao, ‘Xixue shu mubiao (zhaize)’ (A choice of books to study the West) in Jian Bozan et al. (eds), Wuxu bianfa (The Hundred Days), Shanghai: Shenzhou guoguang she, 1953, vol. 1, pp. 447–62. A discussion of the complete list of books compiled by Liang can be found in Chen Chi-Yun, ‘Liang Ch’i-ch’ao’s missionary education: A case study of missionary influence on the reform’, Papers on China, 16 (1962), pp. 111–14. Chen believes that ‘the missionary influence upon Liang Ch’i-ch’ao seemed to be rather indirect’; ibid p. 78.

87.Robert Mackenzie, The nineteenth century: A history, London: Nelson, 1889, p. 212.

88.Ibid., pp. 213–14.

89.Henry Wheaton, Elements of international law, London: Stevens, 1889, part 1, paragraph 17, line 3, p. 30.

90.See Noriko Kamachi, Reform in China: Huang Tsun-hsien and the Japanese model, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 141.

91.Ibid., p. 55.

92.Huang Zunxian, Renjinglu shicao qianzhu (Collection of annotated poems by Huang Zunxian), Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1981, p. 238.

93.Ibid., p. 239, n. 4.

94.Ibid., p. 362.

95.Kamachi, Huang Tsun-hsien, pp. 15, 141.

96.See however, S. Nagata, Untersuchungen zum Konservatismus im China des späten 19. Jahrhunderts, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1978, pp. 118–200.

97.Charlton M. Lewis, Prologue to the Chinese revolution: The transformation of ideas and institutions in Hunan Province, 1891–1907, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University East Asian Research Center, 1976, pp. 64–5.

98.Ye Dehui (ed.), Yijiao congbian (Documents of the campaign against the 1898 reform movement), Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1970, p. 442.

4. RACE AS NATION (1903–1915)

1.See Liang Qichao, ‘Zhengzhixue dajia Bolunzhili zhi xueshuo’ (The doctrine of the great political scientist Bluntschli) in YBSWJ, 5, 13: 67–89.

2.Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The history of an idea, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p. 267.

3.On this, see James A. Rogers, ‘Darwinism and social Darwinism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 33, no. 2 (1972), pp. 265–80.

4.See Diane B. Paul, ‘The selection of the “survival of the fittest”’, Journal of the History of Biology, 21, no. 3 (Fall 1988), pp. 411–24.

5.Charles R. Darwin, On the origin of species (reprint of the 1st edn), with a foreword by C. D. Darlington, London: Watts, 1950, p. 53.

6.Ibid., p. 65.

7.See Linda L. Clark, Social Darwinism in France, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984.

8.Hisham B. Sharabi, Arab intellectuals and the West: The formative years, 1875–1914, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970, p. 69.

9.Albert Hourani, Arabic thought in the liberal age, 1798–1939, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 248–50.

10.Adel A. Ziadat, Western science in the Arab world: The impact of Darwinism, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986, pp. 57–60.

11.Ma Junwu, Wuzhong yuanshi (Charles R. Darwin, On the origin of species), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1919. See also R. B. Freeman, ‘Darwin in Chinese’, Archives of Natural History, 13, no. 1 (1986), pp. 19–24, and P. J. P. Whitehead, ‘Darwin in Chinese: Some additions’, Archives of Natural History, 15, no. 1 (1988), pp. 61–2.

12.Mary B. Rankin, Early Chinese revolutionaries: Radical intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902–1911, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 30.

13.Changyanbao, nos 1–8 (July–Sept. 1898), photolithograph, Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1967.

14.See Tang Zhijun, ‘Zhang Taiyan de shehuixue’ (Zhang Binglin’s study of sociology) in Zhang Nianchi (ed.), Zhang Taiyan shengping yu xueshu (The life and work of Zhang Binglin), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1988, pp. 532–42. It is worth noting that Darwin’s writings were available in Japanese as early as 1881. Meiji Japan’s interpretation of Darwinism was heavily nationalist and also used Darwin as a weapon against Christianity; see Eikoh Shimao, ‘Darwinism in Japan’, Annals of Science, 38 (1981), pp. 93–102.

15.Yan Fu, Qunxue siyan (Herbert Spencer, The study of sociology), Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1981 (1st edn 1902).

16.Ma Junwu, Shehuixue yinlun (A guide to sociology), Shanghai: Xijiang ouhuashe, 1903.

17.Wu Jianchang, Shehuixue tigang (An outline of sociology), Shanghai, 1903.

18.Herbert Spencer, The study of sociology, London: Williams and Norgate, 1907, p. 53.

19.See Walter M. Simon, ‘Herbert Spencer and the social organism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 21, no. 2 (April–June 1960), p. 299.

20.Stanislaw Andreski, Herbert Spencer: Structure, function and evolution, London: Nelson, 1971, p. 28.

21.On Liang Qichao’s concept of qun, see Chang Hao, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and intellectual transition in China, 1890–1907, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 95 ff.

22.Kamachi, Huang Tsun-hsien, p. 166.

23.Yan, Yan Fu shiwen xuan, p. 15.

24.Ibid., p. 14.

25.Ibid., p. 17.

26.Tang Zhijun (ed.), Zhang Taiyan zhenglun xuanji (Selected political writings of Zhang Binglin), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977, p. 139.

27.See John D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: The evolution of a sociologist, London: Heinemann, 1971, pp. 151–2.

28.T. H. Huxley and Julian Huxley, Evolution and ethics, London: Pilot Press, 1947, p. 54.

29.See James G. Paradis, T. H. Huxley: Man’s place in nature, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978, pp. 142 ff.

30.Yan Fu, Tianyanlun (T. H. Huxley and Julian Huxley, Evolution and ethics), Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1981, p. 33.

31.Huxley, Evolution, p. 47.

32.On this, see also Hao Xiang, ‘Lun Zhongguo jindai zichan jieji zhexue dui jinhualun xueshuo de gaizao’ (The transformation of the theory of evolution by bourgeois philosophy in modern China), Zhongguo zhexue shi yanjiu, 1 (1988), pp. 79–84.

33.Compare baozhong jinhua at p. 5 with baoqun jinhua at p. 12; see baozhong combined with hequn at p. 16, etc., in Yan, Tianyanlun.

34.Ibid., pp. 30, 14, and 20.

35.‘Renzu’ (Ancestors of mankind), Jiangsu, 3 (June 1903), pp. 141–3.

36.On the non-Darwinian theories of evolution in Europe, see Peter J. Bowler, The non-Darwinian revolution: Reinterpreting a historical myth, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

37.Collective neurosis about degeneration was of course widespread in Europe too; see Daniel Pick, Faces of degeneration: A European disorder, c. 1848-c. 1918, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

38.This section probes the discourse of race among radical students by focusing mainly on three periodicals, Tides of Zhejiang (Zhejiangchao), Jiangsu (Jiangsu) and Hubei Student (Hubei xueshengjie). These are generally considered to have been the most influential of the scores of periodicals published by students in Japan from 1902–11. Other journals, of course, also included numerous articles promoting racial theories. The Jingshi wenchao (Literary tides of statecraft) had a special section on race in each issue (‘Renzhongbu’) from April 1903 onwards. The Juemin charted the history of ‘human races’ Zhong Guang, ‘Renzhongshi’ (History of human races), Juemin (Awake the people), 8 (July 1904); a periodical founded by Hunanese students listed the various origins of humanity and investigated racial differences: ‘Wanguo zhongzu yuanshi biao’ (Table on the origins of the various nations’ races), ‘Geguo renzhong leikao’ (Study of the types of human races), Hunan tongsu yanshuohao (Hunan journal of popular speeches), 12 (Sept. 1903); one of the main vernacular journals included articles on the Yellow Emperor and on racial struggle since ancient times: ‘Renzhong’ (Human races), ‘Huangdi zhuan’ (Biography of the Yellow Emperor), ‘Pangu yilai zhongzu jingzheng de dashi’ (General trend of racial struggles since Pangu), Zhongguo baihuabao (The China vernacular), no. 1 (Dec. 1903) et seq.; many other examples could be given.

39.For an introduction to the influence of Japan on Chinese radicals, see Marius B. Jansen, ‘Japan and the Chinese Revolution of 1911’ in Dennis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds), The Cambridge history of China, Cambridge University Press, 1980, vol. 11, part 2, pp. 339–74.

40.See Robert A. Scalapino and George T. Yu, Modem China and its revolutionary process: Recurrent challenges to the traditional order, 1850–1920, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, p. 172.

41.The term minzu is usually rendered as ‘nation’, or ‘people’, but there is an area of overlap with ‘tribe’ and ‘race’. Lexicographic problems were first officially discussed in the 1950s. In 1954, Fan Wenlan published a study arguing that the Han’s minzu had taken shape as early as the Qin and Han periods. Fan’s thesis was the starting point for a series of heated debates on the exact definition of minzu. These culminated in a conference in 1962 that examined the use of the term in translations of Marx, Engels and Stalin. It appeared that the German terms Nation, Volk and Völkerschaft as well as the Russian terms natsia, narod and narodnost’ had all been translated as minzu (Zhang Lu, ‘Guanyu “minzu” yici de shiyong he fanyi qingkuang’ (About the situation of the use and translation of the term minzu), Minzu tuanjie, 7 (July 1962), pp. 34–9). It was implicitly recognised that the term embraced a biological as well as a political meaning. An ill-advised translator, however, had rendered Stalin’s narodnost’ by buzu, or ‘tribe’. Natsia, or minzu, was used exclusively to describe a community that had already reached a certain level of ‘capitalist development’ and of ‘political awareness’. The conferees finally agreed upon consistently employing the term minzu in all cases, thereby ascribing a political status to all the minorities, whatever their stage of development (on this, see George Moseley, ‘China’s fresh approach to the national minority question’, The China Quarterly, 24 (Dec. 1965), pp. 15–27; see also Thomas Heberer, ‘Probleme der Nationalitatentheorie und des Natiönsbegriffs in China’, Internationales Asienforum, 16, nos 1–2 (May 1985), pp. 109–24). Another result of the conferees’ terminological inquiry was to reveal a state of confusion between the terms zhongzu (race) and minzu (nation). Lin Yaohua, in a lengthy article analysing the concept of minzu, quoted several contemporary historians who used both terms indiscriminately, and urged social scientists to be more attentive to terminology (Lin Yaohua, ‘Guanyu “minzu” yici de shiyong he yiming de wenti’ (About the problems of the synonyms and the use of the term minzu), Lishi yanjiu, 2 (Feb. 1963), p. 175). His remonstrations had little effect, as historians in the 1970s still used both terms interchangeably (Joshua A. Fogel, ‘Race and class in Chinese historiography’, Modern China, 3 (July 1977), p. 351). Such confusion had existed since the adoption of the concept minzu from the Japanese (minzoku) before 1900. Some researchers have traced the first appearance of the term minzu back to Liang Qichao in 1898 (see Jin Tianming and Wang Qingren, ‘“Minzu” yici lai woguo chuxian ji qi shiyong wenti’ (The appearance of the term minzu in our country and the problems of its use), Shehui kexue jikan, 4 (1981), quoted in Wang Lei, ‘The definition of “nation” and the formation of the Han nationality’, Social Sciences in China, 4, no. 2 (June 1983), p. 167). More recent research goes back to a 1895 issue of the reformist journal Qiangxuebao (Han Jinchun and Li Yifu, ‘Hanwen “minzu” yici de chuxian ji qi zaoqi shiyong qingkuang’ (The first appearance of the term minzu in Chinese and the circumstances of its early use), Minzu yanjiu, 2 (1984), pp. 36–43). This has been challenged by Peng Yingming, who believes that the reformer Wang Tao first introduced the term from the English in the early 1870s (Peng Yingming, ‘Guanyu woguo minzu gainian lishi de chubu kaocha’ (Preliminary investigation with respect to the history of the concept of nation in our country), Minzu yanjiu, 2 (1985), pp. 5–7).

42.Yuanyun, ‘Sike zhenglun’ (Four political views), Zhejiangchao, 7 (Sept. 1903), p. 43.

43.Zhang Nan and Wang Renzhi, Xinhai geming qian shinianjian shilun xuanji (Selected material on debates of the ten years preceding the 1911 Revolution), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1963, vol. 1, p. 110.

44.Yunnan, 1 (Aug. 1906), pp. 7–12.

45.Yuyi, ‘Minzuzhuyi lun’ (On nationalism), Zhejiangchao, 1 (Feb. 1903), p. 3.

46.‘Yindu miewang zhi yuanyin’ (The reasons for the extinction of India), Zhejiangchao, 1 (Feb. 1903), pp. 4–6.

47.Feisheng, ‘Eren zhi xingzhi’ (The Russians’ nature), Zhejiangchao, 1 (Feb. 1903), pp. 4–5, 2 (March 1903), pp. 77–9.

48.Taosheng, ‘Haishang de Meiren’ (The Americans on the sea), Zhejiangchao, 6 (Aug. 1903), p. 2.

49.See, for instance, Shulou, ‘Jiaoyuhui wei mintuan zhi jichu’ (Education associations as a foundation for civil corps), Jiangsu, 1 (April 1903), pp. 13–19.

50.Lincang, ‘Tiexuezhuyi zhi jiaoyu’ (Iron-blooded education), Zhejiangchao, 10 (Dec. 1903), pp. 64–6.

51.Ye Xuesheng, ‘Zhongguo kaifang lun’ (About the opening of China), Zhejiangchao, 6 (Aug. 1903), pp. 1–12.

52.Bolin, ‘Tiyu’ (Physical education), Yunnan, 1 (Aug. 1906), p. 40; on this theme, see also Andrew Morris, ‘“To make the four hundred million move”: The late Qing dynasty origins of modern Chinese sport and physical culture’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42, No. 4 (Oct. 2000), pp. 876–906.

53.Review of Tiyuxue (Physical education), Zhejiangchao, 4 (May 1903), p. 18a.

54.‘Xing yixue tong’ (On promoting medicine), Hubei xueshengjie, 2 (Feb. 1903), pp. 61–72.

55.Jiangsu, 4 (July 1903), p. 144.

56.On anti-Manchuism before the 1911 revolution, see Li Liangyu, ‘Xinhai geming shiqi de paiman sixiang’ (Anti-Manchuism during the 1911 Revolution), Nanjing daxue xuebao, 2 (1989), pp. 67–77.

57.Yalu, ‘Zheng Chenggong zhuan’ (A biography of Zheng Chenggong), Jiangsu, 4 (July 1903), pp. 70–1.

58.‘Huanghuo yuce’ (Forecast of the yellow peril), Jiangsu, 1 (April 1903), pp. 103–7, based on a Japanese article.

59.Zhang Zhaotong, review of Weilai shijie lun (About the future world), Jiangsu, 3 (June 1903), p. 20a.

60.Zhongkan, ‘Zizhipian’ (On self-government), Zhejiangchao, 6 (Aug. 1903), p. 2.

61.Hubei xueshengjie, 2 (Feb. 1903), pp. 135–6.

62.‘Tong ding tong’ (Sorrow calms the sorrow), Jiangsu, 3 (June 1903), p. 124. Chanchanbotsu is an onomatopoeia associated with the slight ringing sound produced by glasses or coins striking together: chink. I am indebted to C. A. Bois for this information.

63.Zhejiangchao, 2 (March 1903), p. 134.

64.‘Wuhu youtai’ (Alas the Jew), Zhejiangchao, 7 (Sept. 1903), p. 165; the reformers also lamented the Jews; see for instance ‘Youtairen zhi canzhuang’ (The miserable condition of the Jew), Xinmin congbao, 20 (1903).

65.Ch’en, China and the West, p. 160.

66.Sidney Shapiro, Jews in old China: Studies by Chinese scholars, New York: Hippocrene Books, 1984, p. 160. Compare this recent statement with the writings of Wu, presented in the next chapter. On the images of the ‘Jew’ in China, see Zhou Xun, Chinese perceptions of the ‘Jew’ and Judaism: A history of the Youtai, London: Curzon, 2001.

67.Michael Gasster, ‘The Republican revolutionary movement’ in Dennis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (eds), The Cambridge history of China, Cambridge University Press, 1980, vol. 11, part 2, p. 497.

68.‘Qiguai renzhong’ (A strange race of men), Zhejiangchao, 9 (Nov. 1903), p. 113.

69.‘Shijie geguo bingshi shenti zhi changduan’ (Comparative height of soldiers from different countries of the world), Youxue yibian, 3 (Jan. 1903), pp. 276–7.

70.‘Heiren zhi baifen’ (The black’s white powder), Zhejiangchao, 7 (Sept. 1903), p. 172.

71.‘Heinu xuexiao’ (Schools for the black slaves), Jiangsu, 7 (Oct. 1903), p. 168.

72.For instance in Jiangsu, 3 (1903), Ershi shiji zhi Zhina, 1 (June 1905), Minbao, 1 (Nov. 1905), and others. The opening issue of the Minbao proclaimed that the Yellow Emperor was ‘the first great nationalist of the world’.

73.Liu Shipei, ‘Huangdi jinian shuo’ (About a calendar based on the Yellow Emperor), Huangdi hun (The soul of the Yellow Emperor), 1904, p. 1; reprinted, Taipei: Zhonghua minguo shiliao congbian, 1968.

74.Gu Jiegang, ‘Huangdi’ (Yellow Emperor) in Shilin zashi (Miscellaneous historical studies), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963, pp. 176–84.

75.Zhang Qiyun, ‘Huangdi zisun’ (Sons of the Yellow Emperor, speech given during the National Festival of Grave Sweeping, 5 April 1941) in Minzu sixiang (Nationalist thought), Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1951, p. 1. Another scholarly contribution to the myth of the Yellow Emperor is Qian Mu, Huangdi (The Yellow Emperor), Taipei: Dongda tushu youxian gongsi, 1944 (reprinted, 1987). The religion of the Yellow Emperor was formally established in Taiwan in March 1957 with government approval; see Christian Joachim, ‘Flowers, fruit, and incense only: Elite versus popular in Taiwan’s religion of the Yellow Emperor’, Modern China, 16, no. 1 (Jan. 1990), p. 7.

76.On Chen Tianhua, see Ernst P. Young, ‘Ch’en T’ien-hua (1875–1905): A Chinese nationalist’, Papers on China, 13 (1959), pp. 113–62.

77.Chen Tianhua, Chen Tianhua ji (Collected works of Chen Tianhua), Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 82.

78.Ibid., p. 81.

79.Tsou Jung, The revolutionary army: A Chinese nationalist tract of 1903, intro. and transl. by John Lust, Paris: Mouton, 1968, p. 72.

80.Ibid., p. 106.

81.Ibid., p. 109.

82.Ibid., p. 80.

83.Ibid., pp. 106–7.

84.Ibid., p. 106.

85.Liu Yazi, in Zhang and Wang, Xinhai geming, vol. 2, p. 813.

86.Jiang Guanyun, ‘Zhongguo renzhong kao’ (Inquiry into the Chinese race), Xinmin congbao, 38–9 (Oct. 1903) to 60 (Jan. 1905).

87.The following is based on Albert Etienne Jean-Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie, Western origins of the early Chinese civilisation from 2300 B.C. to 200 A.D., London: Asher, 1894.

88.Guocui xuebao, 6 (1904), p. 3b.

89.See Laurence A. Schneider, ‘National essence and the new intelligentsia’ in Furth (ed.), The limits of change, p. 66.

90.One of the most thoughtful introductions to Zhang Binglin is Wang Fansen, Zhang Taiyan de sixiang (1868–1919) ji qi dui ruxue chuantong de chongji (Zhang Binglin’s thought from 1868 to 1919 and his attack on the Confucian tradition), Taipei: Shibao wenhua chuban shiye youxian gongsi, 1985. Shimada Kenji’s Pioneer of the Chinese revolution: Zhang Binglin and Confucianism, Stanford University Press, 1990, is invaluable. See also Chang Hao, Chinese intellectuals in crisis: Search for order and meaning, 1890–1911, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, and Charlotte Furth, ‘The sage as rebel: The inner world of Chang Ping-lin’ in Furth (ed.), The limits of change, pp. 113–50.

91.See Kondō Kuniyasu, ‘Shō Heiren ni okeru kakumei shisō no keisei’ (On the formation of Zhang Binglin’s revolutionary thought), Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo kiyō, no. 28 (March 1962), pp. 207–24. From 1898 onwards, this concern was gradually superseded by violent anti-Manchuism. As emphasised in the introduction, this study is not concerned with representations of minority people in China. For an introduction to Zhang Binglin’s anti-Manchu thought, see Onogawa Hidemi’s ‘Zhang Binglin de paiman sixiang’ (Zhang Binglin’s anti-Manchu thought), Dalu zazhi, 44, no. 3 (March 1972), pp. 39–60. For a study that refutes the importance of Zhang’s racial theories and anti-Manchu thought, see Wong Young-tsu, Search for modern nationalism: Zhang Binglin and revolutionary China, 1869–1936, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989. See also Kauko Laitinen, Chinese nationalism in the late Qing dynasty: Zhang Binglin as an anti-Manchu propagandist, London: Curzon Press, 1990.

92.Zhang Binglin, Qiushu (Book of raillery), Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1958, pp. 41–56.

93.Ibid., p. 38.

94.See for instance Zhang Binglin, ‘Menggu shengshuai lun’ (About the rise and fall of the Mongols), Changyanbao, 9 (Sept. 1898), p. la.

95.On Zhang’s concept of evolution, see also Wang Yu, ‘Zhang Taiyan jinhuaguan pingxi’ (An appraisal of Zhang Binglin’s view of evolution) in Zhang, Zhang Taiyan, pp. 232–99.

96.Zhang Binglin, ‘Lun xuehui you yi yu huangren ji yi baohu’ (About the benefit of study societies for the yellows and that they should urgently be protected), Shiwubao, 19 (March 1897).

97.Zhang, Qiushu, p. 38.

98.Ibid., pp. 41, 38 and 58.

99.I do not intend in this section to discuss the Tongmenghui nationalists and other 1911 revolutionaries who have already been treated at considerable length elsewhere. It will suffice here to indicate the connection between race and nation in the writings of Sun Yatsen.

100.Lyon Sharman, Sun Yat-sen, his life and its meaning, Stanford University Press, 1968, p. 288.

101.See A. James Gregor, ‘National-fascismo and the revolutionary nationalism of Sun Yatsen’, Journal of Asian Studies, 39, no. 1 (Nov. 1979), pp. 21–37.

102.Sun Wen (Sun Yatsen), Sanminzhuyi (The three principles), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1927, pp. 4–5; this translation follows Frank W. Price, San min chu i: The Three Principles of the People, Shanghai: China Committee, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1927, pp. 11–12.

103.See Kobayashi Toshihiko, ‘Sun Yatsen and Asianism: A positivist approach’ in John Y. Wong (ed.), Sun Yatsen: His international ideas and international connections, with special emphasis on their relevance today, Sydney: Wild Peony, 1987, pp. 15–37.

104.Sun, Sanminzhuyi, pp. 4–5; Price, San min chu i, pp. 8–9.

5. RACE AS SPECIES (1915–1949)

1.Marie-Claire Bergère, The golden age of the Chinese bourgeoisie, 1911–1937, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

2.Chen Duxiu, ‘Dong Xi minzu genben sixiang zhi chayi’ (Fundamental differences in thought between the peoples of the East and the West) in Chen Duxiu wenji, Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan, 1922, pp. 57–62.

3.On these developments, see Frank Dikötter, The age of openness: China before Mao, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

4.Lin Yutang, A history of the press and public opinion in China, London: Oxford University Press, 1933, p. 122; on the modern press one should also read Christopher A. Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese print capitalism, 1876–1937, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004.

5.See Jean-Pierre Drège, La Commercial Press de Shanghai, 1897–1949, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978, pp. 54–5.

6.On the academic community in Republican China, see E-tu Zen Sun, ‘The growth of the academic community 1912–1949’ in John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker (eds), The Cambridge history of China, vol. 13, part 2, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 361–420.

7.Both quotations are taken from Charles W. Hayford, To the people: James Yen and village China, New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, p. 12.

8.Wei Juxian, ‘Zhongguo minzu qiantu zhi shi de kaocha’ (Study on the future of the Chinese race), Qiantu, 1, no. 10 (Oct. 1933), p. 7.

9.A circumspect comment on Wei’s methodological approach appeared in the same journal five months later. The author, Wang Boping, cautiously referred to Wei’s abuse of mythology, his unhistorical methods of analysis and his partiality; see Wang Boping, ‘Zai lun Zhongguo minzu qiyuan wenti’ (Revisiting the question of the origins of the Chinese race), Qiantu, 2, no. 3 (March 1934).

10.This paragraph is based on Li Chi, The formation of the Chinese people: An anthropological inquiry, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928.

11.Lin Yan, Zhongguo minzu de youlai (Origins of the Chinese race), Shanghai: Yongxiang yinshuguan, 1947, p. 27.

12.The following is based on Zhang Junjun, Zhongguo minzu zhi gaizao (The reform of the Chinese race), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1935. See also his Zhongguo minzu zhi gaizao, xubian (Sequel to the reform of the Chinese race), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1936.

13.Liang Boqiang, ‘Yixueshang Zhongguo minzu zhi yanjiu’ (Medical research on the Chinese race), Dongfang zazhi, 23, no. 13 (July 1926), pp. 93 and 98. Liang equated the ‘Chinese nation’ with the ‘Han race’.

14.Laurence A. Schneider, Ku Chieh-kang and China’s new history, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971, p. 164.

15.Lin Yutang, My country and my people, New York: John Ray, 1935, p. 27.

16.Chen’s work was republished eight times, and was reprinted in Taiwan in 1971 as part of a series of scientific books for young people. The book was described on the back cover of this reprint as the most illuminating work ever written on anthropology by a Chinese scientist. Chen Yinghuang, Renleixue (Anthropology), Taipei: Xueren yuekan zazhi she, 1971.

17.Chen Yinghuang, Renleixue (Anthropology), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan (1st edn 1918), 1928, p. 5.

18.Ibid., p. 81.

19.Xue Deyu, Renti shengli weishengxue tiyao (Precis of human physiological health science), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1921, p. 14.

20.Gong Tingzhang, Renlei yu wenhua jinbu shi (History of the progress of mankind and culture), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1926, pp. 54–66.

21.Zhu Xi, Women de zuxian (Our ancestors), Shanghai: Wenhua shenghuo chubanshe, 1940, pp. 226, 252.

22.Chen, Renleixue, pp. 66–9.

23.Zhang Zuoren, Renlei tianyan shi (History of human evolution), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1930, pp. 51–2.

24.You Jiade, Renlei qiyuan (Origins of mankind), Shanghai: Shijie shuju, 1929, p. 7.

25.Lin, My country, p. 40.

26.Gong, Renlei, p. 11.

27.Zhu Weiji, Shengwu de jinhua (Evolution of organisms), Shanghai: Yongxiang yinshuguan, 1948 (1st edn 1945), p. 72.

28.Zhang Ziping, Hekeer (Haeckel), Shanghai: Kaiming shudian, 1934.

29.Zhang Ziping, Renwen dilixue (Human geography), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1926 (1st edn 1924), pp. 32, 34.

30.Zhang Ziping, Renlei jinhualun (The theory of human evolution), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1930, pp. 84, 74.

31.Lin, My country, p. 26.

32.The following draws freely on Frank Dikötter, ‘La représentation du Japon et des Japonais dans la caricature chinoise (1923–1937)’, unpubl. MA thesis, Dept. of History, University of Geneva, 1985.

33.Wu Dingliang, ‘On metopism of Chinese skulls and its relation to the size of cranial measurements’, Renleixue jikan, 1 (Collected papers on anthropology), Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo, 1941, vol. 2, pp. 84–6.

34.Zhang Liyuan, Renleixue dayi (Main points of anthropology), Shanghai: Shenzhou guoguangshe, 1931, p. 19.

35.Zhang Junjun, Minzu suzhi zhi gaizao (The reform of the race’s quality), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1943, p. 34.

36.Lu Zhiwei’s results originally appeared in the Shehui xinli zazhi, 2 (1931), pp. 402–8.

37.Tong Runzhi, ‘Zhongguo minzu de zhili’ (The intelligence of the Chinese race), Dongfang zazhi, 26, no. 3 (Feb. 1929), pp. 67–74.

38.Chen Jianshan, Renlei naosui zhi jinhua (The evolution of the human brain), Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1947, p. 76.

39.Chen Yucang, Renti de yanjiu (Research on the human body), Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1937, p. 180.

40.Jiang Xiangqing, Renti celiangxue (The science of body measurements), Shanghai: Qinfen shuju, 1935, pp. 97–8.

41.Lin, My country, pp. 78 and 80.

42.Nancy Stepan, The idea of race in science: Great Britain, 1800–1960, London: Macmillan, 1982, p. 15; for the common association of Africans with apes, see pp. 15–18.

43.Keith Thomas, Man and the natural world: Changing attitudes in England, 1500–1800, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 134–5.

44.Gu, Renleixue, p. 51. Gu Shoubai published a second slim volume on anthropology the same year; Gu Shoubai, Renleixue (Anthropology), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1924.

45.Gong, Renlei, p. 53.

46.Chen Jianshan, ‘Shi renlei’ (Explaining mankind), Minduo zazhi, 5, no. 1 (March 1924), p. 7.

47.Chen Darong, Dongwu yu rensheng (Animals and life), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1928 (1st edn 1916), pp. 8–13. The author thus echoed the ‘polyphyletic theory’, first expounded by Carl Vogt in 1865, in which a different anthropoid ape was identified for each human race; see Léon Poliakov, Le mythe aryen. Essai sur les sources du racisme et des nationalismes, Bruxelles: Editions Complexe, 1987, p. 316.

48.Anonymous, Renzhongxue (Anthropology), n.d., pp. 36–8.

49.Gu, Renleixue, pp. 51, 41, 65, 67, 68.

50.Du Yaquan et al. (eds), Dongwuxue da cidian (Great dictionary of zoology), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1927 (1st edn 1923), p. 15.

51.Liu Huru, Rensheng dili gaiyao (General principles of human geography), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1931, pp. 47–8.

52.Zhou, Renlei, p. 45.

53.Anonymous, Renzhongxue, p. 33.

54.Du, Dongwuxue, p. 17.

55.Zhou, Renlei, p. 29.

56.Zhu, Women de zuxian, p. 225.

57.Chen Duo et al. (eds), Riyong baike quanshu (Daily encyclopedia), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1919, part 3, pp. 93–6. See also Huang Shaoxu et al. (eds), Riyong baike quanshu (Daily encyclopedia), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1934, pp. 183–7.

58.Li Xuezeng, Yazhou zhongzu dili (Racial geography of Asia), Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1947, p. 10.

59.Rensheng dilixue (Human geography), Shanghai: Qunyi shuju, 1907, pp. 147–9.

60.The sticker may be observed by slowly passing a finger over the illustration; the original picture becomes visible when the page is held against the light.

61.Fu Yunsen, Renwen dili (Human geography), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1914, pp. 9–15.

62.Léon Wieger, Moralisme officiel des écoles, en 1920, Hien-hien, 1921, p. 180, original Chinese text.

63.Cao Bohan, Shijie dili gangyao (Essentials of world geography), Shanghai: Dongnan chubanshe, 1943, pp. 4–5; see also Cao Bohan, Shijie dili chubu (Elementary world geography), Shanghai: Shenghuo shudian, 1948, pp. 6–7. Both were standard schoolbooks.

64.‘Anti-foreign teachings in text-books of China’, supplement to the International Gleanings from Japan, no. 16 (Oct. 1932), Tokyo: Sokokusha, p. 12.

65.Wu Zelin, Xiandai zhongzu (Contemporary races), Shanghai: Xinyue shudian, 1932, pp. 2–3.

66.Frederick Hung (Hong Yuan), ‘Racial superiority and inferiority complex’, The China Critic, 9 Jan. 1930, p. 29.

67.Lu Xinqiu, Jinhua yichuan yu yousheng (Evolutionary heredity and eugenics), Shanghai: Zhongguo kexue tushu yiqi gongsi, 1949, p. 42.

68.Huang Wenshan, ‘Fuxing Zhonghua minzu de jiben yuanze’ (Fundamental principles for reviving the Chinese nation) in Minzu zhi shang lun (On the supremacy of the nation), Hankou: Duli chubanshe, 1938, p. 52; see also Huang Wenshan’s ‘Zhongzuzhuyi lun’ (About racism) in Huang Wenshan xueshu luncong (Collected studies on society), Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1959, pp. 225–54, first published in 1942. It may be noted that Huang, a professor at Lingnan University, was one of the ten signatories of the notorious ‘Manifesto on Cultural Construction on a Chinese Base’, published in 1934, which criticised the ‘westernising tendencies’ of the New Culture Movement and called for study of the country’s cultural heritage.

69.Tao Menghe, ‘Zhongzu wenti’ (Racial problems), Xiandai pinglun, 3, no. 63 (Feb. 1926), p. 208.

70.Wu Zelin and Ye Shaochun, Shijie renkou wenti (Problems of the world population), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1938, p. 84.

71.Zhou, Renlei, p. 61.

72.Hu Huanyong, Shijie dili (World geography), Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 6th edn 1947 (1st edn 1942), pp. 43–4.

73.Li Zongwu, Renwen dili ABC (ABC of human geography), Shanghai: Shijie shuju, 1929, p. 24.

74.Wu and Ye, Shijie renkou, p. 92.

75.E. U. Essien-Udom, Black nationalism: The rise of the black Muslims in U.S.A., Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966, p. 40.

76.On the theme of alienation, see Jerome Ch’en, ‘Yiguo, “yihua”: liangci dazhan jian Yingyu guojia Zhongguo liuxuesheng taidu he xingwei de bianqian’ (Estrangement in strange lands: Attitudinal and behavioural changes of Chinese students in English-speaking countries between the two world wars), manuscript presented at the Institute of Modern History, Beijing, Summer 1990. See also his China and the West, pp. 151–72.

77.Hsu Kai-yu, Wen I-to, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980, p. 61.

78.Wen Yiduo, Wen Yiduo quanji (Complete works of Wen Yiduo), Hong Kong: Yuandong tushu gongsi, 1968, vol. 1, p. 40.

79.Wen Yiduo, ‘Wo shi Zhongguoren’ (I am Chinese), Xiandai pinglun, 2, no. 33 (July 1925), pp. 136–7.

80.Lu Xun, Selected writings, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1980, vol. 4, p. 149.

81.Huang Zhenxia, ‘Huangren zhi xue’ (Blood of the yellow race), Qianfeng yuekan (Vanguard monthly), 1, no. 7 (July 1931), p. 6; for this translation I have relied on Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang (transl.), Lu Xun, Selected writings, vol. 3, pp. 146–7.

82.Pan Guangdan, review of Donald Young (ed.), The american negro (1928), The China Critic, 28 Aug. 1930, p. 838.

83.R. D. Arkush, Fei Xiaotong and sociology in revolutionary China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 37–46.

84.Zhang Junmai, Minzu fuxing zhi xueshu jichu (The scientific foundations for national revival), Beijing: Zaishengshe, 1935, pp. 10, 22.

85.Qi Sihe, ‘Zhongzu yu minzu’ (Race and nationality), Yugong, 7, nos 1–3 (April 1937), pp. 25–34.

86.See ‘Class, nation, and race’ in Maurice Meisner, Li Ta-chao and the origins of Chinese Marxism, New York: Atheneum, 1970, pp. 188–94.

6. RACE AS SEED (1915–1949)

1.Parts of this chapter have been published as Frank Dikötter, ‘Eugenics in Republican China’, Republican China, 15, no. 1 (Nov. 1989), pp. 1–17.

2.The following is based on Zhang Binglun, ‘Researches in heredity and breeding’ in Ancient China’s technology and science, Institute of the History of Natural Sciences (ed.), Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1983, pp. 281–91. See also Donald Leslie, ‘Early Chinese ideas on heredity’, Asiatische Studien, 1 (1953), pp. 26–46.

3.Wan Quan, Youke fahui (Exposition of medicine for infants), orig. 1549, Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe, 1963, p. 4.

4.Zhong is equivalent to giông in Vietnamese, chùng in Sino-Vietnamese, shu in Japanese, and chong in Korean.

5.Zhulinsi sengren, Zhulinsi nüke erzhong (Two texts on medicine for women by the Bamboo Grove monastery), orig. 1786, Beijing: Zhongyi guji chubanshe, 1993, p. 293.

6.Angela K. Leung, ‘Autour de la naissance: La mère et l’enfant en Chine aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, 76 (Jan.-June 1984), pp. 53, 56 and 64. See also Charlotte Furth, ‘Concepts of pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy in Ch’ing dynasty China’, Journal of Asian Studies, 46, no. 1 (Feb. 1987), pp. 7–35, and Charlotte Furth, ‘Blood, body and gender: Medical images of the female condition in China, 1600–1850’, Chinese Science, 7 (Dec. 1986), pp. 43–66; a comprehensive analysis of ideas around pregnancy and childbirth, on which the first section of this chapter is based, appears in Frank Dikötter, Imperfect conceptions: Medical knowledge, birth defects and eugenics in China, London: Hurst; New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

7.Yu Tan, Xishang futan (Talks on the mat), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936, p. 16.

8.Yongsitang zhuren, Taichan hebi (Two books on childbirth), orig. 1862 edn., juan 1, p. 3ab.

9.Wan Quan, Wan shi furenke (Wan Quan’s medicine for women), Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1983, p. 21.

10.Yan Chunxi, Taichan xinfa (Personal experience in childbirth), orig. 1730, 1824 edn., juan 1, 10b-11a; on Yan Chunxi, see Guo Junshuang and Tian Daihua, ‘Yan Chunxi yu Taichan xinfa’ (Yan Chunxi and his book on childbirth), Zhonghua yishi zazhi, 1990, 20, no. 3, pp. 180–3.

11.Yan Yuan, Preservation of Learning (Cunxuebian), translated with an introduction on his life and thought by Mansfield Freeman, Los Angeles: Monumenta Serica, 1972, p. 30.

12.Xu Guangqi, Nongzheng quanshu jiaozhu (Complete book on agricultural management with annotations), Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1979, p. 90.

13.On demographic thought in late imperial China, see Frank Dikötter, Sex, culture and modernity in China: Medical science and the construction of sexual identities in the early Republican period, London: Hurst; Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press; Hong Kong University Press, 1995, pp. 102–21.

14.Tang Peng, ‘Yi pin’ (To cure poverty) in Fu Qiuzi (Works of Tang Peng), Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1987, pp. 313–19.

15.Qi Sihe (ed.), Huang Juezi zoushu—Xu Naiji zouyi: hekan (Combined publication of the memorials of Huang Juezi and Xu Naiji), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959, pp. 216–19.

16.Wu Shenyuan, ‘“Renman zhi huan”: Jindai Zhongguo renkou sixiang de “redian”’ (The peril of overpopulation: A ‘hot point’ in modern Chinese demographic thought), Renkouxue, 1987, no. 3, pp. 92–3.

17.Xu Zi, Weihuizhai wenji (Collected writings of Xu Zi), Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1970, p. 28.

18.Frank Dikötter, ‘The limits of benevolence: Wang Shiduo (1802–1889) and population control’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 55, no. 1 (Feb. 1992), pp. 110–15.

19.Wang Shiduo, Wang Huiweng yibing riji (Diary of Wang Shiduo), Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1967, p. 145.

20.Tan Sitong, Tan Sitong quanji (Collected writings of Tan Sitong), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981, p. 366.

21.Liang Qichao, ‘Nanhai Kang xiansheng zhuan’ (Biography of Kang Youwei) in Yinbingshi wenji (Complete works of Liang Qichao), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1941, 3, 6: 78.

22.Yan Fu, ‘Baozhong yuyi’ (Afterthoughts on the preservation of the race) in Yan Fuji (Collected works of Yan Fu), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986, p. 87.

23.Liang Qichao, ‘Sibada xiaoshi’ (Short history of the Spartans) in YBSWJ, 4, 15: 1–19. Liang also admired Kaiser Wilhelm II for his concern about the health of the ‘German race’; see ibid., 3, 4: 117.

24.Zhang Binglin, Qiushu (Book of raillery), Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1958, p. 40.

25.Chen Yinghuang, Renleixue (Anthropology), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1928 (1st edn 1918), p. 242.

26.Xia Yuzhong, ‘Shuzhongxue yu jiaoyu’ (Eugenics and education), Xinjiaoyu, 2, no. 4 (Dec. 1919), p. 395.

27.Dong Zhuli, ‘Renzhong gailiangxue zhi yanjiu fangfa’ (Charles B. Davenport, The research methods of the science of race improvement), Funü zazhi, 5, no. 12 (Dec. 1919), pp. 1–8; 6, no. 1 (Jan. 1920), pp. 6–10; San Wu, ‘Bi ren wo guan’ (My point of view on contraception), Funü zazhi, 6, no. 12 (Dec. 1920), pp. 1–7.

28.Zhou had already published an article on the principles of eugenics in Eastern Miscellany. This article was later integrated in his Evolution and Eugenics; see Zhou Jianren, ‘Shanzhongxue de lilun yu shishi’ (The theory of eugenics and its implementation), Dongfang zazhi, 18, no. 2 (Jan. 1921), pp. 56–64; Chen Changheng, a pioneer in the field of population theories, would later see birth control and eugenics as the cornerstones of his ‘childbearing revolution’ (shengyu geming); see chapter 3 of his Sanminzhuyi yu renkou zhengce (The Three Principles of the People and population policies), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1930. Chen was also a committee member of the Legislative Yuan.

29.Chen Changheng and Zhou Jianren, Jinhualun yu shanzhongxue (Evolution and eugenics), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1925 (1st edn 1923), pp. 5–10, 13–16.

30.Ibid., p. 68.

31.Ibid., p. 75.

32.Nancy L. Stepan, ‘Eugenics in Brazil, 1917–1940’ and Mark B. Adams, ‘Eugenics in Russia, 1900–1940’ in Mark B. Adams (ed.), The wellborn science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil and Russia, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 110–216; see also Dain Borges, ‘“Puffy, ugly, slothful and inert”: Degeneration in Brazilian social thought, 1880–1940’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 25 (1993), pp. 235–56.

33.William H. Schneider, Quality and quantity: The quest for biological regeneration in twentieth-century France, Cambridge University Press, 1990; Anne Carol, Histoire de l’eugénisme en France. Les médecins et la procréation, XIXe-XXe siècle, Paris: Seuil, 1995; Pierre-André Taguieff, ‘Eugénisme ou décadence? L’exception française’, Ethnologie Française, no. 24, no. 1 (Jan.-March 1994), pp. 81–103.

34.The following is based on Liu Xiong, Yichuan yu yousheng (Heredity and eugenics), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, part of the popular science series ‘Universal Library’, 1926 (1st edn 1924), pp. 74–83.

35.Howard L. Boorman (ed.), Biographical dictionary of Republican China, New York: Columbia University Press, 1971, p. 61. See also Ying Zi, Zhongguo xin xueshu renwu zhi (Bibliographies of Chinese famous modern scientists), Hong Kong: Zhiming shuju, 1956, pp. 79–82. Pan appears to have been a rather bookish person, oblivious to the outside world and often engrossed in the study of Chinese family genealogies.

36.Pan’s introduction was originally published in the Dongfang zazhi, 22, no. 22 (Nov. 1925), ‘Ershi nianlai shijie zhi yousheng yundong’ (The eugenics movement in the world during the last twenty years), pp. 60–83, and was reprinted in Pan Guangdan, Youshengxue (Eugenics), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1933. The following discussion refers to this edition.

37.Ibid., p. 44.

38.Pan Guangdan, ‘Zhongguo zhi yousheng wenti’ (China’s eugenic problem), Dongfang zazhi, 21, no. 22 (Nov. 1924), pp. 15–32, reprinted in Pan, Youshengxue.

39.Ibid., pp. 71–85.

40.Ibid., pp. 93–103.

41.Pan Guangdan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti (Problems of the Chinese family), Shanghai: Xinyue shudian, 1940 (1st edn 1928), p. 2.

42.Ibid., p. 111.

43.Pan Guangdan, Zhongguo lingren xueyuan zhi yanjiu (Research on the blood relationship of Chinese actors), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1941.

44.The Yousheng yuekan (Eugenics monthly) appeared from May 1931 to Feb. 1932.

45.Yi Jiayue, Jiating wenti (Problems of the family), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1920, p. 149.

46.See for instance Chen Jianshan, Yichuanxue qianshuo (Elementary introduction to heredity), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1926, pp. 145–51, and Wang Qishu, Yichuanxue gailun (Introduction to heredity), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1926, last chapter.

47.Hua Rucheng, Youshengxue ABC (ABC of eugenics), Shanghai: Shijie shuju, 1929.

48.Qian Xiaoqiu, Renzhong gailiangxue gailun (Introduction to the science of race improvement), Shanghai: Shenzhou guoguangshe, 1932.

49.Wu Zhenzi, ‘Women weishenme yao yanjiu youshengxue’ (Why we should study eugenics), Xuesheng zazhi, 15, no. 9 (Sept. 1928), pp. 31–6.

50.‘Minzu shengwuxue xulun’ (Introduction to racial biology), Yixue (Medicine), 1, no. 1 (July 1931).

51.Jin Zizhi, Minzu weisheng (Racial hygiene), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1930, p. 1.

52.Review in Yousheng yuekan, 2, no. 2 (Feb. 1932), p. 5; on this issue, see Dikötter, Sex, culture and modernity in China, pp. 165–179.

53.Ma Chonggan, Jiehun zhidao (Marriage guide), Shanghai: Qinfen shuju, 1931, pp. 11–12.

54.Zhang Jixiu, Funü zhuance (Special handbook for women), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1937, pp. 52–61.

55.‘Renzhong gailiang xiansheng jiang you kexue yinghai chuxian’ (First signs of race improvement: Imminent appearance of scientific babies), Xianggang gongshang, 18 Jan. 1935.

56.Yan Duhe, ‘Youshenglü’ (Eugenic laws), Xinwenbao, 12 May 1935.

57.‘Minzu gaizao wenti’ (The problem of race reform), Zhongyang ribao, 20 Aug. 1935.

58.‘Yichuan yu yousheng’ (Heredity and eugenics), Shishi xinbao, 11 Jan. 1935.

59.Pan Guangdan, ‘Yousheng yu minjianzukang’ (Eugenics and racial health), Beiping chenbao, 3 March 1935.

60.‘Zhongguo yanyu zhong de yousheng jianjie’ (Eugenic views in Chinese proverbs), Beiping chenbao, 7 April 1935.

61.Shen Songnian, ‘Zhenzheng cishanjia ying zhuyi youshengxue’ (Real philanthropists should pay attention to eugenics), Beiping chenbao, 19 April 1935.

60.Sun Benwen, ‘Zai lun wenhua yu youshengxue’ (Culture and eugenics again), Shehui xuejie, 1, no. 2 (Feb. 1927), pp. 1–8.

63.Ru Song, ‘Ping youshengxue yu huanjinglun de lunzheng’ (Reviewing the controversy between eugenics and environment), Ershi shiji, 1, no. 1 (Feb 1931), p. 60.

64.Sun Benwen, Renkoulun ABC (ABC of population theories), Shanghai: Shijie shuju, 1928, pp. 109–11.

65.Ibid., p. 112.

64.Chen Tianbiao, Renkou wenti yanjiu (Research on population problems), Shanghai: Liming shuju, 1930, pp. 33–4.

67.Ibid., p. 143.

68.Xu Shilian, Renkoulun gangyao (Essentials of population theory), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1934, p. 267.

69.Ibid., pp. 273–5.

70.See Yuan Fang and Quan Weitian, ‘Sociologist Chen Da’, Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, 13, no. 3 (Spring 1981), pp. 59–74; the Eugenics Monthly published a letter from Chen in support of the spread of eugenics and the establishment of eugenic journals; see Yousheng yuekan (Eugenics monthly), 2, no. 1 (Jan. 1932), p. 28.

71.Chen Da, Renkou wenti (Population problems), Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1934, pp. 201–2.

72.Daniel J. Kevles, In the name of eugenics: Genetics and the use of human heredity, New York: Knopf, 1985, p. 120.

73.Yu Jingrang, Renzhong gailiang (Improvement of the race), Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1947 (1st edn 1936), p. 44.

74.Ibid., preface.

75.Zhang Junjun, Zhongguo minzu zhi gaizao (The reform of the Chinese race), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1937 (1st edn 1935), p. 169.

76.Ibid., p. 195.

77.Ibid., p. 226 ff.

78.Lunyu (Analects), Yanghuo, 17: 3.

79.Keh-ming Lin, ‘Traditional Chinese medical beliefs and their relevance for mental illness and psychiatry’ in Arthur Kleinman and Liu Tsung-Yi, Normal and abnormal behaviour in Chinese culture, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981, pp. 106–7.

80.Ke Xiangfeng, Xiandai renkou wenti (Modern population problems), Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1934, p. 381.

81.Jiang Zhongzheng (Jiang Jieshi), Xinshenghuo yundong (The New Life Movement), Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1935, pp. 27, 41.

82.Chen Ta, Population in modern China, New York: Octagon Books, 1974, pp. 76–7.

83.Zhang Junjun, Zhongguo minzu, p. 266. Three separate translations of Hitler’s Mein Kampf had been published in China by 1935. Many biographies of Hitler and books on National Socialism were published until the 1940s. The reception and interpretation of German Nazism and Italian Fascism in China from the 1930s onwards would undoubtedly be a fruitful and revealing research topic.

84.The following is based on Wei Juxian, ‘Zhongguo minzu qiantu zhi shi de kaocha’ (Study on the future of the Chinese race), Qiantu, 1, no. 10 (Oct. 1933), pp. 17–18.

85.Many newspapers, including specialised medical periodicals, regularly reported on German eugenic matters. The Zhonghua yixue zazhi (Chinese medical journal), for instance, published a detailed account of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, forbidding any kind of union between ‘Jews’ and ‘Aryans’ (Zhonghua yixue zazhi, 21, no. 10 (1935), pp. 1176–7). These reports were obviously filtered by the journal’s own interests. Two months later it published a proposal by the Association of German Doctors on the establishment of Matchmaking Centres (hunyin jieshaosuo). These would guide young people in their search for partners, celibacy being viewed as harmful to the race (ibid., no. 12, p. 1474).

86.William C. Kirby, Germany and Republican China, Stanford University Press, 1984, p. 167. An analysis of the Nazi press in China, along with the translation of an anti-Semitic pamphlet, appears in Françoise Kreissler, L’action culturelle allemande en Chine. Dela fin du XIXe siècle à la seconde guerre mondiale, Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1989, pp. 98–112, 269. Kreissler’s study, however, concerns only the German community in China; there is no attempt to explore Chinese reactions to German racial theories.

87.Kevles, In the name of eugenics, p. 118.

88.Donald K. Pickens, Eugenics and the progressives, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968, p. 99, n. 44.

89.The following is based on Hao Qinming, Yichuanxue (Genetics), Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1948, pp. 207–9.

90.Ibid., p. 227.

91.This section is based on Hu Buchan, Youshengxue yu renlei yichuanxue (Eugenics and human genetics), Taipei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1959 (1st edn 1936), pp. 175–8.

92.Ibid., p. 204.

93.Elsewhere, the author extended the notion of pure blood (chunxue) to the entire Chinese ‘race’, regardless of class. Westerners and Japanese, on the other hand, were all of ‘mixed blood’ (hunxue); ibid., p. 118.

7. RACE AS NATIONALITY (1949–2012)

1.Ubukata Naokichi, ‘Chūgoku ni okeru jinshu sabetsu no kinshi’ (On the prohibition of racial discrimination in China), Hikakuhō kenkyū, 6 (April 1953), pp. 40–6.

2.See R. K. Wu and C. H. Liu, ‘The history of physical anthropology in China’, Homo, 35 (1984), pp. 127–34; Wu Rukang, ‘Antropologiia v Kitae’, Sovietskaia Antropologiia, 3, no. 1 (1959), pp. 107–12.

3.See, for instance, Zhou Jianren, Lun youshengxue yu zhongzu qishi (About eugenics and racial discrimination), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1950.

4.Greg E. Guldin, ‘Chinese anthropologies’, Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, 20, no. 4 (Summer 1988), p. 9. On the relationship between anthropology and the minorities, see also G. Gjessing, ‘Chinese anthropology and New China’s policy toward her minorities’, Acta Sociologica, 2, no. 1 (1956), pp. 45–68.

5.Zhou, Lun youshengxue yu zhongzu qishi.

6.Laurence A. Schneider, ‘Learning from Russia: Lysenkoism and the fate of genetics in China, 1950–1986’ in Merle Goldman and Denis F. Simon (eds), Science and technology in post-Mao China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 45–65; see also Laurence A. Schneider, Lysenkoism in China: Proceedings of the 1956 Qingdao Genetics Symposium, Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1986.

7.An essential book for understanding ethnic nationalism in China is Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic nationalism in the People’s Republic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991; on the project of ‘ethnic’ classification one should read Thomas Mullaney, Coming to terms with the nation: Ethnic classification in modern China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

8.Christian Tyler, Wild West China: The taming of Xinjiang, London: John Murray, 2003, pp. 138–40.

9.Stuart R. Schram, The political thought of Mao Tse-tung, New York: Praeger, 1969, p. 374.

10.‘Mao zhuxi jiejian Feizhou pengyou fabiao zhichi Meiguo heiren douzheng de shengming’ (Chairman Mao meets our African friends and issues a statement in support of the American blacks’ struggle), Renmin ribao (People’s Daily), 9 Aug. 1963, p. 1.

11.For example Choushi Meidi, bishi Meidi, mieshi Meidi (Hate American imperialism, disdain American imperialism, despise American imperialism), Shanghai: Wenhuibao, 1950, p. 39.

12.Louis Barcata, China in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1968, pp. 193–4.

13.Alan Hutchison, China’s African revolution, London: Hutchinson, 1975, p. 179.

14.Ibid., p. 192, n. 3.

15.Emmanuel J. Hevi, An African student in China, London: Pall Mall Press, 1963, p. 187. Many incidents, such as a doctor asking why his skin was still so black if he washed regularly, led Hevi to the conclusion that the Chinese people were either supremely ignorant or supremely ill-intentioned; ibid., p. 187.

16.Michael J. Sullivan, ‘The 1988–89 Nanjing anti-African protests: Racial nationalism or national racism?’, China Quarterly, 138 (1994), p. 444.

17.Chiang Kaishek, China’s destiny, New York: Roy Publishers 1947, pp. 39–40.

18.James Leibold, ‘Competing narratives of racial unity in republican China: From the Yellow Emperor to Peking Man’, Modern China, 32, no. 2 (April 2006), pp. 181–220.

19.Material in the next four paragraphs comes from Frank Dikötter, ‘Reading the body: Genetic knowledge and social marginalisation in the PRC’, China Information, 13, nos 2–3 (December 1998), pp. 1–13.

20.Zhao Tongmao, Renlei xuexing yichuanxue (Genetics of human blood groups), Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1987, pp. 351–71; see also Yuan Yida and Du Ruofu, ‘Zhongguo shiqige minzu jian de yichuan juli de chubu yanjiu’ (Preliminary investigation of the genetic distance between seventeen ethnic groups in China), Yichuan xuebao, 10, no 5 (1983), pp. 398–405.

21.Zhang Zhenbiao, ‘Zangzu de tizhi tezheng’ (The physical characteristics of the Tibetan nationality), Renleixue xuebao, 4, no. 3 (Aug. 1985), pp. 250–7; the only reference to a European study in Zhang Zhenbiao’s research was an article published in 1954 in the Annals of Eugenics.

22.W. J. F. Jenner, ‘Race and history in China’, New Left Review, 11 (Oct. 2001), p. 74.

23.Ibid., p. 57.

24.Wu Rukang, Guren leixue (Paleoanthropology), Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1989, pp. 205–6; see also Wu Rukang, Renlei de qiyuan he fazhan (The origin and evolution of ancient man), Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1980; on Peking Man one should also read Barry Sautman, ‘Myths of descent, racial nationalism and ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China’ in Frank Dikötter, The construction of racial identities in China and Japan: Historical and contemporary perspectives, London: Hurst; Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997, pp. 75–95; Barry Sautman, ‘Peking Man and the politics of paleoanthropological nationalism in China’, Journal of Asian Studies, 60, no. 1 (Feb. 2001), pp. 95–124.

25.For instance Yang Qun, ‘Kaoguxue yu renleixue’ (Archaeology and anthropology) in Zhongguo renlei xuehui (eds), Renleixue yanjiu (Studies in anthropology), Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1987, pp. 288–302.

26.See for instance Han Kangxin and Pan Qifeng, ‘Gudai Zhongguo renzhong chengfen yanjiu’ (Research into the racial composition of ancient China), Kaogu xuebao, no. 2 (Feb. 1984).

27.John Reader, Missing links: The hunt for earliest man, London: Penguin Books, 1990, p. 111.

28.‘Stirring find in Xuchang’, China Daily, 28 Jan. 2008.

29.Qian Wang, Goran Štrkalj and Li Sun, ‘On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: Alive and well (Discussion)’, Current Anthropology, 44, no. 3 (June 2003), p. 403.

30.A much more detailed discussion, as well as more abundant evidence, appears in the book from which all the material in this section has been taken, namely Frank Dikötter, Imperfect conceptions: Medical knowledge, birth defects and eugenics in China, London: Hurst; New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

31.‘Tigao renkou suzhi de guanjian zai nongcun’ (The key to improving the quality of the population lies in the countryside), Renkou yu yousheng, 1993, no. 1, pp. 24–5.

32.Tao Kan, ‘Fushu diqu yuanhe ruozhi ertong yuelai yueduo’ (Why retarded children are on the increase in rich and populous regions), Renkou yu yousheng, 1996, no. 4, p. 3.

33.Wang Ruogu, ‘Wen Xinjiapo xin renkou zhengce you gan’ (The population policy in Singapore), Renkou yu yousheng, 1992, no. 4, p. 26.

34.Nicolas D. Kristof, ‘Parts of China forcibly sterilizing the retarded who wish to marry’, New York Times, 15 August 1991, p. 1.

35.Zhou Xiaozheng, ‘Ershiyi shiji de Zhongguo renkou yu yousheng’ (The Chinese population and eugenics in the twenty-first century), Renkouxue, 1988, no. 4, p. 83.

36.Yuan Huarong, ‘Lun yousi de shehui jingji yiyi he daode jiazhi’ (About the social and economic meaning of euthanasia and its moral value), Renkou yanjiu, 1990, no. 4.

37.Mu Guangzong, ‘Lun Zhongguo renkou de suzhi kongzhi: Guanyu Zhonghua minzu weilai de shehuixue sikao’ (The control of the quality of China’s population: Sociological considerations about the future of the Chinese nation), Renkouxue, 1991, no. 4, p. 75.

38.Liu Jinxiang, ‘Ping Pan Guangdan de Yousheng gailun’ (A review of Pan Guangdan’s Introduction to eugenics), Yichuan, 1982, no. 3, pp. 39–40; in demography, see Hu Jize, ‘Yao dong yidian youshengxue (jieshao Pan Guangdan de Yousheng yuanli)’ (We should understand some eugenics: Introducing Pan Guangdan’s Eugenic principles), Renkouxue, 1986, no. 3, pp. 74–6.

39.‘Zhiming renshi zuotan zhichu: Tuixing yousheng ke bu rong huan’ (Public figures point out that eugenics policies are of great urgency), Dagongbao, 30 Jan. 1991, p. 12.

40.‘Profile of Shanghai exhibition views “heavy burden” of China’s disabled’, SWB, 1 December 1993, FE/1860 G/6; on disability in contemporary China one should read Matthew Kohrman, Bodies of difference: Experiences of disability and institutional advocacy in the making of modern China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

41.Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen (eds), Eugenics and the welfare state: Sterilization policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996.

42.On Switzerland, see Philippe Ehrenström, ‘Stérilisation opératoire et maladie mentale. Une étude de cas’, Gesnerus, 48 (1991), pp. 503–16, and Frank Preiswerk, ‘Auguste Forel (1848–1931). Un projet de régénération sociale, morale et raciale’, Annuelles. Revue d’Histoire Contemporaine, 2 (1991), pp. 25–50.

43.Martin Bobrow, ‘Redrafted Chinese law remains eugenic’, Journal of Medical Genetics, 32, no. 6 (June 1995), p. 409; Jonanna McMillan, Sex, science and morality in China, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 70–1.

44.Sullivan, ‘The 1988–89 Nanjing anti-African protests’; a witness account can be found in Richard Lufrano, ‘The 1988 Nanjing incident: Notes on race and politics in contemporary China’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 1994, pp. 83–92.

45.Cheng Yinghong, ‘From campus racism to cyber racism: Discourse of race and Chinese nationalism’, China Quarterly, 207 (Sept. 2011), pp. 561–79.

46.Nicholas D. Kristof, ‘Black Africa leaves China in quandary’, New York Times, 30 Dec. 1988.

47.M. Dujon Johnson, Race and racism in the Chinas, Bloomington, IN: Author’s House, 2007, pp. 76–7.

48.Cheng, ‘From campus racism to cyber racism’, p. 567.

49.Simon Shen, ‘A constructed (un)reality on China’s re-entry into Africa: The Chinese online community perception of Africa (2006–2008)’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 47, no. 3 (Sept. 2009), pp. 425–48.

50.Didi Kirsten Tatlow, ‘True colours’, South China Morning Post, 1 April 2005, A17.

51.Yang Lien-sheng, ‘Historical notes on the Chinese world order’ in John K. Fairbank (ed.), The Chinese world order: Traditional China’s foreign relations, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 27.