China

China

Eugenic theories gained popularity in 1920s China surrounding reproductive issues such as birth control. Eugenics was advocated for tackling the pervading social problems of overpopulation and venereal disease. Many intellectuals shared in some of the eugenic goals of racial betterment, which they combined with advocating feminism, free marriage, sexuality, and individualism. The most well-known translator, writer, and editor of The Eugenic Journal in China was Pan Guangdan, a Professor of Sociology at Qinghua University. Following birth control advocate Margaret Sanger’s visit to China in 1922, during the 1930s eugenics became part of birth control campaigns and part of a national hygiene program. While Pan Guangdan’s eugenic thought was more conservative and nationalistic, radical sexologist Zhang Jingsheng was also an ardent eugenicist. Prominent gynecologists and public health officials such as Yang Chongrui promoted birth control in their clinical practice, but were also believers in the potential of eugenics for racial betterment for saving mothers from multiple births. Such efforts were not based on any coercive consideration, but rather rested on the utopic potential of eugenics. Eugenic marriage laws and contraception and sterilization of mentally-disabled people were passed by the Guomindang in 1945.

Eugenics in The People’s Republic of China
In 1949 with the final victory of the Communist Party over the nationalist camp the People’s Republic of China was established. After 1949 eugenic ideas were condemned for their inherent class bias. Despite the tensions between eugenics and Marxism, some form of eugenic thought still persisted in the Marriage Law of the 1950s, according to which some people suffering from certain venereal diseases, impotence, or mental disorders were deemed unfit for marriage. But following Mao Zedong’s pronatalist policies, negative eugenics, and contraception became incompatible within socialist thought. Eugenicists and birth control advocates such as Pan Guangdan and Yang Chongrui were denounced as right-wing reactionaries during the Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976. As a result of Mao’s policies, the Chinese population increased dramatically.

In the post-Mao era, eugenics resurfaced in conjunction with modernization in the much-debated “One Child Policy” of population control (1979), which was marred in controversies over instances of forced sterilization and abortion, and strict controls over women’s reproductive bodies. Nowadays these eugenics advocates have been revived as important contributors to Chinese history to politically justify these policies. The complete works of Pan Guangdan are available in multiple volumes and have been widely published. Further re-articulations of eugenics occurred in the 1995 law restricting births related to genetic defects, which also supports pre-marital checkups inquiring into hereditary diseases pertaining to mental health and venereal disease. These so-called inferior births were strongly discouraged in favour of sterilization and abortion. In a general sense, eugenics as a notion is still used in China today to denote a science of healthy birth and most books on pregnancies and baby care contain eugenics in their content or title.

Contemporary implications of eugenics
The social problems associated with this contemporary use of eugenics and contested population policies include the gender imbalance resulting from selective abortions that privilege male babies, and the abandonment of babies with mental health problems. These issues have lately made headlines: a safety hatch designed for forsaken babies in Guangzhou was recently closed due to the overwhelming numbers of babies abandoned there, most of them mentally disabled. Recent relaxations of the “One Child Policy” to allow a second child for parents with no siblings has also brought back into the spotlight reproductive issues. Three decades since its implementation, former Malthusian overpopulation fears have given way to an aging population whose labour force is shrinking as the retiring population increases.

Advances into genetic research in China—including the Beijing Genomic Institute’s innovative cognitive genomic project using brain mapping—have raised ethical concerns. These include fears about the eugenic implications of researching intelligence and anxieties that this genomic data would be employed for reproductive purposes through artificial reproductive technologies, selection of particular good genes, and possible creation of super babies. Already the institute’s collection of genetic data has led to the identification of gene mutations permitting adaptation to high altitude environments, which were found to be more common among Tibetans than among Chinese living in Beijing. These new developments suggest that the eugenic implications of reproduction are not a thing of the past but are very much still relevant today.

-Mirela David

  • Chung, Y. J. (2002) Struggle for National Survival: Eugenics in Sino-Japanese Contexts, 1896-1945. New York: Routledge.

  • Dikötter, F. (1998). Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Dikötter, F. (1995). Sex, Culture and Modernity in China: Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican Period. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

China

Eugenic theories gained popularity in 1920s China surrounding reproductive issues such as birth control. Eugenics was advocated for tackling the pervading social problems of overpopulation and venereal disease. Many intellectuals shared in some of the eugenic goals of racial betterment, which they combined with advocating feminism, free marriage, sexuality, and individualism. The most well-known translator, writer, and editor of The Eugenic Journal in China was Pan Guangdan, a Professor of Sociology at Qinghua University. Following birth control advocate Margaret Sanger’s visit to China in 1922, during the 1930s eugenics became part of birth control campaigns and part of a national hygiene program. While Pan Guangdan’s eugenic thought was more conservative and nationalistic, radical sexologist Zhang Jingsheng was also an ardent eugenicist. Prominent gynecologists and public health officials such as Yang Chongrui promoted birth control in their clinical practice, but were also believers in the potential of eugenics for racial betterment for saving mothers from multiple births. Such efforts were not based on any coercive consideration, but rather rested on the utopic potential of eugenics. Eugenic marriage laws and contraception and sterilization of mentally-disabled people were passed by the Guomindang in 1945.

Eugenics in The People’s Republic of China
In 1949 with the final victory of the Communist Party over the nationalist camp the People’s Republic of China was established. After 1949 eugenic ideas were condemned for their inherent class bias. Despite the tensions between eugenics and Marxism, some form of eugenic thought still persisted in the Marriage Law of the 1950s, according to which some people suffering from certain venereal diseases, impotence, or mental disorders were deemed unfit for marriage. But following Mao Zedong’s pronatalist policies, negative eugenics, and contraception became incompatible within socialist thought. Eugenicists and birth control advocates such as Pan Guangdan and Yang Chongrui were denounced as right-wing reactionaries during the Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976. As a result of Mao’s policies, the Chinese population increased dramatically.

In the post-Mao era, eugenics resurfaced in conjunction with modernization in the much-debated “One Child Policy” of population control (1979), which was marred in controversies over instances of forced sterilization and abortion, and strict controls over women’s reproductive bodies. Nowadays these eugenics advocates have been revived as important contributors to Chinese history to politically justify these policies. The complete works of Pan Guangdan are available in multiple volumes and have been widely published. Further re-articulations of eugenics occurred in the 1995 law restricting births related to genetic defects, which also supports pre-marital checkups inquiring into hereditary diseases pertaining to mental health and venereal disease. These so-called inferior births were strongly discouraged in favour of sterilization and abortion. In a general sense, eugenics as a notion is still used in China today to denote a science of healthy birth and most books on pregnancies and baby care contain eugenics in their content or title.

Contemporary implications of eugenics
The social problems associated with this contemporary use of eugenics and contested population policies include the gender imbalance resulting from selective abortions that privilege male babies, and the abandonment of babies with mental health problems. These issues have lately made headlines: a safety hatch designed for forsaken babies in Guangzhou was recently closed due to the overwhelming numbers of babies abandoned there, most of them mentally disabled. Recent relaxations of the “One Child Policy” to allow a second child for parents with no siblings has also brought back into the spotlight reproductive issues. Three decades since its implementation, former Malthusian overpopulation fears have given way to an aging population whose labour force is shrinking as the retiring population increases.

Advances into genetic research in China—including the Beijing Genomic Institute’s innovative cognitive genomic project using brain mapping—have raised ethical concerns. These include fears about the eugenic implications of researching intelligence and anxieties that this genomic data would be employed for reproductive purposes through artificial reproductive technologies, selection of particular good genes, and possible creation of super babies. Already the institute’s collection of genetic data has led to the identification of gene mutations permitting adaptation to high altitude environments, which were found to be more common among Tibetans than among Chinese living in Beijing. These new developments suggest that the eugenic implications of reproduction are not a thing of the past but are very much still relevant today.

-Mirela David

  • Chung, Y. J. (2002) Struggle for National Survival: Eugenics in Sino-Japanese Contexts, 1896-1945. New York: Routledge.

  • Dikötter, F. (1998). Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Dikötter, F. (1995). Sex, Culture and Modernity in China: Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican Period. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.