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ABSTRACT
This article locates the moment in Chinese history when ethnicity became a subject of scientific concern and an object of social engineering. Specifically, it examines how Han Chinese academicians during the Nanjing decade (1927–37) argued for the necessity of social engineering by appealing to race science. Focusing on a debate between the eugenicist Pan Guangdan and the anthropologist Wu Zelin, it argues that the Nanjing decade witnessed a key moment of ideological convergence in the physical and social sciences. Academicians concerned with national and racial salvation believed in awakening the Chinese population’s racial consciousness, which could only be achieved through rigorous social engineering. To justify the state’s homogenizing claims over ethnic minorities, they appealed to the doctrine of racial homogeneity, capitalized on the increasing cultural authority of scientific empiricism to recruit political allies to their cause, and endeavored to embed the ‘fact’ of ‘race’ from specialized disciplines to political institutions.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Julie Yu-Wen Chen and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I am grateful to Peter Carroll and Melissa Macauley for their extensive guidance. Many thanks to Kenneth Chan, Haydon Cherry, Jiwei Ci, Howard Chiang, Arthur Clement, Yuri Doolan, Frank Dikotter, Norman Joshua, Leung Kai-ping, Jayson Porter, Guangshuo Yang, Ji-Yeon Yuh, Margherita Zanasi, and Amanda Zhang for stimulating conversations and encouragement. Special thanks to Yasser Ali Nasser and Noa Solomon-Auger.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Pan, “Dushu tiyao: Xiandai zhongzu,” 1–6
2. The three principles minzu (民族 Nationalism), minquan (民權 Democracy), and minsheng (民生 People’s Livelihood) served as the foundational political philosophy of the Republican regime.
3. These academics were known as “returned students” – young Chinese who returned to China after studying in Europe, America, or Japan – from the 1910s onward. For a good overview of this phenomenon, see Ye, Seeking Modernity in China’s Name.
4. See for example Turda, “Race, Science, and Eugenics in the Twentieth Century,” 62–79.
5. Here I translate “Zhonghua minzu” as I interpret the authors analyzed in this article intended, as a racial-national biopolitical category inclusive of both the Han majority and non-Han ethnic minorities. Most scholars tend to translate Zhonghua minzu as “the Chinese nation” (For a recent example see Jenco, “Can the Chinese Nation Be One?” and Schneider, Nation and Ethnicity. As this article attempts to show, the idea of racial salvation was inseparable from national rejuvenation, and thus I consider “the Chinese nation” to insufficiently capture this racial dimension.
6. Leibold “Positioning “Minzu” Within Sun Yat-sen’s Discourse of Minzuzhuyi,” 163-213; Leibold, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism; Schneider, Nation and Ethnicity.
7. Dikotter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, 2. See also Pamela Crossley, Orphan Warriors.
8. Leibold, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism, 144.
9. For a good overview of the social engineering movement in Republican China, see Chiang, Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919-1949.
10. Chiang, “Liberating Sex, Knowing Desire,” 56.
11. I credit the phrase psychobiological to Howard Chiang.
12. Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity, 13.
13. Dikotter, Imperfect Conceptions, 4.
14. For a classic study of “scientism” in China, see Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought: 1900-1950.
15. Lam, A Passion for Facts, 2011.
16. For the distinction between racial and cultural nationalists, see Leibold, Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism, 145. For a detailed discussion of factional differences within Chinese academia, see Chung, Struggle for National Survival, 2002. Ye also highlights factional differences and contesting conclusions in the chapter “The Question of Race” of Seeking Modernity in China”s Name, 108-113.
17. See Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation. Pan and Wu would later work together as strong advocates of birth control during their time at the Central Institute of Chinese Minority Nationalities after 1952.
18. Mullaney, “Seeing for the State,” 325–42.
19. Teng, “On Not Looking Chinese,” 49.
20. For a good overview of the emergence of the “population” in early twentieth-century China see Thompson, “The Birth of the Chinese Population.”
21. Jenco, “Can the Chinese Nation Be One?, 4.
22. Chow, “Imagining Boundaries of Blood,” 34–52.
23. Leibold, “Xinhai Remembered,” 1–20.
24. See for example Harrell, “Ethnicity, Local Interests, and the State”; Jenco, “Can the Chinese Nation Be One?”
25. Wang, “Discursive Community and the Genealogy of Scientific Categories,” 80-120.
26. Wang, “Discursive Communities,” 84.
27. Dirlik, Li, and Yen, Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth Century China.
28. Shen, “Scientism in the Twentieth Century,” 120.
29. Wang, “Discursive Communities,” 84–85.
30. Sakamoto, “The Cult of ‘Love and Eugenics,” 361–2. For a good biography of Quentin Pan Guangdan, see Rocha, “Quentin Pan in The China Critic.” Although Pan wrote critiques of Davenport and other Western eugenicists, he frequently translated their work and was invested in scholarship on the differences between races. See for example his translations of Francis Galton. Pan, “Lun zhongzu caipin de buqi,” 7–11.
31. Leo Ou-fan Lee uses this term in Shanghai Modern, 47, to describe Shanghai print culture and the intellectuals dedicated to disseminating “modern” literary, scientific, and political discourses during the Republican period, many of whom were influenced by radical ideas from Euro-America and Japan.
32. Pan, “Lun Zhongguo benwei yu minzuxing” 論中國本位與民族性 [On Sinocentrism and National Character], PGDWJ, vol. 3, 33-34. All articles cited in volume 3 that appear in this paper were originally published in the 1937 collection Pan, Minzu texing yu minzu weisheng. The book was a compilation of articles Pan wrote for various periodicals in the 1920s and 30s.
33. Pan, “Bu tashi de minzu yilun” 不踏實的民族議論 [Impractical Discussions of Minzu], PGDWJ, 34.
34. Pan, “Zhongguo minzu zijiu yundong zhong de renkou wenti” 中國民族自救運動中的人口問題 [The Population Problem in the National Salvation Movement], PGDMZYJWJ, 53. Like PGDWJ, most of the articles in this volume were originally published in the 1920s and 30s.
35. Pan, “Minzu fuxing de xianjue wenti” 民族復興的先決問題 [Prerequisites for National Rejuvenation], PGDWJ, 3, 35.
36. Pan, “Huanjing minzu yu zhidu” 環境, 民族與制度 [Environment, Race, and System], PGDMZYJWJ, 127.
37. Wu, Minzu yanjiu wenji, 433.
38. Although not much information is available on Wu’s time in the United States, Wu’s position on race echoed that of Boas, suggesting that Wu was most likely aware of Boas and his disciplinary tradition. See Ye, Seeking Modernity in China’s Name, 109-110.
39. Wu, Xiandai zhongzu, 15–16.
40. Wu, Xiandai zhongzu, 18.
41. Wu, Xiandai zhongzu, 70.
42. Wu, Xiandai zhongzu, 152.
43. Wu, “Zhongzu de youlie wenti,” 14–15.
44. Pan, “Dushu tiyao: Xiandai zhongzu,” 4–5.
45. For a good discussion of Lamarckism and social Darwinism and their reception in China, see Chung, Struggle for National Survival, 61–83.
46. Pan, “Dangqian minzu wenti de lingyizhong shoufa” 當前民族問題的另一種手法 [Another Way of Confronting the Current Racial Problems], PGDMZYJWJ, 33.
47. Pan, “Lun zixinli de genju” 論自信力的根據 [On the Basis for Self-Confidence], PGDMZYJWJ, 38.
48. Pan, “Xing yu minzu” 性與民族 [Sex and Race], PGDMZYJWJ, 41.
49. Pan, “Wenhua de shengwu xianxiang” 文化的生物現象 [The Biological Manifestations of Culture], PGDWJ, 2, 315.
50. Pan, “Minzu de bingxiang,” 民族的病象 [The Symptoms of Sickness in a National People] in Minzu texing yu minzu weisheng, 267–74.
51. Pan, “Bei Zhongguo yu nan Zhongguo,” 北中國與南中國 [Northern Versus Southern China] in Minzu texing yu minzu weisheng, 210.
52. Pan, “Bei Zhongguo yu nan Zhongguo,” 191.
53. Pan, “Minzu weisheng de chulu,” 民族衛生的出路 [Avenues for Racial Hygiene] PGDWJ, 3, 206-207.
54. Ming and Qing province administered by Beijing, including Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, and parts of Shandong. See Pan, “Bei Zhongguo yu nan Zhongguo,” 197–9.
55. Pan, “Bei Zhongguo yu nan Zhongguo,” 200–201.
56. Chung, “Eugenics in China and Hong Kong: Nationalism and Colonialism, 1890s-1940s,” 269.
57. Hanson, “Robust Northerners and Delicate Southerners.”
58. Wu, “Wenhua biaoge shuoming,” 208–50.
59. Lu, “Hanyu he zhongguo sixiang zhengzai zenme gaibian,” 1-10. Lu Zhiwei received his doctorate in 1920 at the University of Chicago, studying in the departments of psychology and biology. He became president of Yenching in 1934. He was part of an intellectual movement promoting Pinyin in the early-twentieth century.
60. Wu, “Fuzhou danmin diaocha,” 141–54. Wu Gaozi completed his graduate studies in 1934 at the University of Southern California.
61. One curious question beyond the scope of this essay is the eminence of Pan despite his eugenic views, which were ostensibly rejected post-1949. Wu’s position appears to be more compatible with, if not part of, leftist position on Chinese society. He has, however, faded into insignificance, while Pan has been heralded as one of Tsinghua”s “four greatest philosophers.”
62. Wu, Preface, 3.
63. Ye, Seeking Modernity in China’s Name, 107.
64. Wu, Meiguo ren duo heiren, youtairen he dongfangren de taidu.
65. Wu did not use the term “Yellow” as he recognized that South Asians, although “essentially part of the white race,” were nevertheless oppressed in America due to a lack of cultural development.
66. Wu, Meiguo ren dui heiren, youtairen he dongfangren de taidu, 268-292.
67. Wu, “Zi xu” [Preface], 5. The translation of minzu is highly dependent on the context. As the compilation is about his anthropological studies of the Miao people in Guizhou, and he extensively discusses ethnic minorities “shaoshu minzu” I have opted to translate this term as referring racial groups.
68. Wu, Preface, 2.
69. Wu, Preface, 5.
70. Wu”s use of minzu here is messy and undefined. Above, I translate the term “minzu jiaoyu” as racial-national education as I interpret Wu to be referring to the collective Chinese race. Here I translate xiongdi minzu as “brotherhood of ethnicities” as I interpret Wu to be describing individual Chinese ethnicities comprising the Chinese race. The overlapping usage of minzu in reference to race and ethnicity should be further researched.
71. Wu would later be the founder of Museum of Anthropology at Tsinghua University and China’s first Museum of Ethnology just before his death.
72. By scientistic I mean a worldview based on scientism, an outlook that strives to understand reality based on quantification and categorization.
73. Dikotter, Imperfect Conceptions, 112.
74. Pan, Yousheng yu kangzhan 優生與抗戰 [Eugenics and the War of Resistance], PGDWJ, vol. 5, 131.
75. Pan, Yousheng yu kangzhan, 208–15.
76. Sun, Guofu quanji, 1:2, 5; 2:397, 404.
77. Zhe, “Wujingtianze, shizheshengcun,” 3. The phrase tongbao, still widely used today as “fellow citizens,” when translated literally means “common cells.”
78. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation.
79. Greenhalgh, Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China.
80. Given space constraints, this essay has centered race rather than gender or class as the primary category of analysis. Certainly, gendered and class concerns such as fertility control and selective breeding were inseparable with those of race, and it is imperative that scholars continue to explore these interrelated themes in future research.
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Matthew Wong Foreman
Matthew Wong Foreman is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Northwestern University, USA. His research focuses on the coevolution of science, nationalism, and cultural identity in modern China.