Microbic Mass Destruction - Biological Warfare and Epidemic Prevention in Republican China

Abstract

In the first half of the twentieth century, the possibility of weaponizing bacteria and waging a biological war became a frequently discussed topic in Europe, America, and Asia. This article traces the discourse on bacteriological warfare (xijunzhan) before, during, and in the aftermath of the Second Sino-Japanese War and puts it in the historical context of the development of biomedical sciences, epidemic prevention, and governance in Republican China. The discussion of biowarfare might be understood as an expression of both the skepticism about the scientization as well as technologization of warfare and the fear of epidemics ravaging China at the time. Considering the prevalence of epidemics in China during the first half of the twentieth century, the horror scenario of biological warfare did not necessarily lead to the direct expansion of or change in actual anti-epidemic measures during the Republican era. However, the very possibility of bacteriological attacks increased the sensitivity and knowledge of decision makers, military personnel, and large parts of the population regarding the threat of infectious disease and epidemics. The dread of enemies dropping vessels filled with disease vectors helped to justify the promulgation and implementation of hygiene protocols, vaccine campaigns, and microbiological knowledge.

Keywords:

• Germ warfare
• bacteriological warfare
• history of science
• hygiene
• public health
• Modern China
• Second Sino-Japanese War

The man who escaped smallpox went down before scarlet fever. The man who was immune to yellow fever was carried away by cholera; and if he were immune to that, too, the Black Death, which was the bubonic plague, swept him away. For it was these bacteria, and germs, and microbes, and bacilli, cultured in the laboratories of the West, that had come down upon China in the rain of glass.

Jack London: The Unparalleled Invasion (London and Métraux 2009: 135)

In 1910, Jack London published the short story The Unparalleled Invasion that narrates how, out of fear of China’s uncontrollable population growth, a concerted attack by “all the Western nations and some few from the East” with various bacteriological bombs dropped by airplanes entirely extinguishes the Chinese people. A devastated and emptied China is repopulated through “the happy intermingling of [settlers with various] nationalities” which becomes nothing less than “a tremendous and successful experiment in cross-fertilization” (London and Métraux 2009: 137).¹ Only a few years later, during the First World War, the German army employed bacteriological attacks, mostly to sabotage Allied supply lines. The possibility of weaponizing bacteria and biological warfare has been a hotly debated topic among politicians, scientists, and members of the military, as well as in the popular press around the globe, including China, ever since. The Geneva Protocol, a widely recognized international disarmament treaty, signed in 1925, explicitly prohibits the use of poisonous gases and “bacterial methods of warfare.” While the Republic of China officially acceded in 1929, the Japanese government never ratified the protocol, despite the fact that it was among the initial signatories.

It seems that London’s story has never been translated into Chinese but it anticipates a deep-seated and widespread fear of biological warfare and presents a scenario that appeared to be persuasive to Chinese scientists, government officials, military personnel, journalists, and other writers in China from the late 1920s to the early 1950s.² This article traces the discourse on bacteriological warfare (xijunzhan 細菌戰, also, more generally, translated as germ or biological warfare) before, during, and in the aftermath of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and puts it in the historical context of the development of biomedical sciences, epidemic prevention, and governance in Republican China.³ In particular, the discourse on germ warfare illustrates the change in concepts about hygiene, from a governmental technique of regulating and disciplining humans and their bodies to one of defending Chinese lives against hostile bacilli. The discussion of biowarfare might be understood as an expression of both the skepticism about the scientization as well as technologization of warfare and the fear of epidemics ravaging China at the time. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, and other epidemics affected every part of China and took many lives, with unprecedented frequency (Yu 2014: 91–105). Considering the prevalence of epidemics in China during that time, the horror scenario of biological warfare did not necessarily lead to the direct expansion of or change in actual anti-epidemic measures during the Republican era. However, the very possibility of bacteriological attacks increased the sensitivity and knowledge of decision makers, military personnel, and large parts of the population regarding the threat of infectious disease and epidemics. The dread of enemies dropping vessels filled with disease vectors helped to justify the promulgation and implementation of hygiene protocols, vaccine campaigns, and microbiological knowledge.⁴

Epidemic prevention and hygiene education was an issue high on the agendas of politicians, administrators, military officers, educators, intellectuals, scientists, and medical practitioners in China from the early twentieth century onwards. Influenced by popular similar notions in the United States, Europe, and Japan, they viewed a healthy and strong population as essential for an economically prosperous and political sovereign nation. The fear of infectious diseases was immense and, partially under international pressure, the Nationalist government under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek took great efforts to contain the outbreaks of plague, smallpox, and cholera. Health, cleanliness, and hygiene became signifiers of progress, rationality, civilization, and “modernity” and were no longer merely private matters but the joint effort of every member of the nation (Barns and Watt 2014; Bu 2017; Rogarski 2004; Yip 1995).

Hygiene was also an essential characteristic of the emerging concept of citizenship, arguably culminating during the New Life Movement in the 1930s: Chiang and his associates sought to transfer military-style health discipline to the civilian population and promoted personal cleanliness, as well as upright behavior, and linked it to a moralist national ideology (Culp 2006: 529–54; Dirlik 1975: 954–59). Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei points out that, during the Republican era, weisheng 衛生—which literally means “guarding life” but is commonly translated as “hygiene,” “preserving health,” or “sanitation”—was regarded as a personal matter with moral and patriotic implications, rather than as warfare against germs (Lei 2009). On the other hand, practitioners of biomedicine, modernistic officials, and military officers increasingly gave significance to such scientific disciplines as bacteriology and immunology. The New Life Movement particularly included hygiene campaigns aimed at eradicating insects, illustrating the epistemological development of weisheng (Rogaski 2002: 400). With the introduction of bacteriological knowledge and, subsequently, immunology in China, weisheng increasingly became a defense technology against deadly “invisible microorganisms” (Wu 1935: 42), without replacing the former connotation of discipline. Hygiene came to be more broadly defined, including not only personal rituals of order and cleanliness but also the collective preservation of health and prevention of contagious diseases and epidemics (weisheng fangyi 衛生防疫), based on the germ theory of diseases.

Public health policies allowed for an unprecedented interference with the lives and bodies of Chinese citizens. Acting on the authority of scientific hygiene and sanitation standards, the state promoted a corresponding behavior, coerced people into compliance if necessary, and legitimized its actions and very presence. With the emerging discourse on germ warfare and the fear of bacteriological attacks, the role of hygiene extended further. Officials, decision makers, medical practitioners, and scientists—particularly those who were part of the army or interested in the military—were no longer only worried about “natural” diseases that befell an allegedly backward China, but about a specific politics of eliminating the Chinese population or even “race” (see also Andrews 1997: 143). Disease prevention through hygiene (increasingly including mass vaccination) became part of a biopolitics of security, which sought to protect the physical health of the population and life as such from foreign attacks with epidemic pathogens.⁵ The greatest threat to the Chinese population was Japanese army officers and scientists who, based on racist ideals, deemed Chinese life as expendable, and experimented with biological weapons of mass destruction. While not fully verified at the time, first reports about the Japanese military conducting experiments with pathogens and infectious diseases and attempting to induce epidemics among the Chinese population appeared shortly after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The rumors and later confirmed cases of Japanese biological warfare rekindled pre-war discussion about bacteriological weapons and renewed the fear of extinction of the Chinese “race” or even humankind. The scare of an enemy power drawing on deadly microbes to attack Chinese lives continued to exist until the early 1950s: during the Korean War, the government of the newly established People’s Republic of China accused the United States of deploying bacteriological weapons. While these allegations were unsubstantiated, the Chinese communist leaders successfully conducted the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign, which not only mobilized millions to fight against diseases and epidemics but also encouraged the population’s allegiance and loyalty to the new regime.

1 The Specter of Bacteriological Warfare

Although political, military, and specialized scientific circles in China were previously aware of the theoretical ability to use bacteria as weapons, the issue appeared in earnest in the early 1930s. A number of articles in various military and popular civilian magazines discussed the future threat of such an unconventional war, often with and in comparison to chemical weapons, pending another large-scale deployment after their devastating use during the First World War (see for instance Jinfu 1936). In 1933, the influential newspaper Shenbao published a lengthy article titled “Bacteriological and Gas Warfare in the Next World War,” which posited that germ warfare was nothing less than a threat to human life itself. While most of the article dealt in detail with chemical warfare, it also attested to biological weapons’ immense, and possibly uncontainable, destructive potential, which might affect a civilian population even after the war. Moreover, it remarks, “If poisonous gas enables the attack on the people of an enemy state, then one can truly speak of bacteria as a weapon to indirectly attack the entire humankind.” The article ends with the emotional statement that, with the Japanese invasion of northeast China/Manchuria in 1931, following the so-called Mukden Incident, and the bombardment of Shanghai a year later, the Second World War had already begun. Moreover, the pain of these Japanese attacks was a harbinger of the much more horrific gas and bacteriological warfare soon to come: “Gigantic bombs will smash thriving cities, gas and bacteria will wipe out all life everywhere, resulting in dead ruins and ghosts wandering in the wilderness, filling the space between heaven and earth with silence. An unprecedented and unrepeatable history of humankind’s pain lies in front of us” (Jibin 1933: 88).

Prior to the Second Sino-Japanese War, many other books, essays, and articles particularly in popular scientific as well as military journals, whether translations or original contributions, evoked the threat of biological warfare. Albeit less apocalyptically than the Shenbao article, they assigned to this new and most troublesome addition to military arsenals around the globe adjectives like “frightening,” “ghastly,” “fearsome,” “terrifying,” and “horrible.” An article on the topic in the official journal Military Magazine, noted, “As science steadily leaps forward, the power and rapidness of weapons increases. The fierceness of future wars is truly unimaginable!” (Xu 1935: 221) The translator of the article, Xu Fuguan, was a historian, intellectual, and army officer who held various posts as aide in Nationalist military command and administration institutions, and who was a close confidant of Chiang Kai-shek. With the steady improvement in bacteriology, the text continued, it would be easy to discover bacteria that caused highly infectious diseases and thus affect both warfare and military organizations. As an example, during the First World War, Romanian cavalry units were infected with glanders by German agents, which led to research on bacteriological weapons in a number of countries. However, the article also highlighted the limitations of using microorganisms as weapons, particularly with regard to the delivery of deadly germs, which can be both difficult and imprecise. Furthermore, the expertise of hygienists, microbiologists, and bacteriologists also increased, and facilitated the development of effective countermeasures. The article addressed most of the major themes in the debate, including the actual threat potential of biological weapons and the German (and sometimes Austrian) deployment of disease-causing bacteria in Italy, Russia or Romania during the First World War. Moreover, while emphasizing the real possibility of germ warfare, it addressed the problems of delivery and other serious restrictions (see also He 1936: 6–12; Jiezhou 1934: 3–6; Tang 1934: 39–43).

Other texts dealt in detail with various pathogens and epidemics, and their transmission and effect on either humans or animals, concentrating on the potential of certain infectious diseases as deliberately applied weapons of war. Cholera, typhoid, and dysentery are water-borne diseases that affect the intestines; therefore the threat of enemy troops contaminating drinking water was an obvious danger. According to a small booklet on bacteriological warfare, particularly the deployment of cholera bacteria was effective since they “easily cause an epidemic, with a high mortality rate and a short incubation period” (Chen 1942: 8). Other germs were directly and indirectly transmitted by rats and insects, including flies, worms, and mosquitos. Bacteria and other infections caused by microorganisms could also be contracted through food, infected wounds, or airborne droplets, as in the case of diphtheria, smallpox, and scarlet fever. In addition to bubonic plague, cholera, and typhoid, anthrax and glanders, which affected military animals, such as dogs, horses, or doves, as well as domestic animals used for military food supply, were considered the most possible and dangerous diseases initiated by humans during a war. While human agents, directly or secretly, could infect animals or poison water and food, other methods to cause epidemics included bullets, grenades, and other weapons smeared with germs. However, vessels containing vectors that were dropped from the air on enemy troops or behind enemy lines were ultimately considered much more effective.⁶

In July 1934, the renowned British journalist and historian Henry Wickham Steed published an article in the popular journal The Nineteenth Century and After, in which he reported the German air force’s development of biological weapons and their plans to release highly contagious pathogens in the ventilation systems of the undergrounds in London and Paris. German officials and scientists denied Steed’s allegations, which were based on partially disclosed German documents in his possession. The feasibility of the attacks was doubtful and only the French military, and perhaps the British secret service, seem to have taken his report seriously. German agents, in a few verified and many more unverified cases, clandestinely attempted to infect horses and cattle in the service of Allied armies with glanders and perhaps even tried to spread the plague in St. Petersburg during the First World War. While secret and unofficial research on biological warfare existed prior to and during the Second World War in Germany, Hitler explicitly forbade the development of such weapons and research never had a serious impact. Nevertheless, Steed’s publication instilled fear among the wider public around the globe and urged Allied governments to develop their own biological weapons programs (Hugh‐Jones 1992: 379–402).

Chinese journals, too, widely discussed Steed’s article and the alleged German plans of spreading highly contagious germs in France and Britain, and it seems to have triggered the whole discourse on bacteriological weapons, or at least caused its intensification, in the 1930s. Sheng Tongsheng, for instance, a German-educated veterinarian and microbiologist, discussed “The Feasibility of Bacteriological Warfare” by reference to Steed in a contribution to the popular science magazine Kexue Shijie (Sheng 1936: 39–41). One article that quoted him was a translation from the French magazine La Science et la Vie, titled “Bacteriological Warfare and its Technical Feasibility.” It reported on the French military’s experiments to develop methods for the airborne transmission of germs, led by Auguste Trillat, the director of the Naval Chemical Research Laboratory. Trillat, an expert in aerosols who coined the term “microbial cloud” (xijunwu 細菌霧), deemed the alleged German metro attack plans unlikely and very difficult to implement, yet theoretically possible (Li 1935: 211–16). Consequently, the French military amplified its already existing research on germ warfare, and between 1936 and 1940 it possessed the most advanced program regarding the delivery of bacteriological weapons.⁷

Military and civilian observers around the globe viewed biological warfare as strongly connected to both chemical weapons and the air force. Steed’s article referred to the Luft-Gas-Angriff (Air Gas Attack) department of the German ministry of defense as the originator of all German bacteriological attack plans. Although such a department likely never existed, it was indeed chemical engineers and members of the air force, rather than microbiologists, who occupied themselves with the matter and who sought to transfer their experience with the delivery of mustard gas and other poisons to germ warfare and biological aerosols (Hugh-Jones 1992: 388). The suspected analogy between chemical and biological weapons played a role in the Chinese discourse as well (see for instance Anonymous 1941: 125) but the focus was, similar to that in Germany, France, and other countries, even more on the airborne delivery of both aerosols and vessels containing bacteria or other microorganisms. Since the deadly epidemic potential of certain germs was beyond doubt, using bacteriological weapons was, militarily speaking, a problem of (aerial) delivery. At least in the 1930s, magazines such as the Journal for Air Defense (Fangkong zazhi 防空雜誌), Air Defense (Fangkong 防空), Air Force (Kongjun 空軍), as well as the Journal for Aviation (Hangkong zazhi 航空雜誌) strongly contributed to the media presence of the topic in China. Referring to both German bacteriological attacks during the First World War and alleged plans to release germs in the Paris and London undergrounds, the article “Bacteriological Warfare and the Future War,” for instance, depicted such attacks as one aspect of the increasing role of air forces internationally (see also Figure 1). War was unavoidable, the author claimed, and “the air force will become the main element of an all-round war on multiple levels” (Dizhou 1935: 186). The devastating potential of military aviation included, in addition to the bombing of cities, the dropping of vessels containing germs or vectors—which might be combined with poisonous gas to make them even more efficient. “During the next war, the combination of chemical and biological weapons with aircrafts will be the most important element to quickly annihilate one’s enemy and gain victory” (Dizhou 1935: 186). This and similar articles also pondered the myriad factors to consider in airborne bacteriological warfare—whether it be in the form of germ “bombs” or aerosols—including air pressure, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric electricity.⁸

Figure 1 “The Nazis’ germ warfare” (Guoshedang de xijuzhan 國社黨的細菌戰), Guowen zhoubao 國文周報, 1935. The caricature allegedly derived from a Soviet source. The text in the image reads “WAR BACILLUS.”

Most Chinese authors of the time concluded that bacteriological warfare was only an abstract military scenario, albeit one who’s realization was possible and should not be neglected. Still, they argued that the use of germs in war was problematic and that successfully inducing an epidemic was dependent upon the complex interplay of many factors, including climate, outdoor temperature, and season. Outside a host, germs quickly lose their harmful potential; moreover, from a tactical point of view, their varying incubation periods made it difficult to calculate military actions. Armies using bacteriological weapons always had to be vigilant not to expose, infect, and eventually kill their own troops. Particularly military journals generally demanded that the army’s leadership as well as military medical personnel needed to pay full attention to bacteriological war and prepare for it by recruiting the best available specialists. One Military Magazine article even claimed that this issue determined the future of China’s military (Nancun 1934b: 60–63). Military medical doctors and hygiene specialists, such as the later head of the National Health Administration in Chongqing, Jin Baoshan, viewed military hygiene to be “crucial to increase the fighting strength of the army” (Jin 1935: 12). They referred to the threat of biological warfare to emphasize that it was crucial to expand the epidemic prevention infrastructure particularly in the army.

Almost all reports of the time which focused on germ warfare also identified hygiene as a necessary preventive instrument to defend soldiers, the population, and even humankind against deadly, anthropogenic epidemics. Most articles concluded that, in order to withstand a bacteriological attack, hygiene and medicine in the population had to be significantly improved. Germs were tiny parasitic organisms that needed a living substrate to survive; therefore, if the hygienic knowledge among the population was sufficient and the military possessed refined equipment, the authors of these texts argued, the actual effectiveness of biological weapons was not very high (see for instance Sheng 1936: 41; Zhuru 1935: 35–40). Hygiene overlapped with, and even encompassed, the idea of epidemic prevention that included a plethora of measures. Members of the military, such as the later general staff officer Jiang Gongquan, and contributions in official military periodicals, displayed confidence that gas masks, mosquito nets, vaccines, disinfectants, water filters, steaming devices, and other sanitation measures forestalled the outbreak and spread of transmissible diseases and thus limited the threat of bacteriological attacks (Jiang 1934: 63–68; Jiming 1934: 128–36).⁹ While it is unknown whether Chinese military or political decision makers truly expected an enemy deployment of bacteriological weapons, they acknowledged the need to be prepared and placed great confidence in hygiene.

2 The War Against Germs

With the outbreak of the Second World War in Asia in 1937, and then in Europe in 1939, the fear of actual bacteriological attacks heightened in China, and discussions increasingly switched from the theoretical possibility of germ warfare to ways of guarding and protecting against germs and preventing epidemics. Many Chinese commentators were fully confident that catching rats and killing vectors, as well as other hygienic measures, enabled scientific specialists and the Chinese people in general to withstand hostile germs (Huang 1941: 22–23). One author proclaimed: “These evil bastards of germs! Coming to fester our skin and flesh? But we are not afraid and don’t run! We use science to resist, and united we attack head-on!” (Anonymous 1942: 24). Chinese observers assumed that Germany, France, Britain, the United States, Canada, and Japan were secretly developing biological weapons, and some were sure they would be brought to action during the war. Initially, alleged German plans were again at the center of attention, but the news of actual Japanese biological warfare in China soon dominated the discussion.

In 1938, the popular magazine Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌) published a translation from the German military journal Deutsche Wehr, which introduced bacteriological warfare as an “unprecedented tactic” without any prior history and experience. The article argued that there were in fact many dangers and difficulties to consider if one wanted to use germ weapons. First, there was the issue of finding the most effective transmittable disease; the author identified plague as most suitable, but anthrax and glanders (against animals) were also worth considering. Second, there was the question of how to infect the enemy, particularly since atmospheric and other environmental conditions could inhibit the spread of any epidemic significantly. According to the article, bacteriological weapons could only be used against noncombatants since using such weapons close to the front easily risked an infection of one’s own troops. Moreover, other reasons, such as the “resilience of a people” could also prevent a man-made epidemic. The best (and easiest) defense against bacteriological attacks was public hygiene and an effective disease prevention organization, including urban sanitation and food safety, particularly “in places such as factories, barracks, military camps, and public institutions, [requiring] the close cooperation of political and military authorities” (Zhong 1938: 49). The final factor to consider was fear; a bacterial attack might not be effective in creating casualties, but it could completely undermine the morale and resistance of a population. The article concluded by warning not to exaggerate the power of bacteriological weapons, but then demanded preparation for the worst case. The template for the translation derived from the American journal Living Age, and was a retranslation (Zhong 1938: 47–49).¹⁰

A different, shorter version of the article consisted of both an English text and a Chinese translation, and was titled “Germany Plans a Microbe War,” and emphasized that the plague bacillus was perhaps the most effective pathogen for germ warfare. However, it stated, “We must study what effect the seasons have on the efficiency of certain epidemics.” While asserting “[a]eroplanes will prove the best weapon in microbe warfare because they permit of several ways of spreading germs,” this version of the article also emphasized “the nature of the soil, and social conditions, also must be taken into consideration when choosing the kind of epidemics to be spread from the air.” So as to leave no doubt, the Chinese translator placed a short paragraph at the beginning of the article in which he denounced germ warfare as inhumane and cold-blooded (Guangbi 1939: 61–63).¹¹

Apart from the moral issues, there were also numerous doubts that bacteriological warfare was feasible and whether releasing germs against enemy soldiers and civilians was truly effective militarily. One of the most pointed objections appeared in the widely read popular science journal Science Pictorial (Kexue huabao). While deploring the misuse of engineers, chemists, and biologists for military purposes, the article “Discussing Bacteriological Warfare” argued that, in the history of humankind, moral considerations had never held anyone back from seeking the most devastating weapon available (Muchun 1942). However, despite widely circulating fearmongering, the use of germ weapons was hard to accomplish and not imminent. Referring to the research results concerning biological warfare from the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, which took place in Washington in 1922, the article first argued that “bacteria, used as weapons, can never be limited to one place. Second, cholera and typhoid infections can be prevented by disinfecting drinking water. Third, contagious diseases, such as plague, can severely harm both sides if used as weapons and there is nothing more dangerous. Fourth, the danger of typhus is exaggerated and not as high as many claim. Fifth, modern hygiene equipment can prevent infectious diseases from spreading” (Muchun 1942: 284). The article emphasized that people had medicine as a defensive measure and hygiene as a preventive arm to contain transmissible diseases. In fact, by the time of First World War, there was no longer the terror of epidemics, since both the French and German armies had used hygiene measures to significantly reduce the number of soldiers dying from infectious diseases. During a plague outbreak in Punjab, India, in 1924, only six British soldiers fell ill among hundreds of cases, demonstrating the adage “cleanliness is the best prevention.” According to the article, the fear of bacterial warfare was obscure and unsubstantiated—unless the fantasies of some authors were to come true or some sort of “super bacteria” (chao xijun 超細菌) suddenly appear. Biological weapons were ineffective and strategically useless since vectors or other methods for delivering germs were imprecise and unreliable and, in particular, neither bacteria nor toxins produced from bacteria were able to resist great heat. The author argued that the cause of any epidemic outbreak was very complex and, therefore, fearing the secret deployment of germs by an enemy was unfounded. “Therefore, we can clearly understand that bacteriological warfare is just a fantasy of the future” (Muchun 1942: 286).

Nonetheless, as early as the Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, reports of actual Japanese experiments and attacks with bacteriological weapons appeared, and warnings to be on guard concerning the quality of water were issued (Anonymous 1937). In 1938, because they had heard rumors about Japanese military planes spreading cholera and typhoid fever, residents in Xi’an demanded vaccines from the members of a League of Nations epidemic prevention team that was active there at the time (Brazelton 2019a: 61). In the following year, the Yunnan-based journal Wartime Knowledge (Zhanshi zhishi) reported of the Japanese “insidious scheme” (duji 毒计) to kill not only officers and soldiers but also Chinese civilians. The author, Zhao Jianzhong, rejected Japanese accusations that the Chinese army had used gas and biological weapons themselves, and argued that these accusations served the purpose to conceal Japanese atrocities. These included the contamination of drinking water with germs, and the mass infection of the Chinese population with tuberculosis bacilli particularly to physically weaken able-bodied men and prevent any resistance against the Japanese invasion, Zhao alleged. Moreover, as a bacteriological experiment, Chinese collaborators in Japanese service supposedly injected their compatriots in the Northeast provinces (Manchuria), Inner Mongolia, and other occupied territories with a germ that caused people to lose the ability to speak, turning them into mute and submissive puppets (yaba 啞吧).

The author admitted that there was no proof for these accusations apart from implicit indications in newspapers and the confessions of captured collaborators. He emphasized that these reports had to be treated with caution since they could be deliberately exaggerated Japanese propaganda meant to instill fear behind the Chinese front line. Nevertheless, germs were a “bloodless weapon” and another “slow way of killing” the Chinese people similar to opium, morphine, and heroin. Zhao forcefully stated that it was “obviously the tactic of the Japanese imperialists not only to extinguish China but also annihilate the Chinese race.” With fierce bacteriological weapons, the “Japanese bandits” sought to “eradicate the whole Chinese nation.” To defend themselves, the Chinese had to destroy all enemy agents and traitors who attempted to release deadly germs and, implicitly, Zhao demanded that the Chinese military should also use bacteriological weapons by “fighting poison with poison” (Zhao 1939: n.p.). More importantly, however, his article listed various hygienic measures for preventing the outbreak of any epidemic and transmission of bacilli sent by the enemy: refrain from eating unheated food, keep clothes and foodstuff clean, wash hands often, shower and clean the body regularly, kill any possible vectors, and see a doctor and get an injection once sick. Finally, Zhao demanded that the government pay attention to the universal availability of medicine and the implementation of hygiene standards to protect the health of the people (Zhao 1939: n.p.).

Zhao’s claims were not unsubstantiated since, during the war in China, the Japanese army set up several units with over two thousand personnel, disguised as epidemic prevention and water purification centers, to conduct biomedical research and develop the use of biological weapons (Zhu 1996: 129). The largest and most notorious of these was Unit 731, which army surgeon Ishii Shiro secretly established in Harbin to perform experiments on living, and often conscious, Chinese and other prisoners. These experiments included vivisections and invasive surgery, frostbite tests, forced pregnancies, and the deliberate infection of test subjects with syphilis, gonorrhea, tularemia, typhus, smallpox, and other highly infectious pathogens. At least one Japanese researcher also experimented with tuberculosis but the scope Zhao claimed in his article is unverified (Harris 1994: 63–64). Unit 731, as well as other smaller units (Unit 100 in Changchun, Unit 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 1855 in Beijing), also produced and secretly tested bombs containing fleas as well as aerosols with anthrax, plague, and cholera germs on the Chinese population, causing thousands—possibly tens of thousands—of deaths. In 1940, for instance, the Japanese reportedly contaminated grain with fleas which carried the pest bacillus in Ningbo. Since Chinese authorities discovered the attack relatively quickly, and were able to take countermeasures in the form of quarantines and vaccinations, the number of people that were infected and died remained under one hundred. The most devastating use of bacilli as biological weapon in north China took place along the Wei River in the spring of 1943. After heavy rains, Japanese troops contaminated local water supplies with cholera germs, causing a lasting epidemic in Shandong and Hubei with over 400,000 deaths, according to some estimations which take into account the long-lasting effect of the cholera pathogen in the region (Watt 2014: 296–97). An earlier cholera epidemic in Yunnan, in 1942, was also attributed to the Japanese army, but the National Epidemic Prevention Bureau found that it most likely originated in Burma, rebutting the suspicion of a Japanese bacteriological attack (Brazelton 2019a: 88–89).

The atrocities of Unit 731 and similar units are well described by other scholars (Harris 1994; Nie et al. 2010; Williams and Wallace 1989, see also Zhongyang Dang’anguan 1989). It is thought that the Japanese conducted at least ten bacteriological attacks between 1937 and 1945, however, it is difficult to trace the true extent of Japanese biological warfare because of the frequent natural occurrence of epidemics in the 1930s and 1940s and the destruction of evidence after the war (Zhu 1996: 129–31). The actual number of Japanese bacteriological attacks remains opaque and it is likely that there were many more tests that remain unknown. Although most epidemic outbreaks, at the time, were not or could not be linked to deliberate Japanese actions, both the Nationalist Government in Chongqing and the Communists were aware of possible Japanese bacteriological attacks and issued statements and telegrams reporting of or warning against attacks with typhoid, cholera, malaria, and plague organisms (Watt 2014: 294–98). The releasing of plague germs in Ningbo, for instance, was a widely acknowledged case and articles like “The Truth About the Enemy’s Bacteriological Warfare [in Ningbo]” (published in the Journal of Military Medicine in 1944) demonstrate that military doctors and scientists were strongly concerned with protecting against such attacks (Yang 1944: 6–7).¹²

While biological warfare was often viewed as a military tactical affair (see for instance Anonymous 1944a), the National Revolutionary Army seemed not to have implemented any specific measures in case of a bacteriological attack, as compared to the outbreak of a “natural” epidemic. Forced migration, troop movement, hunger, malnutrition, and the occasional breakdown of basic hygiene practices, allowed smallpox, typhoid, typhus, recurrent and scarlet fever, and dysentery to spread, particularly at the onset and conclusion of the war, and strongly affected both the civilian population and the army, with thousands getting sick, particularly in the war zone. As part of general epidemic prevention, the army operated special roadway stations every 30 to 50 kilometers to check travelers for plague, cholera, typhus and other infections, enforced travel restrictions and quarantines, administered vaccines, and provided hygiene information. There were also delousing stations, with special bathrooms and disinfection chambers, to prevent the spread of typhus and recurring fever and to extinguish scabies, which was prevalent among soldiers, along with malaria. For field and frontline work the Army Medical Administration organized Hygiene Corps, as well as Epidemic Prevention Corps, which included up to 130 hygienists and other specialists, doctors, soldiers, and logistics personnel. There were also special military units tasked with the mass burial of disease victims. The tasks of Epidemic Prevention Corps included prophylactic inoculation, isolation and quarantine measures, eradication of disease vectors like insects and rats, environmental hygiene, general hygienic as well as bacteriological and chemical inspections, and the teaching and promulgation of hygiene practices. Specific responsibilities also included securing the quality of drinking water, cleaning wells, and disinfecting water with chlorine (Yip 2001: 173–81; Zhu 1996: 123–27). Other chemical substances, including plain alcohol and then the insecticide DDT (first used in 1945), were increasingly used to disinfect contaminated areas. Alternatively, “physical methods” of heating contaminated objects were used, including burning, steaming, boiling, and using sunlight (Anonymous 1944b: 37–38).

Military epidemic prevention protocols, however, did stipulate that, after discovering an outbreak, specialists from the Army’s Epidemic Prevention Corps would enter and inspect the area to determine whether enemy action was in any way related to the situation. The contaminated area had to be sealed off, with access and evacuation strictly limited and closely monitored. Possibly infected people were to be medically examined, treated and, if necessary, separated and put under quarantine (Zhu 1996: 130). Army troops and military epidemic prevention teams participated, together with various civilian provincial and national units, in quelling plague outbreaks in Ningbo and other places such as Quzhou and Yiwu County, which were attributed to “bubonic bombs” dropped by Japanese aircrafts. However, success in fighting these epidemics—by establishing large quarantine zones and administering vaccines—also depended on the work and cooperation of local elites (Schoppa 2011: 298, 336).

Preemptive vaccination increasingly enhanced the possibilities and spectrum of hygiene and epidemic prevention (Watt 2014: 117). Marie Brazelton emphasizes that vaccination and mass immunization were not just part of a national health project but became a weapon of “strategic importance” or “military tactic” against biowarfare (Brazelton 2019a: 85, 99). In order to sensitize people for the possibility of Japanese bacteriological attacks, the matter was even discussed during radio broadcasts. The Nationalist Revolutionary Army’s medical base in Guiyang, along with the National Epidemic Prevention Bureau, as well as civilian biomedical schools and research institutions originally located in Beijing, Nanjing, or Shanghai (all relocated to Kunming during the war), feverishly worked to develop and mass-produce vaccines and antisera. Vaccines, for the obvious reasons that they were the most effective antidote against germs, became increasingly important. While the overall availability of vaccines was low, millions of Chinese men and women received some sort of injection to immunize them against infectious diseases. Military personnel were given priority, and the Army Medical Administration and the Red Cross distributed millions of doses to protect soldiers against smallpox, cholera, tetanus, typhoid, and plague. The threat of possible Japanese bacteriological attacks helped to justify and expedite these vaccinations (Brazelton 2019a: 57, 73, 84–85, 89). However, already in 1938, Wang Dasheng, a German-educated, chief mechanical engineer involved in Republican arms production, remarked that there were no vaccines for all the “over 300 kinds of bacteria” that existed, so science-based hygienics was still indispensable against bacteriological warfare (Wang 1938: 11–12).

The Japanese government and military denied any kind of bacteriological attacks or experiments. In 1942 the Tianjin-based, Japanese-controlled journal Jinjin yuekan published an article in its science rubric that denounced bacteriological warfare as gossip people liked to talk about but which actually would not, and could not, be realized. In wartime the God of Plague was to be feared much more than the God of War, it stated, but only those who were willing to self-sacrifice tried to deploy something as uncontainable as bacteriological weapons. Throughout history any war party had always sought to use the most effective available weapons without any moral concerns, the article admitted, however, germs causing lethal and devastating epidemics were simply too enormously difficult to deliver. Even in the case of cholera bacilli, which were easy to reproduce and, according to the article, had the potential of killing the entire human population, preventive measures such as water disinfection were quite effective. Overall, it declared, bacteriological warfare was just a “pipe dream of military strategists” (Weilu 1942: 40).

Japanese bacteriological attacks and experiments likely caused thousands of deaths, but that number was small in relation to the overall war casualties and other unrelated epidemics. Rather, as many contemporary authors in the debate on bacteriological warfare have commented, the real strategic potential of germ weapons was in sowing fear—a fear which they themselves created to a large degree. One text on bacteriological warfare remarked that, while non-lethal, typhus was extremely unpleasant since it robbed its victims of their sleep and caused them to lose their spirit (Weilu 1942: 40). Another text argued that germs were a treacherous weapon containing intangible and “fleshless” microorganisms capable of shaking the spirit of soldiers (Nancun 1934b: 187). Fear, as implied in Zhao Jianzhong’s (1939) article, discussed above, works both ways: Japanese biowarfare induced terror, slowly but deliberately killing Chinese people or literally turning them into controllable undead zombies, with bacteriological weapons. Such reports, while containing an element of truth, were strongly exaggerated and, rooted in both the discourse on bacteriological warfare and actual epidemics across China, were also the basis for stepping up the biopolitical control and management of Chinese lives through hygiene and epidemic prevention. Albeit regionally limited, the Nationalist government demonstrated central state power by persuading or coercing an increasing number of people to receive vaccination (Brazelton 2019a: 79, 90–91).

3 The Afterlife of “Bubonic Bombs”

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war and nuclear weapons were at the center of global attention. Framing the atomic bomb in the same discursive categories as bacteriological warfare, Chinese medical scientists described nuclear armaments as the ultimate “horrible” and “terrifying” weapon that could annihilate the human species, not only because of the immediate destructive potential but also because of the long-term interference with the environment and human life. Radioactivity affected the human reproductive organs, causing men to lose their reproductive ability, leading to miscarriages, and stopping female menstruation (Qin 1948; Tao 1947; Ye 1948). And yet, according to many scientists, hygiene in the broad sense was the best, or even sole, defensive measure against nuclear warfare, which they viewed as a much smaller threat than biological warfare, after all.

In 1947, Ye Weifa, scientist at the Department of Bacteriology and Research Center for Blood Serum and Vaccination at the School for Military Medicine in Shanghai, published the article New Weapons: An Analysis of Clostridium botulinum (Botulism bacterium). Referring to the more or less secret American, British, and Canadian efforts to develop bacteriological weapons (xijun wuqi 細菌武器), Ye announced that China needed similar programs. Although China would never use such weapons, military bacteriological research was necessary to be prepared for the next war. The First World War, he argued, was a “chemical war” because of the first deployment of poisonous gas. The Second World War, on the other hand, could count as “physical war” because of the use of nuclear bombs. The next war, however, would be fought with germs and therefore be a “biological war.” Biological weapons, Ye emphasized, embodied an immeasurably higher terror than the nuclear bomb and threatened to extinguish any trace of the human race (Ye 1947a: 22–25/13–17).

The Japanese bacteriological attacks and experiments in China were partially uncovered after the war but their full scale remains unknown even today (see for instance Anonymous 1946: 27). In postwar China, germ warfare was no longer regarded as a remote possibility but the most dangerous, lethal, and sophisticated weapon of the future, possible even more destructive than the atomic bomb. According to the journal Popular Science(Kexue dazhong), the threat of bacteriological warfare was neither mere propaganda nor inflated by scientists, but a very scary tool of mass destruction that included bacteria, viruses, parasites, other microorganisms, and toxins, capable of affecting both flora and fauna far beyond war and the battle line (Anonymous 1947: 171). Another article from 1946, reporting on Hitler’s alleged plan to wage bacteriological warfare, emphasized that, in the case of a third world war, the greater threat would not be from nuclear but germ warfare (duxizhan 毒細戰). It would not only kill people and animals but could also weaken “the vitality and resistance of humankind.” While nuclear weapons demand immense resources and funds, even smaller countries could easily develop bacteriological weapons, the author warned. In the event of such a war, martial law must be imposed, all hygiene personnel mobilized, and the entire country put under the control of the Army Medical Administration of the Defense Ministry. The whole population would need to be vaccinated, and also receive special clothing and respirator masks. The article closed with the statement: “There is no better way [to prevent the effects of biological warfare] than increasing the whole nation’s level of hygiene” (Liu 1946: 22).

Even the danger of German bacteriological weapons lingered on, according to Red Cross Monthly; it alleged that a Nazi underground resistance still existed and planned to exterminate the city of London with epidemic bacteria if the “British side” did not agree to form a united “Western bloc” against the Soviet Union (Wang 1947). Ye Weifa, after referring to several German bacteriological attack plots since the First World War, and the failed Japanese release of plague-infected rats in Hunan and Zhejiang provinces,¹³ demanded the obvious devastating threat be addressed by improving hygiene amongst the general Chinese population. According to him, the Americans, British, and Canadians had extensive programs to research cholera, plague, polio, and narcolepsy for military use. Other articles, too, reported of British and American research plans to develop bacteriological weapons after the Second World War, usually highlighting the preventive and defensive nature of these programs (for instance, to produce penicillin) (Anonymous 1948: 27, see also Anonymous 1946: 47, 1947: 171).¹⁴

On a similar theme to the previously mentioned articles, Ye was afraid that bacteriological weapons were relatively easy for even small countries to develop, and much more destructive when compared to the atomic bomb, with the potential to kill tens of thousands of people, and, for instance, wipe out the population of Latin America. Moreover, citing an unnamed expert in the military, he declared that they were a thousand times more effective than gas. “China’s geographical conditions and the habits of the population,” Ye declared, “make it a vulnerable target for germ warfare, since the people lack education, common sense, and scientific knowledge. Hygiene standards are implemented only rudimentarily, they are very superstitious and believe in heaven and, therefore, people do not know how to prevent the transmission of infectious diseases and have no way to stop them from spreading.” (Ye 1947b: 11). According to Ye, established customs that often benefitted epidemics hardly changed. People did not pay attention to cleanliness, their clothes were dirty, they used natural fertilizers (feces), and polluted the environment. Additionally, the circulation of germs and epidemics was easy because of China’s warm climate, numerous stagnant waters, and lack of peace. Life for the common people was very hard, with no way to keep clothes and food clean, and bodily resistance to disease was generally weak. Consequently, there were high rates of disease and mortality. In conclusion, Ye described how he, as author of numerous papers and books on the topic, personally lobbied Chiang Kai-shek and other important leaders, urging them to send young scientists abroad to receive expert training and establish military research centers to improve hygiene and immunology (Ye 1947b: 12).

Chinese scientists also warned against a new threat to consider concerning biological warfare. The development and success of bacteriology as a leading medical science was linked to the microscopic visualization of bacteria in the late nineteenth-century. Similarly, the invention of the electron microscope in the 1930s gave final proof to the existence of viruses, leading to a deeper understanding of many infectious diseases, their causes, and transmission. However, as a consequence, a certain Lu Shenfu argued in the official Guofang kexue jianbao (Defense Science Bulletin), biological warfare would become more devastating because viral agents were more infections and spread much faster compared to other pathogens.¹⁵ Penicillin was useless against viruses and, therefore, the focus had to be on the invention of new vaccines. According to Lu, particularly the American military conducted research on weaponizing viruses to develop preventive inoculation to protect both soldiers and the population (Lu 1948: 546–48).

The postwar Nationalist government continued its civil and military wartime epidemic prevention efforts, which were at least partially influenced by the discourse on biological warfare. The Ministry of Health, for instance, launched health education campaigns that included lectures in factories or schools as well as the elimination of disease vectors. Most important were vaccination campaigns, which were supported by local or regional committees and institutions such as the Red Cross or the Army’s hygiene and public health departments. As a result of the war, the Nationalist administration particularly paid attention to biomedical sciences and massively funded the research and manufacturing of vaccines and antisera, laying the groundwork for later immunization campaigns (Brazelton 2019a: 103, 108–10). The Ministry of Defense, too, took scientists’ warnings seriously and funded military research related to “defense science” that included projects on bacteriological weapons (SHAC 1949: 6).

4 Conclusion: Patriotic Hygiene

Only a few years later, in 1952, the anticipated biological warfare became a reality—at least in the official narrative of the recently established People’s Republic of China. During the Korean War, the Chinese government accused the United States of using bacteriological weapons, including, according to the allegations, spreading plague and anthrax germs in both Korea and northeast China. Internal Chinese government documents show that the US military never deployed biological weapons. Rather, Chinese officials designed an American germ warfare propaganda campaign “dually as propagandistic and pedagogical tools” (Kuech 2020: 614) to propel the fight against epidemics and rally support for the Communist regime. As in the 1930s and 40s, the army was again at the forefront of both the war against germs and germ warfare regarding both the establishment of bacteriological knowledge and the implementation of disease prevention measures. However, the newly established Chinese government went much further with a radical rendering of nature as the enemy of the people and civilization. It utilized the specter of germ warfare to instigate fear and justify an unprecedented, nation-wide mass mobilization and intervention in people’s lives and their physical bodies. The Communist government subsequently launched the nationwide Patriotic Hygiene Campaign as a defensive countermeasure, which entailed the close monitoring of personal and public cleanliness, environmental sanitation, the extinction of disease vectors such as flies and rats, and mass vaccination, affecting hundreds of millions of Chinese people. Public lectures, propaganda posters, films, and textbooks provided information and “educated” them about American biological warfare, the germ theory of diseases, and epidemic prevention. Scientific exhibits depicted magnified images of bacteria cultures as well as diseases carriers such as rodents and insects to conjure the idea of a microbic and hitherto unnoticed threat to the nation (Rogaski 2002: 386; see also Brazelton 2019a: 123–44; Yang 2004: 155–82).

The proclaimed goal was not only to withstand American imperialism but also to eradicate infectious diseases, once and for all. The Patriotic Hygiene Campaign occurred in an atmosphere of declared war against all elements that stood in the way of communist modernity, including criminals, capitalists, and nature. Ruth Rogaski argues that the idea of subduing nature, a continued fear of severe epidemics, and the coupling of science and war (most powerfully symbolized by the atomic bomb) made the threat of American germ warfare credible for most Chinese people at the time (Rogaski 2002: 387). Furthermore, as this article shows, Chinese Communist party propagandists drew on a biological warfare discourse that had existed since the early 1930s. Vivid images of a war against germs and microbes as “hordes of enemies” (Barnes 2018: 93) were already prevalent in China decades prior to the Korean War and the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign, including depictions of bacteria that created a bunch of “invisible enemies” threatening to destroy Chinese lives or even humankind (see for instance He 1936: 12; Muchun 1942: 284–85; Nancun 1934a: 61). Despite the skepticism about the feasibility of germ warfare and accented confidence in hygiene in the broad sense, both truthful and false reports about Japanese biological warfare triggered local hysteria and a sense of urgency among officials and scientists during the Sino-Japanese War. Japanese bacteriological attacks highlighted the need to step-up the fight against epidemics, particularly by researching, producing, and administering vaccines. Explicitly acknowledging the threat of Japanese germ warfare, the danger of epidemics, and the disciplinary power of hygiene, the Communist Party, too, paid great attention to health and sanitation campaigns (Zhu 1996: 177–81).

After the war, sympathetic reports by Chinese scientists about the biological weapon programs of, at the time, allied states such as the United States or Britain, maintained the fear of a bacteriological attack that might annihilate the Chinese population. When the Civil War between the Nationalists and Communists concluded, many scientists, including microbiologists, hygiene experts, and immunologists, stayed in Mainland China, contributing their expertise to the new regime. Arguably, their emphasis on biowarfare as the major threat instead of the atom bomb might also have influenced Mao Zedong in downplaying the latter as a “paper tiger” (see also Matten 2018: 244) and focus on the possibility of American germ warfare. By consciously and systematically tapping into the long existing fear of an enemy weaponizing infectious microbes, the Communist government succeeded in containing epidemics as well as endemic infections all over China.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on a paper given at the conference “The Intersection of Colonialism and Medicine in East Asia” at the University of Pittsburgh in 2018, organized by Tina Phillips Johnson, James A. Cook, and Michael Shiyung Liu. I thank the organizers as well as the participants of the conference, particularly David Luesink, for their valuable comments and questions. I am also indebted to two anonymous reviewers whose suggestions greatly helped to improve the article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicolas Schillinger

Nicolas Schillinger is a postdoctoral researcher at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, who specializes in the history of masculinity and the history of science in Modern China. He is a member of the research group Sinology – Algorithms, Prognostics, Statistics (Sin-aps), funded by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, and currently works on a book project tentatively entitled Scientific Warfare in Republican China.

Notes

¹ The story originally appeared in McClure’s Magazine in July 1910, pp. 308–16. Daniel A. Métraux argues that the common portrayal of London as a xenophobic, anti-Asian white supremacist is entirely wrong since, as his writings and travel reportages demonstrate, he was sympathetic to and genuinely interested in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other societies, individuals, and cultural backgrounds. London was socialist and anti-imperialists, and The Unparalleled Invasion is less about evoking a “Yellow Peril” than describing how Western racism might lead to the use of a novel scientific warfare to commit genocide (London and Métraux 2009: 69–77).

² On the translation history of London’s work into Chinese, see Lockard and Dan (2013).

³ The term xijunzhan (literally: bacterial war) is linked to the understanding of early twentieth century bacteriology. In France, and other countries, the comprehensive term microbiology was more prominent, and while Louis Pasteur promoted a more balanced view of bacteria, the German bacteriologists around Robert Koch popularized the view that bacteria and germs were essentially the same. Moreover, according to Bridie Andrews, “In early twentieth century laboratory medicine […] for most infectious diseases, the germ was the disease” (Andrews 1997: 147). Apart from xijun, Chinese texts rarely used other terms for germ, such as dujun 毒菌or bingjun 病菌, and hence the term for biological or germ warfare was xijunzhan.

⁴ This article is based on over sixty contributions in a variety of journals published between 1933 and 1949 that focus on bacteriological warfare, as well as other sources such as books and official regulations that discuss—although not necessarily focusing on—the topic. Examined texts include articles in military and military medical journals as well as popular science and general journals with different audiences and circulation.

⁵ On the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics and its re-conceptualization as necropolitics or thanatopolitics (see Debrix and Barder 2013: 1–25).

⁶ Contributions seeking to summarize various kinds of possible ways to conduct and defend against biological war only appeared after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. The largest but incomprehensive contribution on bacteriological warfare was a short book by Chen Feimo (Chen 1942). It introduced bacteriological knowledge and highlighted the importance of hygiene when dealing with germ attacks and epidemics. See also Anonymous 1944a. Another article reported of the use of steel-eating or rust-causing bacteria as a potential weapon (Wang 1938).

⁷ The article was also translated by Deren (1935). On Trillat and the French military research program, which actually favored the neurotoxin botulinum (produced by Clostridium botulinum) as a biological warfare agent, see Prasad (2009: 35).

⁸ In Jack London’s story, animal hosts infected with biological agents are also dropped from airplanes, and, according to the Chinese Communist propaganda, the American military did the same during the Korean War.

⁹ The article published under the name of Jiang Gongquan is a shorter but identical version of the former article.

¹⁰ The translator, Zhong Kailai or Chung Kai-lai, was a young physics and math student from Tsinghua University. During the war, he continued his studies in number and probability theory at National Southwestern Associated University, or Lianda, in Kunming. In 1945, Zhong went to the United States and subsequently became an internationally leading theorist of probability calculations. He ascertained that all medical terms used in the text were in accordance with the Chinese Inquiry Commission for Scientific Terms.

¹¹ The content of the German text was also summarized in Anonymous (1940: 19).

¹² Japanese attacks were also mentioned in other contemporary reports (see for instance Chen 1942; Ye 1947b).

¹³ In addition to the proposed German attacks on the Paris Métro and London Tube, he also referred to plans to infect swine in the USA with anthrax in order to harm the American military (Ye 1947b, 11).

¹⁴ On the development of penicillin in wartime China, see Brazelton 2019b.

¹⁵ The article was also printed, in the same year, in another military journal called Binggong yuekan. Lu, who narrated the history of virology up to this point, apparently was himself a microbiologist or immunologist conducting vaccine research. He used the term lübingdu 滤病毒 for virus (literally: filtered virus) and classified it among four other kinds of disease-causing pathogens: “Bacterien” (weijun 微菌), “Spirochaeta” (luozuchong lei 螺族蟲類), “Rickettsiae” (likeci bingyuanti 立克次病原體), “Protozoen” (yuanchong 原蟲) (the latter is a now outdated classification of single-celled microorganisms and the other two are bacteria genera) (Lu 1948: 543).