The Communication Of Eugenics And The Concept Of Marriage And Procreation In Modern China

The rebuilding of the Science of Healthy Birth in contemporary China had relation to the need of the policy of family planning in Chinese Mainland and based on the long history of eugenics in modern China. Studying the communication of eugenics in modern China and its influence is important to evaluate the value of the Science of Healthy Birth and the Human Genetics in contemporary China.Chapter1 discusses the eugenic culture in Chinese ancient tradition and its development in the time of"western learning spreading to the east". Ancient Chinese liked to have a son than to have a daughter. They had a commiserative attitude to handicapped person. There was the integrated system of marriage and procreation in ancient China. In the background of"western learning spreading to the east"and the nation declining to deceased, Wang Shiduo had brought forward a way of"Jianmin"(reducing population) to control procreation, as well as Kang Youwei had brought forward a way of"Zahun"(miscegenation) to improve Chinese stirps.Chapter2 introduces the pioneers who imported eugenics to China first and the spread process of eugenics in Chinese society. Yan fu and Zhang Taiyan could be regarded as the earliest disseminator of eugenics and the earliest disseminator of the western heredity theory. The reason they have not been noticed by historian of science is that the contributiveness of Galton and his school of biostatistics was overlooked universally in the study of genetics history. The knowledge of eugenics had been spread abroad by eugenic book, magazine, newspaper and textbook of high school and college in modern China after 1919. Margaret Sanger's visiting in China 1922 and the movement of procreation limit afterwards, the popularization and publicizing of eugenics by Pan Guangdan, Zhou Jianren and other scholars, the arguments about eugenics widely by a lot of humanists and sociologists, all these works had acted important function in the spread of Chinese modern eugenics.Chapter3 studies the knowledge of feeble-mind in modern society and reveals the influence of eugenics to the thought of modern Chinese people by analysis to the eugenic book The Kallikak Family:A Study in the heredity of Feeblemindedness.. The eugenics spreading abroad in intellectuals had promoted an elitism mate-selection ethic and an endogamy system which made the bad or good heredity as the science criterion of mate-selection.The chapter also studied the understanding of people in modern times to the heredity of pulmonary tuberculosis by analysis to the poem the love of a lunger which could tell us the influence of eugenics to the love idea of intellectual persons. The eugenic love view"not love for love"was based on genetics and evolutionism. In some eugenicist's eyes,"the marriage based on the theory of eugenics is the marriage for love". As a whole, these marriage reformation measures just as loving freely, party in public, coeducation were upheld by eugenicists.Chapter4 studies the influence of eugenics to the concept of procreation and parent rights in Chinese tradition by analyzing the essays of Lu Xun and Zhu Ziqing. The spread of eugenics in modern China helped to set up a new concept of parenthood as"younger-foremost". The concept thought that the most important purpose of marriage is breeding the healthy children and demanded that just the person healthy in physical and mental has the qualification to be a parent. Eugenicist Pan Guangdan criticized the opinions of some radical feminists who encouraged women out of family and demanded to cast off the duty of procreation. Pan expounded many eugenic element from Chinese traditional family thought. He advocated that education should have sex differentiation and the women should pay attention to spouse selection, embryo care, breastfeeding, sex-education in family.Chapter5 compared the difference of modern eugenics and contemporary healthy-birth study in China, summarized the characteristic of eugenics of modern China and analyzed the criticism to the policy of procreation in contemporary China. The old eugenics made the elitism and nationalism as its guidelines and embodied the study paradigm of socio biology. On the contrary, the new healthy birth science had the pragmatistic and popular characteristics and embodied the study paradigm of medical genetics. Compared with eugenics in west countries, the eugenics in modern China also had such characteristics: it wasn't affected basically by racism; the government of modern China had not the power to push the eugenic movement; the eugenics in modern China was affected deeply by the traditional thoughts of marriage, procreation, family and embodied the characteristics of humanity and objectivity.The rebuilding of the study of healthy births and the law on maternal and infant health was criticized by the west scholars. For avoiding the misunderstanding, some geneticists of China made great efforts to communicate to west geneticists and grabbed eugenics common ground. We could not evaluate the value of genetics and eugenics just by the life ethnics of Occident. Through eugenics included a lot of mistake in its history, these mistake could not become the reason to call it as a sort of pseudoscience.