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. #eugenics #lecture #history #ColdSpringHarborLaboratory #NikolaysGeneticsLessons #currentEvents #china #MaoZedong #communism #communistParty #NikitaKhrushchev #JosephStalin #GreatLeapForward #students #humanRights #humanRightsAbuses #revolution #ruralChina #USSR #military #LinBiao #RedGuard #SouthernChina #politicalViolence #classStruggle #politicalPhilosophy #ChinesePolitics #ChineseHistory #TiananmenSquare #socialism #CulturalRevolution