Introduction

In this chapter, the author reviews a narrative line of the inception, expansion and apogee of the Chinese eugenics movement. Eugenics was considered as the science or technology of human betterment through the application of genetic laws designed so that the dominated could measure up to Civilizational standards, or the dominators to restrain the deplorable tendency of racial and national degeneration. The divergent signification of eugenic ideas is even more acute in the onfrontation of the two populations in the second Sino-Japanese War. Since both Japanese and Chinese eugenicists perceived the war as a war of population, they enacted eugenics bills as part of a national implementation of population policy. The union of hygienists and eugenicists coincided with the name change from the Japanese Eugenics Association to the Japanese Racial Hygiene Association in 1930. This chapter also presents the overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.