Pan Guangdan (; 1898–1967) known in English as Quentin Pan, was a Chinese sociologist, eugenicist, and writer. He was one of the most distinguished sociologists and
eugenicists of China. Educated at
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University (; abbr. THU) is a national public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education.
The university is a member of the C9 League, Double First Class University Plan, Projec ...
on a
Boxer Indemnity Scholarship
The Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program () was a scholarship program for Chinese students to be educated in the United States, funded by the . In 1908, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to return to China the excess of Boxer Indemnity, amounting to ...
,
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...
and
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, where he was trained by
Charles B. Davenport
Charles Benedict Davenport (June 1, 1866 – February 18, 1944) was a biologist and eugenicist influential in the American eugenics movement.
Early life and education
Davenport was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Amzi Benedict Davenport, a ...
,
Pan was also a renowned expert on education. His wide research scope included eugenics, education policy, matrimony policy, familial problems, prostitute policy, and intellectual distributions. Pan's wide-ranging intellect led to his active participation in the
Crescent Moon Society The Crescent Moon Society () was a Chinese literary society founded by the poet Xu Zhimo in 1923, which operated until 1931. It was named after ''The Crescent Moon'', a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. The society began as a loosely-organized dining ass ...
.
Pan's most famous student was
Fei Xiaotong
Fei Xiaotong or Fei Hsiao-tung (November 2, 1910 – April 24, 2005) was a Chinese anthropologist and sociologist. He was a pioneering researcher and professor of sociology and anthropology; he was also noted for his studies in the study o ...
, the "father of Chinese anthropology."
Career
Pan joined the China Democratic Groups League (later
China Democratic League
The China Democratic League (CDL) is one of the eight legally recognized minor political parties in the People's Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party's United Front. The CDL was originally founded in 1941 as an umbrella coalition ...
) in 1941, and was a standing committee member of the central committee of the League. During the
Anti-Rightist Movement
The Anti-Rightist Campaign () in the People's Republic of China, which lasted from 1957 to roughly 1959, was a political campaign to purge alleged "Rightists" within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the country as a whole. The campaign was l ...
, he was determined to be a "rightist." Pan was persecuted in
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
, and died in 1967, at 69. He was rehabilitated in 1979.
Eugenics
For Pan, eugenics was both a political and scientific matter, as well as economic, ethnological and sociological; and he is credited with the popularization of eugenic thought in the 1920s and '30s in China. Some of his most influential works include ''The Eugenic Question in China'' () and ''Chinese Family Problems'' ()(1928). In these works, Pan promoted the family structure over individualism, which he believed, along with traditional marriage, to be most effective in racial improvement through biological inheritance. Urban living, he said, only promoted decadent individualism and contributed nothing to the racial fitness of the nation. Although he supported the use of state power for the implementation of eugenic policies, primarily through his founding of The Chinese Eugenics Institute, conflicts such as the
Sino-Japanese War,
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, and the
civil war
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
between the
KMT and the
Communists
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
prevented governmental adoption of his ideas.
In a 1937 volume of essays, "''Minzu texing yu minzu weisheng''" ( Racial characteristics and racial hygiene) Pan argued that government programs of health and reconstruction were of no use if the majority of the people were of low quality. He included his translations from the works of
Ellsworth Huntington
__NOTOC__
Ellsworth Huntington (September 16, 1876 – October 17, 1947) was a professor of geography at Yale University during the early 20th century, known for his studies on environmental determinism/climatic determinism, economic growth, econo ...
and the American missionary
Arthur H. Smith's 1894 book ''Chinese Characteristics''. Smith's chapters "Absence of Nerves", "Disregard of Accuracy", and "Absence of Public Spirit", he said, illustrated the selfish, unscientific, face-loving, "Chinese Everyman" who weakened the Chinese race. He called for educated and intelligent Chinese to increase their rate of birth and improve Chinese people's health by increasing the number of people who were genetically superior.
[Ruth Rogaski, ''Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)]
pp.241-242
/ref>
Pan argued that the anthropological category of “race” was not yet scientifically substantiated. Eugenics as a newly established discipline should not, he believed, become entangled with dubious claims about superior races, since every “color” of people shared both the good and the bad germplasm distributed in its own population.
References
* Includes a substantial bibliography of scholarship on Pan.
Notes
External links
Pan Guangdan
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...
Authority Page.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pan, Guangdan
1898 births
1967 deaths
Boxer Indemnity Scholarship recipients
Chinese eugenicists
Chinese non-fiction writers
Chinese sociologists
Columbia University alumni
Dartmouth College alumni
Educators from Shanghai
Jinan University faculty
Minzu University of China faculty
National Southwestern Associated University faculty
People's Republic of China writers
Republic of China writers
Scientists from Shanghai
Soochow University (Suzhou) faculty
Tsinghua University alumni
Tsinghua University faculty
Victims of the Cultural Revolution
Writers from Shanghai
20th-century non-fiction writers