Editing Social Darwinism (section)

===China===
Social Darwinism was formally introduced to China through the translation by [[Yan Fu]] of Huxley's ''Evolution and Ethics'', in the course of an extensive series of translations of influential Western thought.<ref>[[Jonathan D. Spence]]. ''[[The Search for Modern China]]''. [[W.W. Norton]], 1990, [https://books.google.com/books?id=vI1RRslLNSwC&q=social+darwinism p. 301].</ref> Yan's translation strongly impacted Chinese scholars because he added national elements not found in the original. Yan Fu criticized Huxley from the perspective of Spencerian social Darwinism in his own annotations to the translation.<ref>{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1017/S0007087418000808|pmid = 30587253|title = Translation and transmutation: The Origin of Species in China|journal = The British Journal for the History of Science|volume = 52|pages = 117–141|year = 2019|last1 = Jin|first1 = Xiaoxing|issue = 1|s2cid = 58605626}}</ref> He understood Spencer's sociology as "not merely analytical and descriptive, but prescriptive as well", and saw Spencer building on Darwin, whom Yan summarized thus:
{{blockquote|Peoples and living things struggle for survival. At first, species struggle with species; as they [people] gradually progress, there is a struggle between one social group and another. The weak invariably become the prey of the strong, the stupid invariably become subservient to the clever.<ref>Spence (1990), p 301</ref>}}
By the 1920s, social Darwinism found expression in the promotion of eugenics by the Chinese sociologist [[Pan Guangdan]]. When Chiang Kai-shek started the New Life movement in 1934, he "...{{nbsp}}harked back to theories of Social Darwinism", writing that "only those who readapt themselves to new conditions, day by day, can live properly. When the life of a people is going through this process of readaptation, it has to remedy its own defects, and get rid of those elements which become useless. Then we call it new life."<ref>Spence (1990), pp. 414–415.</ref>

[[Zhang Jingsheng]] was a notable proponent of Social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism in 20th-century China. His chosen name, Jingsheng, translated to "competition for survival".<ref name="Sex, Eugenics, Aesthetics">{{cite thesis|first=Leon Antonio|last=Rocha|title=Sex, Eugenics, Aesthetics, Utopia in the Life and Work of Zhang Jingsheng (1888–1970)|degree=PhD|publisher=[[University of Cambridge]]|date=2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Charles Leland |last=Leary |title=Intellectual Orthodoxy, the Economy of Knowledge and the Debate Over Zhang Jingsheng's ''Sex Histories'' |journal=Republican China |volume=18 |issue=2 |date=1993 |pages=99–13|doi=10.1080/08932344.1993.11720223 }}</ref> He advocated a form of [[positive eugenics]], recommending [[interracial marriage]] with Europeans and the Japanese to combat what he perceived as "weaknesses" of the [[Zhonghua minzu|Chinese race]].<ref name="Sex, Eugenics, Aesthetics" /><ref>{{cite journal|title=Epistemic Modernity and the Emergence of Homosexuality in China|first=Howard|last=Chiang|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0424.2010.01612.x|journal=[[Gender & History]]|volume=22|issue=3|date=2010|pages=629–657 }}</ref>