IMPERFECT CONCEPTIONS.

Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China. By Frank Dikotter. New York: Columbia University Press. 1998. ix, 226 pp. (Illustrations.) US$27.50, cloth. ISBN 0-231-11370-6.

This is a very well researched work on eugenics in modern China. Readers, however, will be disappointed if they expect a book about irrational laws and inhumane policies. Rather, this is a book that breaks new ground and challenges widely held assumptions. Using a cultural historical approach, Dikotter carefully dissects and re-examines the eugenics discourse in twentieth century China. He shows that the quest for national "fitness," the pursuit of racial hygiene, and the tendency to biologize social problems is not unique to the communist regime of the PRC. Rather, the eugenics discourse can be traced back as early as late imperial China, in the elite medical theories and lay ethnomedical beliefs. Dikotter also contends that the eugenic concerns in modern China are not dissimilar to those advocated in many Scandinavian and some European states some thirty years ago. For example, the "soft approach" to eugenics in France and Brazil and the pedagogical concluding statement of the Latin Eugenic Congress were shared by many medical experts in republican China.

Yet this does not mean Chinese eugenics discourse was merely a transplant of expired western values onto modern China. Dikotter argues that modern Chinese eugenics discourse is more of a cultural reconfiguration. In fact, what makes modern Chinese eugenics discourse intriguing, and this book so fascinating, is the process whereby Chinese traditions were reshaped, remade and re-appropriated in the new language of science for the sake of eugenic promotion. Hence, in accordance with the cultural belief about the complementarity of the person and the environment, birth defects and congenital disabilities were attributed to hostile forces, ranging from evil spirits in the late imperial period, to germs, microbes and toxins in modernity. Likewise, the emphasis on lineage consolidation in a patrilineal culture shaped the popular ideas of fetal education (taijiao), which advanced the notion that the fetus should be educated in utero. This book is so rich in examples that it will entice not only Chinese scholars, but also anyone who is interested in issues related to child bearing, reproductive health, kinship, gender issues, mental handicaps and health education.

Although this book contests the commonly held assumption that modern Chinese eugenics is a product of communist China, it should not be misconstrued that Dikotter sympathizes with the contemporary eugenics discourse. Quite the contrary. His disapproving attitude is very clear: the last nine pages preceding the conclusion chapter (pp. 175-83) are dedicated to social and ethical critiques of eugenic population policies. It is also probably more than coincidence that the book begins and ends with the 1995 sterilization laws.

Dikotter is pioneering in placing eugenic practices in the PRC in the context of historical eugenics discourse in China as well as in comparison with international eugenic trends. While this cultural historical approach brings in many thought-provoking insights, it also limits the study materials and the representations to the state and intellectual elites. The voices of the common people, as well as the consequences of eugenic practices on the individual, were left out of the narrative. This imperfection, however, is inherent to many historical studies and does not undermine the momentous contribution Dikotter makes in bringing the main theoretical thought of eugenics into the modern Chinese setting.