BioSocieties (2008), 3, 21–36 ª London School of Economics and Political Science

doi:10.1017/S1745855208005930

The Changing Nature of Ideology in

the Life Sciences in Mainland China:
Case-studies of Human Cloning and
Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
(hESR) in Medical Textbooks
(1996–2005)

Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner
ARTS C209, Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9SN, UK
E-mail: m.sleeboom-Faulkner@sussex.ac.uk

Abstract
In China ideology has played an important role in the research and teaching of the biological
sciences since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). After the 1978 reforms,
it was recognized that the discontinuation of political interference with the sciences was essential
for their survival and development. However, not much later, when the fields of genetics and
molecular biology became redefined as life sciences, internationally, bioethical regulation became
an essential element of research regulation. The evolution of medical textbooks in the PRC reflects
this. Using the cases of human cloning and human embryonic stem cell research, this article shows
how science regulation incorporates cultural and political ideologies. These, on the one hand, form
a continuation of modes of state propaganda and, on the other hand, embody newly formulated
notions of Chinese society. This article provides a historical background of the role of ideology
during the first decades of the PRC, after which it discusses the evolution of bioethical discussion
of human cloning and human embryonic stem cell research in 17 medical textbooks over nine
years (1996–2005). It concludes with a discussion on the changing role of ideology in bioethical
policy-making for the life sciences.

Keywords China, human cloning, ideology, life sciences, medical textbooks, stem cell research

According to contemporary propaganda in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), science

should be free from ideological and political interference. However, in the first decades of
the PRC, from the 1950s, the biological ideologies of Lysenko and Michurin imported from

Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner is senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sussex. Her work focuses on
nationalism and processes of nation-state building in China and Japan and on biotechnology and society in East
Asia. She currently directs the Socio-genetic Marginalization in Asia Programme (SMAP, 2004–2009), is an ESRC
research fellow of the Stem Cells CBAR programme, and takes part in ‘The International Science and Bioethical
Collaborations’ (ISBC), a research collaboration of Cambridge, Durham and Sussex Universities.

21
 j
22 j M A R G A R E T S L E E B O O M - F A U L K N E R

the Soviet Union damaged the field of genetics and the careers of scientists. But in 1978, when
science became one of the Four Modernizations of the Dengist reform era, genetics was to
receive protection from political intrusion. In the 1980s, it grew into one of the life sciences
and became central to national science programmes, including human embryonic stem cell
research (hESR) and therapeutic cloning (see Sleeboom-Faulkner, 2007).
In order for such research to function internationally and domestically, however,
bioethical research regulation had to be devised. Although bioethical discourse is meant to
facilitate science research in China by ‘basing truth on facts’, and suit the particular histor-
ical circumstances of China in an objective fashion, I show in this article that the bioethical
guidelines are the outcome of various ideological debates and that they are interpreted
through the ideologically coloured lenses of administrators and biomedical researchers,
just as elsewhere in the world. After all, debates on bioethics, and human cloning in parti-
cular, have been discussed heatedly from manifold ideological stances globally (Bonnicksen,
2002; Holland et al., 2004; Sleeboom, 2004). As Sarah Franklin, an experienced and keen
observer of cloning and stem cell debate concludes:

Repeated again and again, concepts such as procreative liberty, the sanctity of the
nuclear family, the right to a unique genetic identity, the value of scientific progress,
the need for rational argument, and the maximization of personal freedom and happi-
ness end up sounding more like stereotypes than analysis. (Franklin, 2004: 255)

Such stereotypes are available in great numbers in Chinese medical textbooks. This arti-
cle explores them and relates them to the turbulent history of the Chinese life sciences.
Chinese textbooks on medical ethics are rather different from their counterparts in, for
instance, the UK. This is partly due to their very short history, as will become clear, and
their use. An increasing number of medical universities in large cities offer medical ethics
as a course. In some universities the course is made compulsory; in others, it is not. Teachers
in the former choose a textbook that they consider authoritative, or which is set by the
university, and expect the students to examine it.
In some cases, the books are written by lecturers in need of publications or researchers
who hope to leave a mark on the teaching of bioethics. Compared to UK textbooks on
medical ethics, these textbooks can be characterized by comprehensiveness, detail, formality
and political correctness. Thus UK textbooks are available stemming from the 1980s (often
with updates) which cover a large range of topics, such as nursing ethics, applied medical
ethics, paediatric ethics, professional ethics, ethics and the community, and ethics and the
social sciences, medical ethics and law usually in separate textbooks. By contrast, most of
these topics can be crammed into each Chinese textbook on medical ethics. As described
below, the topics of cloning and stem cell research have become included in Chinese text-
books, while not many textbooks for medical ethics in the UK include these.
The inclusion in Chinese textbooks on medical ethics of discussions on human cloning
and stem cell research is, I believe, a result of various factors: first, the apparent aim to pro-
vide a ‘complete’ textbook on medical ethics; second, the result of using other textbooks as a
template (and often copying large stretches of them); third, the fact that China now is in the
process of establishing a national bioethics network, which has a focus on advanced science
research; and, fourth, the textbooks are not meant to be used as a practical guide for nurses
and GPs. Thus, not many case studies are provided in the books, and many of them are
 j
T H E C H A N G I N G N A T U R E O F I D E O L O G Y I N C H I N A ’ S L I F E S C I E N C E S j 23

borrowed from foreign textbooks (and contexts) and therefore not always apt to a Chinese
context. Medical ethics classes rarely focus on practice, with perhaps the exception of some
medical schools in the large cities such as Shanghai and Beijing.
The textbooks can be regarded as politically correct in the sense that they do not provide
a new vision or attack the status quo. Nevertheless, there is ample space in the textbooks for
representing diverse opinions. What they do not do is question current practices, the
distribution of health care resources or decisions made by the government. The textbooks
also embody official ideology, quoting from official documents, studies guidelines and
pronouncements, which are also referred to and quoted from by stem cell researchers.1
In other words, the textbooks are varied enough to show that there is great diversity of
opinion, but also a main line in discussions (confirmed by the author’s fieldwork).
The method used in this study of changes in the representation of stem cell research and
cloning in China’s textbooks on medical ethics over the last ten years involved various steps.
First, I have collected a few dozen of the textbooks, which are for sale in ordinary book-
shops, over the last decade. Chinese academic books, including these textbooks, usually
have a detailed table of contents, often covering over three pages of headings. These tables
of contents clearly show the structure of the book and are an indication for the categoriza-
tion of cloning and stem cell research, if covered. I studied the time of appearance, the
categorization of, and the space allocated to the topics in all of the 17 textbooks used.
Further, I examined why attention was paid to the topics and how they were represented,
while focusing on the way textbook authors delineated Chinese discussions from Western
ones, and how official guidelines regarding cloning and stem cell research are represented
and embedded in the textbooks. As the textbooks are written in Chinese, in cases of doubt
about the correct translation or in cases of ambivalence, I have provided the Chinese in
pinyin, the Mainland Chinese alphabetical transcription of Chinese characters.
By means of the method described here, this article aims to understand how the ideolo-
gies behind the stereotypes underpin discourses concerning the socio-political and ethical
merits and demerits of the life sciences, in particular human cloning and human embryonic
stem cell research. It tries to shed light on the political aspects of bioethical discourse in the
PRC. In short, this article attempts to explore areas of friction between scientific discourse,
socio-political morality and the ideological purposes of bioethical regulation for human
cloning and for hESR. A brief discussion on the role of ideology in genetics from the late
1950s to the beginning of the third millennium forms the historical setting of this article.
It is followed by an examination of the changes that have taken place in the role of ideology
in the life sciences after the 1978 reforms on the basis of 17 textbooks on medical ethics
(1996–2005). Here I mainly focus on the socio-cultural and bioethical issues of human clon-
ing and human embryonic stem cell research. First, I analyse the changes in the bioethical
terminology used to describe human cloning and hESR in textbooks that appeared over
the nine years from 1996 to 2005, focusing on arguments extracted from socialist, tradition-
alist and nationalist discourse. Second, I discuss the ways in which these arguments are
expressed in the textbooks ideologically. I conclude this article with a discussion of the
changing role of ideology in the life sciences in China.

1 I interviewed a number of stem cell scientists in Beijing, Changsha, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Hankou during my
fieldwork in 2007.
 j
24 j M A R G A R E T S L E E B O O M - F A U L K N E R

Genetics: The struggle with political morality

In 1950, just over one year after the establishment of the PRC, together with other disci-
plines and modes of production in agriculture, industry and education, the ideology of
Lysenkoism was imported from Stalinist USSR. It replaced ‘bourgeois-idealist’ Mendel–
Morganism (Tan Jiazhen and Zhao Gongmin, 2002: 59–82) and was integrated with the
revolutionary ideology of ‘Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought’. For nearly one
decade, Michurin–Lysenko genetics dominated the curriculum, after which Mendelism
was tolerated next to Michurin’s (1855–1935) ideas on breeding. Denying even the reality
of the gene, Trofym Lysenko (1898–1976) and his followers believed in the spontaneous
generation of life and in the heritability of acquired character (see Joravsky, 1970; Tan
Jiazhen and Zhao Gongmin, 2002: 54–58). Some Chinese proponents of Michurin regarded
the concept of the ‘gene’ as a sign of idealism, as ‘materialism’ believes in the infinite
divisibility of matter (Tan Jiazhen and Zhao Gongmin, 2002: 86). Other Chinese biologists
supported Lysenkoism for other reasons: at face value, because it claimed rapid crop
improvement and it was accessible to common farmers. But politically, the fact that it
was in line with the dialectical materialist dogma, gave it institutional authority (Schneider,
1989). Geneticists could not do much but bend.
The Cultural Revolution brought attacks against the ‘reactionary academic hegemony’
(fandong xueshu quanwei) and ‘bourgeois intellectuals’. The majority of geneticists at the
Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) were cross-examined (131 out of 170 professors) and/
or sent to work in the countryside (Tan Jiazhen and Zhao Gongmin, 2002: 121). Genetics
was heavily criticized, no matter what faction one adhered to. Morganism was equated
with capitalism, Lysenkoism with Soviet revisionism (after the breakdown of relations
with the USSR) and Chinese medicine with feudalism (Tan Jiazhen and Zhao Gongmin,
2002: 123). Lysenkoist dogma was now used to justify Party dogma, being based on the
infinite malleability of nature, an idea that fed into the prevailing revolutionary doctrine
of the malleability of society (see Munro, 1971, 1977). Thus, according to this ideology,
winter-ripening wheat could be changed into the spring-ripening variety, and vice versa.
‘Heredity’ implied a conservatism that revolutionary optimism was to overcome by manip-
ulating the environment of the organism. In this period, the intellectual endeavours of
geneticists were limited to crop experiments in the country.
Genetics was rehabilitated only in 1977, when Deng Xiaoping’s reforms adopted the
policy of Opening Up to the outside world. At the time, the position of genetics as a field
within the discipline of biology was still weak. A first step in the direction of a full revival
of genetics research was the setting up of a National Genetics Society, led by Li Ruqi in
1978. Despite the setback of Lysenkoism and the Cultural Revolution, genetics started to
flourish in the 1980s, especially the fields of molecular genetics and genetic engineering
(Crow, 1988: 167). Initially inhibited by a lack of funding and experimental equipment,
the discipline picked up when it became clear that genetics was to remain of great impor-
tance internationally and had great promise financially.
Although some pockets of Lysenkoism continued to exist in the 1980s, relations and
exchanges with the international genetics community, especially in the US, and the broaden-
ing of genetics into many contemporary areas, soon altered the moral and political image of
genetics research in China (Schneider, 1989: 64). In fact, China’s Lysenkoist experience
 j
T H E C H A N G I N G N A T U R E O F I D E O L O G Y I N C H I N A ’ S L I F E S C I E N C E S j 25

became a warning against Party and political intervention in science. The natural sciences
were separated from the social sciences and the humanities (as exemplified by the
split between the Chinese Academy of Sciences [CAS] and the social sciences; Sleeboom-
Faulkner, 2007), and genetics was no longer to be hampered by the ideological dogmas of
dialectical materialism.2

The ideological turnaround

The role of ideology in science policy-making has changed drastically since the implemen-
tation of the reforms in 1978. A nearly diametrical turn-around has taken place in the area
of science regulation. During the Cultural Revolution, ideology had explicitly played a role
in the organization of science research and scientists had to take ideological instructions into
account in their daily work, their experiments and their teaching (as far as teaching and
research were practised). Dialectical materialism was to provide the key to all political
and creative thinking, but it was subject to numerous disputes and interpretations.
Dissenters were thought to adhere to the wrong ideologies or were regarded as subversive.
Ideology then was to provide the basis, the torch and the way of people’s thinking and beha-
viour. In other words, the regime aimed at full ideological control of thought and creation,
with only a minimum of freedom allowed within the ideological reaches of the canons of
Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Of course, this meant that the idea of
pure and autonomous science was under dispute, as was the idea of pure materialism.
But already some time before the 1978 reforms, gradual change was taking place in the
sciences, allowing the separation of scientific research from established ideology in some
fields. After the reforms, these changes accelerated and resulted in a full ideological turn-
around: ideology gradually was banned from political guidelines and scientific research.
Moreover, at the First Session of the 5th National People’s Congress (NPC, February–
March, 1978), science and technology came to constitute one of the Four Modernizations,
next to agriculture, industry, and national defence—even political thinking was to follow
the adage of ‘Seeking truth from fact’ (shishi qiushi)—and it was ‘objective’ science that
was relied upon to get China a place among the world’s ‘advanced’ and wealthy nations.
More surprisingly, large parts of the financial budget were allocated to the advanced
sciences, among which were the life sciences. For, it was argued that the life sciences were
to bring health benefits to the people, the advancement of society and, in the end, economic
gain for all. Under these conditions, research was to be based on science, unhampered by
ideological interference. Freedom of research, then, was to reign over the scientific plans
for stimulating the life sciences.
Nevertheless, in various ways, ideology in the form of research training and education
remained relevant and, in the form of research regulation, it became relevant and perhaps
even fundamental to science organization. This is so a fortiori in the life sciences for various
reasons. First, in the final instance, the results of scientific development were to benefit Soci-
alism with Chinese Characteristics, that is, the current version of socialism and patriotism.

2 Various new genetics institutes were set up, such as the CAS Development Biology Institute in Beijing (October
1983), a CAS Genetic Engineering Laboratory in Beijing (1984), a major Biotechnology Institute in Shanghai at
Fudan University, and CAS Shanghai Centre of Biotechnology in Shanghai.
 j
26 j M A R G A R E T S L E E B O O M - F A U L K N E R

Second, in order to keep up with global science development, it became clear that it was also
necessary to keep up with global bioethical regulatory devices. And these, as will become
clear, are based on various ideologies that determine what kind of research practice is ethi-
cal. Third, the new sciences, among which are cloning and hESR, touch various aspects of
society that have just become re-evaluated under the influence of Confucianism and other
rehabilitated beliefs and ideologies. Here, we can see a clear call for limiting the powers
of scientists. And, finally, utilitarian considerations and profit maximization are the main
driving force behind the establishment of the socialist market economy in the health and
biomedical sectors, and central to the joint ventures set up by the government and private
enterprises. These ideological considerations, as shown below, find their conceptual expres-
sion and political justification in the realm of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and
various religious and nativist ideologies.

Textbooks on medical ethics: Human cloning and human

embryonic stem cell research (hESR)
Cloning and human embryonic stem cell research (hESR) are examples of controversial
research in many countries for various reasons, ranging from concerns about the value of
an individual and social relations to the value of an embryo and the value of life. Although
science in the view of many scientists is an objective and neutral practice, best left to its own
dynamics of knowledge production, many scientists agree also that cloning and hESR call
for bioethical regulation, including scientists in the PRC. In view of its troubled history of
political meddling with science, how do textbooks authors in the PRC justify such interfer-
ence? The textbooks are produced by academic specialist in bioethics, philosophy and med-
icine, published by academic publishers, and mainly directed at an audience of medical
students. The writing and publishing of the textbooks reflects the officially recognized
need for discussion on bioethical issues and the perceived need to provide medical doctors
and researchers with answers to moral dilemmas. Furthermore, the textbooks provide moral
guidance to future physicians and researchers that otherwise may lead to scandal, dissatis-
faction and official embarrassment. But the textbooks are also a result of a structural
tendency in official academic institutions to appropriate a field and define it in the terms
of currently important issues in political debate, varying from socialism and liberalism to
Confucianism and nationalist expansionism. An examination of 17 textbooks on medical
ethics and bioethics sheds some light on understandings of the relation between political
ideology, bioethics and science presented to students of medicine. In the text, when I refer
to the medical textbooks, I use the numbers that I have allocated to them in chronological
order (see the list of Medical Textbooks following the References).

The example of human cloning

This section first comments on the great attention medical textbooks pay to human cloning.
The space available for discussing cloning in medical textbooks evolved from no informa-
tion in 1996 to detailed discussion in 2005: on average it increased from half a page in
1999 to an entire section in 2005. At first, cloning was discussed under the section ‘repro-
ductive technologies’ (1–4; 8 ), but gradually the headings under which it was discussed
 j
T H E C H A N G I N G N A T U R E O F I D E O L O G Y I N C H I N A ’ S L I F E S C I E N C E S j 27

started to differentiate varying from ‘genetic technology’ (5), ‘genetic engineering’ (6; 7;
10;), ‘modern medical technology and ethical issues’ (9; 15), ‘organ transplantation’ (11)
and ‘bioethics’ (12; 13) to ‘life (science) and reproductive ethics’ (14; 16; 17). Over time,
the theme of cloning was split into reproductive and therapeutic cloning. From 2003
onwards, the two are discussed separately, a distinction with great implications for science
regulation, as discussed below.
Human cloning technology is regarded as a key technology in biological engineering.
Apart from for reproductive purposes, it has wide application in the life sciences and
pharmacogenetic medicine (9: 213). The applications mentioned most frequently are the
generation of knowledge on the genetic and biological development of human life, human
reproduction, and the diagnosis and development of medicine and therapies for serious
diseases, such as heart and lung diseases, and diseases of the nervous system.
Arguments for and against human cloning, which occurred in 15 out of 17 medical text-
books, are presented systematically. Unlike on hESR, a definitive ethical stance is taken on
human cloning, which reflects government policies on the subject. Thus, on 19 March 1997,
health minister Chen Minzhang announced China’s view on human reproductive
cloning: ‘not consent, not support, not allow, not accept’ (Bu zancheng, bu zhichi, bu
yunxu, bu jieshou ). However, the PRC has not pro-
duced legislation against human cloning in general. For China prefers to closely monitor
research on embryo cloning, prohibiting human reproductive cloning only. By allowing
therapeutic cloning, the argument goes, ‘research clones’ can be used for the production
of medicine, the cultivation of organs and the advancement of scientific insights
(9: 213–214).
Concerns most frequently mentioned in relation to human reproductive cloning are
related to the views people have of how society should be ideally organized and developed.
Consider the arguments consistently used over time in favour of the use of human reproduc-
tive cloning:

– Improve the stock of the people (preserve the best human genes; maintain a high
quality gene pool) (6; 10; 12; 13)
– Create superior human beings (mentioned are e.g. Einsteins and Newtons, sports-
men, heroes and scientists) (10; 4; 11; 13; 14)
– Help infertile couples to have offspring (4; 6; 11; 12; 14)
– Human cloning is inevitable, so it is best to plan it in a controlled fashion (14).

The fact that the authors list these arguments does not mean that they support them. On the
contrary, the textbooks usually list the arguments for and against. Of these counter-argu-
ments, I discuss five that are emphasized in the textbooks for reasons related to conditions
in Chinese society. First, human reproductive cloning could damage human evolution (6; 8-
10; 12; 13; 16; 17). A concern with the human ability to steer evolution in the right direc-
tion is evident in the list of arguments for and against. But if it were possible to control the
genetics of human evolution, the textbooks discussing the topic have no doubt about its
political realization. This view is implicit in a second, related counter-argument that cloning
technology could augment the currently lopsided population growth (2; 4; 6; 10; 11; 13;
17). Thus, Zeng Jianmin provides the argument that in feudal backward countries reproduc-
tive cloning could seriously disturb the gender ratio (4: 154). Textbook 17 is concerned
 j
28 j M A R G A R E T S L E E B O O M - F A U L K N E R

about plans for eugenic cloning, and asks rhetorically who will decide which human traits
are to be cloned? If just left to individual governments, textbook 17 argues, cloning would
be used as biological weapons, with serious implications for society, potentially more disas-
trous than nuclear weapons, allowing the large-scale cloning of murderous criminals, the
cloning of human primates, human–pig and human–horse hybrids; and, if left to the human
couples themselves, which of the partners would be cloned (17: 175–179)?
Most discussed is the third counter-argument, that reproductive cloning would damage the
current notion of the family and the family household (2; 6; 8–12; 17). Forms of family orga-
nization and households could multiply uncontrolled. Moreover, by separating reproduction of
the population from relations of intimacy (qinggan) the drive to form a family would lose its
force (e.g. 2; 10; 16). Males would no longer be needed (e.g. 6; 16) and potentially five people
could become parent to one child (semen donor, egg donor, carrier, social parents) (6; 10).
According to textbook 8, without a consanguineous relationship, raising children would be dif-
ficult: a cloned person has no parents and no relatives, so society may treat it coldly. Various
textbooks argue that, when grown up, a clone could unknowingly create offspring with people
who are genetically very close (incest). Especially when the technology of cryopreservation is
involved, then it would be hard to determine parenthood after many decades (6; 10; 17).
This would involve the risk of consanguineous mating, which could pose a threat to the quality
of the Chinese gene pool. Some textbooks believe that the progress of humanity partly derives
from people’s sense of duty towards the household and the family. And if there is no honouring
and nurturing of parents, or filial piety, the next generation will weaken substantially (10; 17).
As according to textbook 10, the environment of a clone is just as important as its genetic
make up, reproductive cloning forms a biological time-bomb.
Most textbooks mention the family as the cell of society. Textbook 10 argues that even
in a communist society, where education is largely taken over by the state, the family house-
hold is still the basic unit of society and the state can never take over the task of raising a
family. Other counter-arguments include human health risk (4; 6; 10;12; 15–17) and the
conclusive impossibility of copying a complete individual (8; 9; 11; 12; 14; 16). The human
risk factor in reproductive cloning here refers to the high chance of technological failure, the
short life-span and the possibly poor quality of life of the clone due to technical problems
(10). But it also refers to a failure to respect life and family relations: it violates humanitar-
ianism (rendaozhuyi). Furthermore, as a clone is only biologically a copy of its model, it
does not have the psychology, and the behavioural and social characteristics of the model.
For this reason the clone is not considered to be a whole person. It is a person that has
lost its ‘self’ (sangshi ziwo de ren) (15: 90; also 6). And textbook 11 argues that, as a clone
is always made for a certain purpose and with certain traits, it will always have a warped
mind and suffer from a pessimistic psychology and fate—it may feel that it is a tool in the
hands of society (11).
In short, cultural and political concerns about the quality of the Chinese population and
the continuation of current Chinese notion of the family are central to the prohibition of
reproductive cloning in China. It is true that the examination of views on therapeutic clon-
ing, rather than human reproductive cloning, yields a different list of arguments. And when
the difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning was recognized in Chinese
bioethics, the issue of human embryonic stem cell research becomes a separate category in
the medical textbooks.
 j
T H E C H A N G I N G N A T U R E O F I D E O L O G Y I N C H I N A ’ S L I F E S C I E N C E S j 29

Human embryonic stem cell research (hESR)

In the medical textbooks, hESR in 2002 was discussed as embryonic cloning through
somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) (6). And from 2003 onwards, hESR is discussed in a
separate section, and the number of pages dedicated to it increased rapidly. hESR is dis-
cussed under the various headings of modern medical technologies and ethical issues (9),
as a separate chapter on hESR (10), in chapters on organ transplantation (11), on bioethics
(12; 13), on the life sciences and reproductive ethics (14; 16; 17) and on the ethics of med-
ical science research (15). Arguments for and against are presented in all of the medical text-
books which discuss hESR from 2002 onward. Unlike the case with reproductive cloning, a
definite stance is not always taken—in some cases ultimate judgement is left open, while in
other cases views and evaluation transpire through the arrangement of arguments for and
against.
The applications for stem cell research mentioned in the textbooks lie in curing hundreds
of thousands of people with severely debilitating diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and leukae-
mia (10: 170; see 6; 9–17). Textbook 11 mentions the use of somatic stem cells to inject
into patients directly (e.g. spleen cell or bone marrow), the use of SCNT to inject cloned
stem cells into patients with diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and so on, and the cloning of
organs in animals matching the patient’s genetic make-up, and the growing of skin grafts
and cartilage on mice (11: 191). Most textbooks also state that the official PRC stance
highly values therapeutic cloning. This was expressed clearly in China’s opposition to the
18 February 2005 United Nations (UN) motion that aimed to forbid human cloning
entirely. As the motion did not distinguish between therapeutic and reproductive cloning,
the PRC could not underwrite it (17: 171).
The problems acknowledged and discussed in the medical textbooks mainly cluster
around two issues: the value of the embryo and embryo donation. In most cases, however,
the views critical of using embryos in research are discussed as if they are problems that only
concern foreign countries. In most of the textbooks, bioethical problems around hESR in the
PRC are not mentioned, with the exception of textbooks 9, 11 and 14, which call for
caution, as described below.3 Textbook 10, as an example of a textbook that seems to be
blissfully unaware of any problems linked to embryo research, states that in view of the
great social and economic advantages promised by hESR, the Chinese Ministry of Health
has made it clear that it supports hESR for clinical purposes. In support of this policy, the
Southern Human Genome Organization’s ethics committee declared that ‘Medicine is to
serve Benevolent (use of) Technology’ (Yiweirenshu ). Textbook 10 concludes
with a reference to the discussion on hESR, which, however, does recognize the existence
of problems indirectly: ‘we need to positively support the country’s hESR researchers,

3 On 6 October 2001, the ethics committee of the Southern hESR Centre published the ‘General ethical guidelines
for hESR’ and in 2002, the expert committee of the Ministry of Health published the ‘Proposal for the supervision
of ethical principles for hESR’ (10: 175). Both say that research embryos may derive from spare embryos, aborted
embryos and cloned embryos. Bioethical regulation for embryo donation included: donation of spare embryos only
on a voluntary basis and with informed consent; research allowed only within 14 days; no return of the blastocyst
into the uterus; no use other than for medicine; the creation of hybrids is not allowed; the coordinator of embryo
donation and the researchers may not be one and the same person; the identity and information on the donor must
remain private. The regulation of somatic stem cell research requires oocyte donation to be on a voluntary basis
with informed consent, allows only in vitro research within 14 days, no return to uterus, and allows the creation
of hybrids if it does not take place in a clinical setting and if the former requirements are observed (also see
Doering, 2003; for an overview of the official guidelines for hESR, see Appendix).
 j
30 j M A R G A R E T S L E E B O O M - F A U L K N E R

healthy development of hESR and our contribution to the twenty-first century. It will
benefit society more than it will do harm’ (10: 176).
Although medical textbooks 9, 11 and 14 relate ethical issues of hESR to Chinese
society, this does not lead to any ethical stance apart from calls to be vigilant and to reflect
more about effective regulation. Textbook 9 refers to issues of whether the treatment of the
embryo in hESR can be regarded as benevolent (ren), weighing the violation of value
attached to the embryo seen as a moral individual (daode geren) against the unethicality
of not helping the severely disabled. Textbook 11 questions whether one can prevent cloning
technologies meant for therapeutic cloning from being used for human reproductive cloning,
and whether safety can be guaranteed even in the case of therapeutic cloning (11: 190). Only
textbook 14 actually relates the discussion on the value of human life to a Chinese context,
including that of Confucianism, which textbook 14 describes as an a-religious form of
regarding human life as sacred (Tiandi zhi xing, ren wei gui). For instance, it states that
up to the present day, it is not thought to be right to use the organs of the dead for donation.
Families hope that the deceased will be able to enter Heaven (Tianguo) unscathed (14: 116).
However, textbook 14 argues that, as embryos are not social human beings but biological
human beings, the foetuses that have been aborted as a requirement of the family planning
policy or spare embryos after IVF treatment can be used in research.
Although the other textbooks discuss arguments against hESR, none of them engages with
the issues of the potential emotional or financial pressures on women to donate embryos or
oocytes, benefit sharing, the psychological problems related to abortion, attachment to pre-
birth life or embryo trade in a Chinese context: they are mainly defined as problems belonging
to foreign, Western, feminist or Christian worlds (10; 12; 14–17). Unfortunately, we know that
this is not the case. As shown by the empirical study by Jing-bao Nie (2005), a large proportion
of the Chinese populations regard life as beginning at conception and many women experience
serious mental and also physical problems as a result of the family planning policy that places
women under great pressure to undergo induced abortion.
Similar to the case of reproductive cloning, the medical ethics of hESR in the examined text-
books follow the official political line on the subject. In the case of hESR it means that they
do not refer to problems related to the value of the embryo in China, as it would contradict
official policies on birth planning. It is clear, however, that discussions on morality and ideol-
ogy around the embryo are alive and pervasive, and are, as in other societies, of great influ-
ence on the way in which science is regulated. Moreover, it could be argued that an
ideological stance in many cases is essential for people’s wellbeing. And indeed, this need is
now widely recognized and expressed in the textbooks. Textbook 15 even states that the
effect of the application of new technologies will depend on the quality of medical ethics
and bioethics (15: ch. 1).

Ideology in textbooks on medical ethics

Textbooks on (bio-)medical ethics are supposed to provide students and researchers with an
overview of issues important in medical ethics, science regulation and discussions about cur-
rent medical problems. The textbooks claim to describe a new objective scientific discipline,
related to other social science disciplines, not subjective moral guidelines. However, in the
 j
T H E C H A N G I N G N A T U R E O F I D E O L O G Y I N C H I N A ’ S L I F E S C I E N C E S j 31

dialectics of traditional Marxist jargon, objectivity is not disturbed by class bias, but actu-
ally based on it as a reflection of changing class relations. Over ten years, this new discipline
has undergone various changes and the textbooks reflect this. Apart from the eras recog-
nized in Marxist stage theory as determinants of biomedical morality (primitive society,
slavery, feudal society, capitalism and socialism), tradition has become recognized as a
determining factor of what is seen as biomedical ethics. Although biomedical ethics is
regarded as part of the superstructure of society, also referred to as the realm of ‘spiritual
civilization’, it is viewed as an important tool for guiding scientific development and its
applications in the medical field. It is the task of intellectuals, then, to guide the people’s
biomedical ethics in a direction suitable to a country in the first stage of socialism with
its particular ancient tradition. Thus, the ethics of cloning and hESR discussed in the text-
books is formulated and justified with the policy of establishing Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics in mind.
Within the increasingly broad discursive space of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,
the appropriation of biomedical ethics—a new field of academic inquiry—has taken root in
approximately one decade. Here I attempt to capture this process, so as to facilitate the
understanding of ideological aspects of the legal prohibition of cloning and the bioethical
and political support for hESR, and the ways in which it differs from pre-reform modes
of ideological interference in science.
As outlined above, in one decade, the textbooks show an increase in attention dedicated
to traditional medical ethics; both as measured in absolute terms of the number of pages and
in relative terms of the proportion of space dedicated to it in the textbooks. In that ten-year
period, considerations of ‘Chinese tradition’ have also become more important vis-à-vis
other Eastern traditions. The presentation of Chinese medical ethics changed from a posi-
tion in which it was just one tradition among others, such as that of the Indian Ayurvedic
tradition, to a tradition central to the development of contemporary medical ethics. At the
same time, the scope of the model for medical ethics broadened from a medical model to
a ‘bio-psycho-social medical model’ for ethics. In this approach, the main concern of the
medical specialist is not concentrated on the body of the individual patients but takes into
account the psychosomatic and social dimensions of medical syndromes.4
Another shift in the textbooks can be detected in the conceptualization of medical ethics
as a science studied through dialectical materialist method to medical ethics as a form of
regulation that can be applied to control the application of bioethical and medical norms
in various cultures. The overall functionalist nature of biomedical ethics as an applied
science, as it presents itself, regards morality as both an object of the study of medical moral
behaviour and as a force behind societal change. Descriptions of this behaviour now include
the ‘superior ethical elements in Chinese medical tradition’, which it is hoped will serve the
current bioethical regime. The applied nature of this form of medical ethics is highlighted by
its frequent presentation as four- and eight-character phrases, maxims used in both classical
Chinese writing and in socialist China to prescribe correct ethical behaviour. At the same
time, this functionalist approach to medical morality as a social guide to biomedical ethics
has also come to define biomedical ethics as a regulatory mechanism (7: ch. 1; 9: ch. 1) for
controlling biomedical behaviour. In some instances, bioethics is mobilized to measure the

4 A development that in modern welfare societies took place during the latter half of the twentieth century.
 j
32 j M A R G A R E T S L E E B O O M - F A U L K N E R

value of life, as is the case in textbooks that provide a quasi-precise formula for calculating
the quality of life (14).
Finally, a cluster of changes can be seen in an altered orientation towards the use of
Marxist categories. Gradually, descriptions of the formation and development of biomedical
ethics in terms of their functions in Marxian historical stages have given way to a focus on
Chinese traditions of medical ethics against an increasingly less important background of
historical stages (12: ch. 1). A parallel change occurs in attitudes to class aspects of medical
ethics, from an emphasis on the class nature of medical ethics to the omission or even denial
of its relevance (5: ch. 3). A similar shift takes place from an emphasis on the class aspects of
medical morality (which indicates a difference between medical ethics under socialism and
capitalism) to an emphasis on the spiritual and cultural aspects of morality, emphasizing
cultural differences between China and the West.
The development in the ideological orientation of the textbooks took place in three stages.
First, in the second half of the 1980s and 1990s, a critical appreciation of traditional and Con-
fucian/Buddhist/Taoist ethics came about, which was ascribed both positive and negative aspects
but was cast aside as tainted by feudalism, and unsuitable as a basis for biomedical ethics. One
of the ‘negative’ aspects frequently mentioned is the Confucian regard for the body as belonging
to the parents—filial piety here means that one should not damage the body. This attitude is said
to have been responsible for forestalling the development of the science of pathology. Another
‘negative’ aspect mentioned is the Buddhist concept of ‘karma’, regarded as erroneously divert-
ing medical attention away from a proper medical diagnosis, while mystical elements in
Taoism are also regarded as obstructions to a ‘scientific’ medical understanding of disease.
In a second stage, around 2001, textbooks started to emphasize the importance of either
socialist or cultural aspects of medical ethics. Now references to socialist culture and Chinese
traditional cultures of Confucian/Buddhist/Taoist views on society, family and health became
frequent. In the last stage, starting around 2003, a last ideological re-orientation in the
medical textbooks encouraged a synthetic approach showing a socialist framework accom-
modating a traditional heritage of medical morality matched with adages of socialist and
Chinese traditional medical ethics. For instance, the Southern Human Genome Organization
ethics committee uses the adage of ‘Medicine for serving benevolence and technology’
(Yi wei ren shu ) (10: 176), soliciting support for biomedical research.
This gradual shift in ideological orientation in the medical textbooks shows a new approach
to analysing class interests. For a change took place from analysing contradictions in the med-
ical sector in terms of class interest to analysing conflict in terms of liyi, which can mean profit,
benefit or advantage.5 Thus discussions on access to healthcare have shifted from analysing the
ethics of access to medical treatment for all and problems related to the market economy of
health, to discussions of liyi. For instance, liyi in textbook 7 (pp. 8–10) is introduced as the basis
of morality, while morality is defined as a regulatory mechanism for many kinds of moral beha-
viour. Because cultural expressions of liyi, such as self-sacrifice and benefit, are seen as basic ele-
ments of medicine, liyi is considered to depend on national context. Liyi in this view is also a
direct expression of economic relations, crucial to issues of the costing of the healthcare systems
(see also 11: ch. 1; 17: ch. 1). Textbook discussions on liyi invariably conclude that the col-
lective advantage of the market economy in healthcare is that it improves efficiency and

5 Chinese-English dictionary. Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1986.

 j
T H E C H A N G I N G N A T U R E O F I D E O L O G Y I N C H I N A ’ S L I F E S C I E N C E S j 33

efficacy of healthcare provision and care. At the same time, it criticizes the profiteering
behaviour of medical personnel and individual patients who dodge hospital bills. Health-
care in the market economy is supposed to provide collective liyi (benefit), not individual
liyi (profit), serving the collective liyi (benefit) (see 8: ch. 1).
Finally, biomedical ethics in the textbooks has gained an additional, political, function.
Apart from ‘selecting superior elements from Chinese medical tradition and Western
concepts of medical ethics’, the textbooks have commenced to change what are regarded
as international concepts of bioethics by relating Socialism with Chinese Characteristics to
bioethics as an expression of Western capitalism. For instance, in textbook 14, ‘Western
humanism’ (14: chs 3, 33) is depicted as lacking viability as it is part of Western capitalism,
rife with class exploitation. In contrast, ‘Humanitarianism’ (rendao), seen as an ancient
Chinese concept, is depicted as having been fused with ‘socialist humanism’, a concept
developed in the 1980s (see Sleeboom-Faulkner, 2007), and presented as the obvious
superior candidate for application to medical ethics. It is clear here that these textbooks
revert to ideological sophistry from the fact that the dismantling of the healthcare system
in the Chinese countryside in the 1980s is not even mentioned. Furthermore, publications
critical of the ideas underlying the current healthcare system, which only appear on the black
market as they have been blacklisted, are not mentioned (e.g. Zhang Guidi and Chun Tao,
2006). The question then, of why these textbooks are published is discussed below.

Discussion: The changing culture of ideology in China’s life

sciences
The dominant view in China on the relationship between science and politics is that soon
after the Cultural Revolution, which was characterized by ideological strife, political interfer-
ence with science gradually disappeared. In the new era after the 1978 reforms, science poli-
cies and research regulation have become regarded as administrative tools for steering science
in accordance with the needs of the people and the demands of the communist leadership.
The argument of this article is not that this steering is morally and politically motivated.
Indeed, in any country one would expect biomedical ethics to be exactly that. Rather, it
shows how explicit political interference in science has been displaced by various steering
activities, one of which is biomedical ethics. Now itself defined as a science, bioethics is
ambiguously positioned both inside and outside the medical/scientific community. Having
become a node of healthcare politics, social ideologies and science policy-making, this new
social science discipline has become the ‘regulator of self-regulation’, at least in principle.
Although biomedical ethics is portrayed as a science, it is at the same time ascribed the
important function of governing bioethical morality in the medical sector. The evolution of
the textbooks on medical ethics shows how Chinese medical ethics soon incorporated bio-
medical ethics and broadened its field, extending from the medical sector to the biomedical
sector and society in general, including reproductive technologies, socio-psychological
health, relations of liyi and cultural politics. The textbooks over ten years evolved from
traditional views on medical ethics based on Marxist morality and evolutionary stage
theories of morality in society combined with freshly imported medical ethics, to a diversity
of increasingly sophisticated syntheses between socialist views on morality, Western
 j
34 j M A R G A R E T S L E E B O O M - F A U L K N E R

bioethics and Chinese traditional views of medical morality. This synthesis was categorized
under the heading of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
Although there have been tremendous political changes in science policies since the post-
1978 reforms, the two case studies on human cloning and hESR show also an important line
of continuity with pre-1978 reform ideology: the uncritical acceptance of the official line and
the continued strong resonance with government propaganda. In the first case study, on
human cloning, the official political decision to prohibit human cloning is backed up by
means of references to socialist ideas of what constitutes individual, nationalist ideas about
the quality of the population, and Confucian ideologies of the family. In the second case
study, on hESR, the official political support for hESR is justified by referring to a cultural
context drawing on the dominant view of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Objections
to hESR, incongruent with the official definition of Chinese spiritual civilizations, are
discussed as if they can only be part of and are even inherent to foreign cultures of feminism,
Christianity and capitalist exploitation. And the bioethical issues pertaining to embryo and
oocyte donation, it is presumed, can be solved through monitoring and regulation.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Frank Pieke and Andrew Kipnis for organizing the AAA panel in 2006, at
which this paper was first presented, and the LUF-fund of the University of Leiden, which
financially facilitated my participation. This article has benefited from research support pro-
vided by the Netherlands Organization of Science (NWO) and the ESRC (RES-350-27-0002).
I would also like to thank Alex Faulkner and Suli Sui for their helpful comments on this article.

References
Bonnicksen, A.L. (2002). Crafting a cloning policy: From Dolly to stem cells. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP.
Crow, J.F. (1988). Genetics in postwar China. In J.Z. Bowers, J. William Hess, & N. Sivin (Eds), Science and medicine
in twentieth-century China: Research and education,155–169. Ann Arbor: Centre for Chinese Studies, U Michigan.
Doering, O. (2003). Chinese researchers promote biomedical regulations: What are the motives of the biopolitical
dawn in China and where are they heading? Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 14, 39–46.
Franklin, S. (2004). What we know and what we don’t about cloning and society. In P. Glasner (Ed.), Reconfiguring
nature: Issues and debates in the new genetics, 247–258. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Holland, S., Lebacqz, K., & Zoloth, L. (2004). The human Embryonic Stem Cell debate. Cambridge, MA and
London: MIT Press.
Joravsky, D. (1970). The Lysenko affair. Chicago: U Chicago Press.
Munro, D.J. (1971). The malleability of man in Chinese Marxism, China Quarterly, Oct./Dec.,609–640.
Munro, D.J. (1977). The concept of man in contemporary China. Ann Arbor: Michigan UP.
Nie, J.B. (2005). Behind the silence: Chinese voices on abortion. Lanham, MD and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schneider, L.A. (1989). Learning from Russia: Lysenkoism and the fate of genetics in China, 1950–1986. In
D.F. Simon and S. Goldman (Eds), Science and technology in post-Mao China, 45–65. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.
Sleeboom, M. (2004). Genomics in Asia: Cultural values and bioethical practices. London:Kegan Paul.
Sleeboom-Faulkner, M. (2007). The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS): Shaping the reforms, academia and
China (1977–2003). Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.
Tan Jiazhen & Zhao Gongmin (Eds.) (2002). Zhonguo Yichuanxue Lishi (The history of genetics in China).
Shanghai: Shanghai Keji Jiaoyu Chubanshe.
Zhang Guidi & Chun Tao (2006). Zhongguo nongmin shengsi baogao (A report on the life and
death of Chinese peasants). Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe.
 j
T H E C H A N G I N G N A T U R E O F I D E O L O G Y I N C H I N A ’ S L I F E S C I E N C E S j 35

Medical textbooks
1. Li Benfu , Li Zhuanjun & Cong Yali (1996). Yixue Lunlixue. Beijing: Beijing
Yike Daxue Chubanshe.
2. Lu Qihua (main Ed.) (1999). Yiue Lunlixue. Huazhong Keji Daxue Chubanshe.
3. Yang Fang , Zhang Chen et al. (2000). Yiue Lunlixue. Shanghai: Di Er Jun Yi Daxue Chubanshe.
4. Zhang Xiuyun (2000). Yiue Lunlixue. Beijing: Guofang Keji Daxue Chubanshe.
5. Qiu Xiangxing (main Ed.) (2001). Yiue Lunlixue. Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe.
6. Chen Yaxin , Wang Dajian , Feng Zhaoxiang & Lu Wei (2002). Dang-
dai Yiue Lunlixue. Beijing:
7. Du Jinxiang & Wang Xiaoyan (main eds) (2002). Yiue Lunlixue Jiaocheng. Beijing:
Kexue Chubanshe.
8. Bu Ping (main Ed.) (2003). Yiue Lunlixue. Beijing: Gaodeng Jiaoyu Chubanshe.
9. Qiu Xiangxing (Main Ed.) (2003). Yiue Lunlixue. Beijing: Renmin Weisheng Chubanshe.
10. Li Runhua & Liu Yaoguang (Eds) (2003). Yiue Lunlixue. Changsha: Zhongnan Daxue
Chubanshe.
11. Lu Qihua , Ruan Liping & Zou Congqing (main Eds) (1999). Yiue Lunlixue.
Huazhong Keji Daxue Chubanshe.
12. Guo Zhaojiang (main Ed.) (2004). Yiue Lunlixue. Xian: Di Si Jun Yi Daxue Chubanshe.
13. Cao Kaibin , Qiu Shichang & Fan Minsheng (2004). Yixue lunlixue. Shanghai:
Fudan Daxue Chubanshe.
14. Sun Muyi (main Ed.) (2004). Yiue Lunlixue. Beijing: Gaodeng Jiaoyu Chubanshe.
15. Li Yongsheng (2004). Yixue Lunlixue. Zengzhou: Zengzhou Chubanshe.
16. Che Longhao (2005). Yixue Lunlixue. Beijing: Gaodeng Jiaoyu Chubanshe.
17. Wu Suxiang (2005). Yixue Lunlixue. Guangzhou: Guangdong Chubanshe.

Appendix: Ethical guiding principles on human embryonic stem

cell research (2003–460)
(Promulgated by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Health,
People’s Republic of China on 24 December 2003 and available at: http://www.chinaphs.
org/bioethics/regulations_&_laws.htm#_Toc113106142)
Authorized translation
The Ethical Guiding Principles for Research on Human Embryonic Stem Cell (herein-
after referred to as the Guiding Principles) are formulated for the purpose of bringing
human embryonic stem cell research in biomedical domains conducted in the People’s
Republic of China to accord with bioethical norms, to ensure internationally recognized
bioethical guidelines and domestic related regulations to be respected and complied with,
and to promote a healthy development of human embryonic stem cell research.
Human embryonic stem cells described in the Guiding Principles include stem cells
derived from donated human embryos, those originated from germ cells and those obtained
from somatic cell nuclear transfer technology.
Any research activity related to human embryonic stem cells conducted in the territory
of the People’s Republic of China shall abide by the Guiding Principle.

1. Any research aiming at human reproductive cloning shall be prohibited.

2. Human embryonic stem cells used for research purpose can only be derived from the
following means with voluntary agreement:

Spared gamete or embryos after in vitro fertilization (IVF);

Fetal cells from accidental spontaneous or voluntarily selected abortions;
 j
36 j M A R G A R E T S L E E B O O M - F A U L K N E R

Embryos obtained by somatic cell nuclear transfer technology or parthenogenetic split

embryos; and
Germ cells voluntarily donated.
3. All research activities related to human embryonic stem cells shall comply with the
following norms:
4. Embryos obtained from IVF, human somatic cell nuclear transfer, parthenogenesis or
genetic modification techniques, its in vitro culture period shall not exceed 14 days
starting from the day when fertilization or nuclear transfer is performed.
5. It shall be prohibited to implant embryos created by means described above into the
genital organ of human beings or any other species.
6. It shall be prohibited to hybridize human germ cells with germ cells of any other spe-
cies.
7. It shall be prohibited to buy or sell human gametes, fertilized eggs, embryos and fetal
tissues.
8. The principle of informed consent and informed choice shall be complied with, the
form of informed consent shall be signed, and subjects’ privacy shall be protected in
all research activities related to human embryonic stem cells.
9. The informed consent and informed choice mentioned above refer to that the
researchers shall use accurate, clear and popular expressions to tell the subjects the
expected aim of the experiment as well as the potential consequences and risks and
to obtain their consent by signing on a form of informed consent.
10. Research institutions engaged in human embryonic stem cell shall establish an ethical
committee, which consists of research and administrative expert in biology, medicine,
law and sociology with the responsibilities for providing scientific and ethical review,
consultation and supervision of the research activities related to human embryonic
stem cells.
11. Research institutions engaged in research related to human embryonic stem cells shall
formulate corresponding detailed measures and regulatory rules in compliance with
the Guiding Principles.
The Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Health of the
People’s Republic of China shall be responsible for the interpretation of the Guiding
Principles.
12. The Guiding Principles shall go into effect as of the date of its promulgation.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.