Zhang Jingsheng

Zhang Jingsheng
Zhang, c. 1920s
Born	Zhang Jiangliu (1888-02-20)20 February 1888 Darongpu, Raoping, Guangdong, Qing China
Died	18 June 1970(1970-06-18) (aged 82) Raoping, Guangdong, China
Spouse	Huang Guannan ​ (m. 1935)​
Education
Education	Imperial University of Peking University of Paris University of Lyon

Zhang Jingsheng (born Zhang Jiangliu (张江流); 20 February 1888 – 18 June 1970) was a Chinese philosopher and sexologist. Born to a merchant family in Raoping County in eastern Guangzhou, Zhang attended Whampoa Military Primary School, where he became a militant supporter of Tongmenghui revolutionaries. After he was expelled from Whampoa, he met with Tongmenghui leader Sun Yat-sen and entered the Imperial University of Peking. He became an enthusiastic advocate of European ideas of social Darwinism, scientific racism, and eugenics, changing his personal name to Jingsheng, "competition for survival". He was an active member of the Beijing Tongmenghui cell alongside Wang Jingwei, but declined a political post in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution, instead studying in France.

Zhang received a doctorate from the University of Lyon in 1919 for a thesis on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of his major philosophical inspirations. On recommendation from Cai Yuanpei, he became a professor at Peking University soon after his return to China in 1920. During the early 1920s, he wrote two books advocating for a society organized around aesthetic principles. In 1926, he published Sex Histories, a sexology text based on stories of sexual encounters he gathered from the public. He was ridiculed by much of the Chinese media and academia for the book, and was often referred to by the mocking nickname Dr. Sex (性博士; Xìng Bóshì) in the tabloid press. A number of unauthorized pornographic sequels of the book were published due to its popularity, leading to confusion about which books were Zhang's original work. He left teaching and settled in Shanghai shortly after the release of Sex Histories. He founded a "Beauty Bookshop" in Shanghai, which published sex-education texts and translations of European literature and philosophy, and edited a monthly periodical he named New Culture. In 1929, he returned to France to work as a translator after his business efforts in Shanghai failed. Four years later, he returned to his home county of Raoping and worked in local politics and education in relative obscurity. He was persecuted by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution and died while in confinement in 1970.

Loosely inspired by Havelock Ellis, Zhang's sexual thought centers on the absorption of bodily fluids produced during sex, which he saw as important for sexual pleasure and the vitality of the resulting children. His political writings outlined a utopian "New China" which would govern society according to aesthetics and sentimentality. This "aesthetic state" would institute a national eugenics program to resolve what he perceived as the weaknesses of the Chinese race. Although he enjoyed a brief period of academic prestige for his works in the early 1920s, the scandal around Sex Histories destroyed his professional reputation, and he became disconnected from academia. Posthumous scholarly opinions on him and his work range from dismissive to highly supportive. His son Zhang Chao, a local official in Raoping, collected his works and worked to promote his legacy during the 1980s. His former home was rebuilt by the county government in 2004 and converted into a park named Dr. Zhang Jingsheng Park. Collections of his writing began to be published during the 1980s, but Sex Histories was not fully republished until 2005, likely due to obscenity laws.

Early life and education

On 20 February 1888, Zhang Jiangliu (张江流) was born in Darongpu Village, Fubin Town, in Raoping County, a rural county in eastern Guangzhou. He was the third child of a well-to-do merchant family. Before settling in rural Guangzhou, his father Zhang Zhihe and grandfather Zhang Xiangruo were affluent Overseas Chinese merchants active in Malaya, Vietnam, and Singapore. Zhang's father took a concubine when Zhang was young, causing great division and strife in his family. During the Qing period, having concubines was a common means to demonstrate one's wealth.

Zhang first attended a traditional private elementary school in a nearby village, where his teacher gave him the name Gongshi (公室; 'state bureaucracy'), derived from the work of ancient philosopher Li Si. In 1903, he attended the western-style No. 1 Primary School in Raoping, and moved to nearby Shantou in 1904 to study at Tongwen High School.

In 1907, Zhang tested into the Whampoa Military Primary School (the precursor to the Whampoa Military Academy), a provincial military academy that had been recently established as part of the Qing dynasty's military modernization program. Whampoa required the study of a foreign language, and Zhang's year cohort was randomly assigned French. He became a supporter of the Tongmenghui revolutionary organization through its Min Bao (民報; 'Civic News') newspaper, which took a socialist, anti-statist position, inspired by a variety of European philosophers. Among the journal's major ideological inspirations was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French Enlightenment-era philosopher heavily championed in columns by Wang Jingwei due to his emphasis of the social contract and natural rights. The deputy director of Whampoa, Tongmenghui member Zhao Sheng, connected Zhang with his revolutionary contacts.

Revolutionary activity and overseas study

Zhang became active in the Tianjin–Beijing cell of the Tongmenghui, where he became close to Wang Jingwei and his fiancée Chen Bijun, alongside other prominent revolutionaries such as Wu Zhihui and Zhang Ji. After Wang was arrested in a failed plot to assassinate the Qing prince regent Zaifeng, Zhang raised money for a planned jailbreak. Zhang graduated in 1911, shortly before the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, where the Tongmenghui overthrew the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. The following year, he was appointed by Sun Yat-sen to serve under Wang as an official in the North–South Conference, a peace conference in Shanghai with the leading Beiyang Army general Yuan Shikai. Zhang wrote in his memoirs that none of the figures involved in peace negotiations "understood what kind of creature republicanism was", blaming this for the ensuing Yuan Shikai regime and the fall into warlordism over the following years.

Zhang declined a posting in the incipient republican government, instead opting to participate as one of the first twenty-five students sponsored by the Kuomintang (the successor party to the Tongmenghui) to travel overseas to continue their education. His participation in the study program was likely due to advocacy from fellow revolutionary Cai Yuanpei.

Zhang initially enrolled in the University of Paris. He made overtures to study medicine and foreign relations, but eventually specialized in social philosophy. The university's Faculty of Letters awarded him a diploma in philosophy in 1914. Due to the outbreak of World War I and the threat posed by the German Army to Paris, he moved to the south of France to continue philosophy studies at the University of Lyon. He further studied the work of Rousseau and sociologist Émile Durkheim. Captivated by Rousseau, Zhang wrote his doctoral thesis on Rousseau's pedagogy, with educator Charles Chabot as his doctoral advisor. Zhang received his doctorate in April 1919. Out of the twenty-five members of his cohort of foreign students, only Zhang and Tan Xihong received doctoral degrees. Zhang chaired a Chinese student group while in France and participated in the founding of the Sino-French Education Association, which promoted overseas education and work-study programs to Chinese academics, most notably through the Diligent Work–Frugal Study Movement. He organized support for Chinese laborers recruited to work in France during the war.

Academic career

In 1920, Zhang returned to China and became the headmaster of Jinshan Middle School in Guangdong on the recommendation of Chaozhou politician Zou Lu. To the reported irritation of the school's owners, he replaced many of the teachers and initiated several reforms, such as the introduction of coeducation, physical education classes, and English-language instruction alongside the abandonment of rote learning. He met with the Guangdong warlord (a regional military governor) Chen Jiongming to advocate for the regional introduction of birth control, which was rejected. Zhang claimed that Chen called him "mentally deranged" when he made the proposal. He was forced to resign after a year and left Guangdong, fearing political persecution by Chen. Cai Yuanpei, the chancellor of Peking University, offered Zhang a position as a professor of philosophy, which he accepted.

At Peking, Zhang was strongly influenced by the political and social philosophies of the May Fourth Movement, sharing the belief that China's weakness against the foreign powers had to be overcome through mass political action and education. He was a popular professor at the university, teaching classes on aesthetics, logic, French, the history of European philosophy, and "customs investigation" (風俗調查; Fēngsú diàochá), which combined anthropology, ethnology, sociology, and folkloristics. He wrote articles for May Fourth Movement publications such as the Jingbao fukan (京报附刊; 'Beijing Post Literary Supplement') and Chenbao fukan (晨报副刊; 'Morning Post Literary Supplement'). In 1923, he married a graduate student at Peking named Chu Songxue, but divorced her a few years later after a tumultuous marriage.

Zhang became close to several other faculty members at Peking, including his old Tongmenghui comrades Wu Zhihui and Zhang Ji, as well as librarian and activist Li Dazhao. Zhang and the writer Hu Shih served as translators for birth control activist Margaret Sanger during her visit to Beijing in 1922. Soon after, Zhang attempted to organize a visit from Albert Einstein, who chose instead to spend time in Japan.