Just as a strong white light fragments into colorful beams through a prism, so Charles Darwin has various images throughout the world. He not only appears as a scientific sage, the founder of modern evolutionary biology; he also has wider cultural images. He can be a liberal or a conservative; an abolitionist or a racist; a moralist or a devil’s chaplain (Kjærgaard 2010, 105–22). His banner can be waved by socialists for mutual aid, as well as by capitalists for jungle rule. Finally, and inevitably, he was a Victorian gentleman. These different, sometimes contradictory images show diverse appropriations of Darwin in the various contexts in which he has been encountered. My aim in this essay is to investigate the Chinese encounter with Darwin and the appropriation of his theories in changing political and social contexts.

The image of Darwin in the People’s Republic of China, founded in 1949, was clearly embodied in the “Meeting in Commemoration of Great Figures of World Culture” held on 27 May 1959 at Beijing to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Darwin and the 200th anniversary of the birth of – amazingly – Robert Burns, the plowman poet from Scotland. What a combination, a gentlemanly capitalist and a spokesman of the proletariat! Bing Zhi, the president of the Zoological Society of China, lectured on “A Century of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species,” and Zheng Zuoxin, the secretary-general of the Zoological Society of China, delivered an address “In Commemoration of the Great Naturalist: Charles Darwin.” According to their address, Darwin was first of all a “great materialistic scientist” who was buried in Westminster Abbey with Isaac Newton, another “great materialistic scientist” (for if Newton can be counted a materialist, why not Darwin?); Darwin was also a scientist who “broke through the shackle of religion,” and his Origin “sets forth a new outlook on the universe, which overthrows the superstitious allegation that God is the creator.” One reason we should pay homage to Charles Darwin is “his resolute endeavor in overthrowing the conservative and reactionary forces.”