Blood Selling in Modern China: Technologies and Ideas, 1876–1937

Abstract: While studies of blood transfusion in Europe and America abound, there is little scholarship concerning the practice in modern China. Drawing on modern Chinese newspapers and reconstructing the historical landscape beyond texts, this article engages the debates surrounding the ethics of blood transfusion and paid blood donation in China from 1876 to 1937. It finds that the point of contention was not between Western medical progress and indigenous medicine but grew out of the anxiety Chinese intellectuals felt when searching for their place in an urban and capitalist social order. Blood selling served as a metaphor for survival in large cities, signifying the equivalence of vital blood and essential money. The intellectuals wanted to share their experience of exhaustion and their perception of the social predicament.