20世纪20至40年代，中国兴起了优生节育思潮。潘光旦是中国近代优生运动的重要推动者，提出了以生物学立场思考人类社会的“人文的生物学”观。他的人文生物学观是站在保守主义和民族主义立场上对个人与民族关系的学科性解答，前期注重生物因素，重视民族未来延续而相对轻视个性解放。由于40年代优生节育思潮的衰退和对社会学研究的不断加深，潘光旦重新审视了其思想中的个人与民族关系，提出了个人与社群并重的“两纲六目”理论。其人文生物学观的视野也由未来转向现实，提倡自由教育和民主政治，对优生学的倚重减少，追求生物学和社会学的贯通。同时，从潘光旦介入中国近代优生思潮起，他的人文生物学观就不断引起争论，交锋点主要围绕个体权利以及婚恋自由、遗传与环境对人的影响机制等。以潘光旦为核心的中国近代优生话语显示：优生概念具有宽泛的内涵，知识分子可以通过对科学的政治解释将优生所具有的科学权威作为自己论战的有力工具，对优生原理的诠释体现了知识分子内心对个人与民族关系问题的态度。而且近代中国优生思想既没有明显的种族主义特征，也没有正式的实践机会，它仅仅提供了一个讨论现代社会话题的生物术语平台，但优生的科学权威让国家正当强化了对个人身体的规训。

In the 1920s and 1940s, the thought of eugenics and birth control emerged in China. Pan Guangdan, an important promoter of the eugenic movement in modern China, proposed a “humanistic biology” view of human society from a biological standpoint. His view of humanistic biology was an academic solution to the relationship between individuals and the nation from a conservative and nationalistic standpoint, focusing on biological factors in the early stage, and valuing the future continuity of the nation while relatively neglecting the liberation of individuality. However, due to the decline of eugenic trend and the development of sociology in the 1940s, Pan had to reconsider the relationship between the individual and the nation. Therefore, the theory of “two programs and six items” was proposed, which placed equal emphasis on the individual and the nation. Moreover, his perspective of humanistic biology also shifted from the future to reality and more effort was put into the advocation of liberal education and democratic politics. In a word, the interpretation of his thought relied less on eugenics, and turned to manifest the coherence of biology and sociology. Pan’s view of humanistic biology has constantly aroused controversy since he intervened in China’s modern eugenics ethos, with the points of contention mainly relating to individual rights and freedom of marriage, and the mechanisms of heredity and environmental influence on human beings. In general, the terminology of eugenics in modern China with Pan’s thoughts as its core shows that the concept of eugenics has a broad connotation and intellectuals can utilize the scientific authority of eugenics as a powerful tool to interpret their political advocacy in political debate. The interpretation of eugenics also reflects their attitude towards the issue of individual and national relations. What’s more, modern Chinese eugenic ethos had neither an obvious racist character nor a formal opportunity for practice. It simply provided a platform, which was built by using biological terms, for discussing modern social topics. But the scientific authority of eugenics helped the state to legitimately reinforce the regulation of the human body.