上海禁娼與在華西人的道德焦慮－以上海進德會為中心的觀察(1918-1924)

Abstract

From 1918 to 1924, the Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee, established mainly by Western Christians and moral reformers in Shanghai's International Settlement, launched ananti-vice campaign aiming at preventing the spread of venereal disease and ameliorating local moral welfare. They compelled the Municipal Council to declare the abolishment of prostitution within five years. Focusing on the Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee, this article shows that Western moral reformers took the salvation of the fallen souls of the Chinese as their mission and hoped to reform China by means of preaching Christianity and Western civilization. Unlike the Municipal Committee or most Westerners, who limited prostitution abolishment to concerns for public health and social order, the Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee was more concerned with the improvement of the morality of the foreign community and the salvation of the foreign prostitutes so as to set good moral examples for the Chinese and promote religious salvation more effectively. However, what made them embarrassed and ashamed was the fact that there were many foreign patients with venereal disease and foreign prostitutes in the International Settlement, which seemed to highlight the hypocrisy of Christianity and Western civilization before the Chinese, and thus became the source of moral quandary. In this sense, the Anti-Vice Campaign in Shanghai was not merely a story of modern sexual reform and Christian evangelism of the Municipal Council and moral reformers, but also lay at the heart of discussions that reflected the mutual moral recognition and cultural imagination of the local Chinese society and the foreign community: when talking about sexual relations, whose culture or civilization was decent and pure, and whose was wild and lascivious. Could this perhaps be regarded as ”the White Man's Burden” for Westerners who considered Shanghai the adventurers' paradise and China their semi- colony?