Reflecting upon "progress": Zhang yaoxiang and the science and history of psychology in Republican China

Zhang Yaoxiang was a key figure in the development of psychology in Republican China. Like many of his contemporaries, Zhang was a practitioner of scientific psychology and spared no effort to leverage psychological expertise for national progress. However, he distinguished himself through his keen interest in the past and his groundbreaking role in inaugurating the historiography of Chinese psychology. Despite acknowledging Zhang's dual roles as a scientist and a historian, existing scholarship has largely overlooked the potential tensions between these roles-particularly regarding how Zhang understood the historical past and its relationship to the present in an era that revered progress. This article revisits Zhang's engagement with the science and history of psychology in China from the 1920s to 1940s. It argues that his perceptions of the past and present of psychology were associated with his evolving conceptions of progress and science. By the 1940s at the latest, through historical inquiries, Zhang was able, on the one hand, to localize psychology and interlink local knowledge with that of Western centers and, on the other hand, to transcend his professional identity as an experimental psychologist to embrace a broadening field with various competing schools of thought. Through Zhang's case, this article offers a nuanced history of the circulation of modern psychology in Republican China and reveals the origins of Chinese psychological historiography as part of global historical traditions. It contributes to current discussions on the relationship between the past and present of psychology, as well as contextual approaches to the history of psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).