Qiu Renzong (邱仁宗, c. 1933) is a Chinese bioethicist. He is a senior research fellow emeritus at China's Institute of Philosophy, and chair of the Academic Committee at the Centre for Bioethics at Peking Union Medical College.^[1] China Daily writes that he is regarded as the scholar who 30 years ago introduced bioethics to China.^[2]

Qiu published a paper in 2002 arguing for the recognition in China of animal rights, and introducing the idea of speciesism. He argued in favour of a gradualist approach to the recognition of rights, rejecting the abolitionist approach as unrealistic. His paper was criticized by Zhao Nanyuan, a professor at Tsinghua University, who wrote that animal rights arguments are foreign ideas and are "anti-humanity."^[3]

Qiu was awarded the 2009 UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science^[1] and he shared the Hastings Center's Henry Knowles Beecher Award with Solomon R. Benatar in 2011.^[4]

Selected works

• Bioethics: Asian Perspectives: A Quest for Moral Diversity. Springer, 2004.