Singularity is China

From The Economist:

But the organisation is involved in even more controversial projects. It is about to embark on a search for the genetic underpinning of intelligence. Two thousand Chinese schoolchildren will have 2,000 of their protein-coding genes sampled, and the results correlated with their test scores at school. Though it will cover less than a tenth of the total number of protein-coding genes, it will be the largest-scale examination to date of the idea that differences between individuals’ intelligence scores are partly due to differences in their DNA.

Two points. First, why is searching for the genetic underpinning of intelligence "controversial?" We know intelligence is partly hereditary (more precisely, we know that some non-trivial fraction of interpersonal variance in IQ scores is due to interpersonal variance in genotypes). We don't know exactly what the genetic mechanism behind this is, but what's wrong with trying to find out? Second, I can't get rid of the feeling that the Chinese authorities are thinking about eugenics. I have no idea what they want or what is feasible, so I can't speculate about anything. On the other hand, I can't help not to. Imagine future China in which, say, 25% of population are people with IQs of 180 or higher.