Anarchism in China was a strong intellectual force in the reform and revolutionary movements in the early 20th century. In the years before and just after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty Chinese anarchists insisted that a true revolution could not be political, replacing one government with another, but had to overthrow traditional culture and create new social practices, especially in the family. "Anarchism" was translated into Chinese as () literally, "the doctrine of no government."
Chinese students in Japan and France eagerly sought out anarchist doctrines to first understand their home country and then to change it. These groups relied on education to create a culture in which strong government would not be needed because men and women were humane in their relations with each other in the family and in society. Groups in Paris and Tokyo published journals and translations that were eagerly read in China and the Paris group organized the Work-Study Programs to bring students to France. The late 19th and early 20th century Nihilist movement and anarchist communism in Russia were a major influence. The use of assassination as a tool was promoted by groups like the Chinese Assassination Corps, similar to the suicidal terror attacks by Russian anti-czarist groups. By the 1920s, however, the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party offered organizational strength and political change which drained support from anarchists.
Origins Chinese anarchism has its origins in philosophical Taoism, which first developed in ancient China during the Spring and Autumn period and has been embraced by some anarchists as a source of anarchistic attitudes. The Taoist sages Lao Tzu and Zhuang Zhou whose philosophy was rather based on an "anti-polity" stance and rejection of any kind of involvement in political movements or organisations and developed a philosophy of "non-rule" in the Zhuang Zhou and Tao Te Ching, and many Taoists in response lived an anarchic lifestyle. There is an ongoing debate whether exhorting rulers not to rule belongs to the sphere of anarchism. A new generation of Taoist thinkers with anarchic leanings appeared during the chaotic Wei-Jin period. Taoist principles were more akin to philosophical anarchism, trying to delegitimate the state and question its morality. Taoism and neo-Taoism were pacifist schools of thought, in contrast with many of their Western anarchist counterparts some centuries later.
Throughout its history, Chinese civilization has gone through a cycle of rise and decline marked by the continued centralization of power by ruling dynasties, collapse of centralized rule and then the eventual rise of a new dynasty. In 1839, the Qing dynasty entered a period of decline, beginning with its defeat by foreign powers during the Opium Wars and continuing with a string of revolts and rebellions, which severely weakened the empire's centralized rule. Chinese dissidents started to flee abroad where, outside of the authority of the Qing dynasty, they were able to freely spread the revolutionary ideas of republicanism, nationalism, socialism and anarchism.
Beginnings of the reformist and revolutionary movements
During the Self-Strengthening Movement, Chinese intellectuals making direct contact with Europeans started to take an interest in the political and economic institutions of European powers. A national consciousness and a sense of cosmopolitanism began to develop, advocating the transformation of China from an empire into a nation-state, in order to secure its future existence in the face of foreign aggression. This rise in Chinese nationalism, which advocated for a form of popular sovereignty, was poorly received by the governing Confucianists, whose conservative desire to preserve the inherited institutions of the empire led them to oust many nationalists from office during the 1880s. This caused much of the nationalist movement to reconstitute itself around revolutionary republican ideals, calling for an end to Qing rule.
Inspired by early Qing thinkers that condemned rulers who prioritized private interests over the public good, the goal of the first generation of Chinese nationalists was to organically integrate Chinese society and the state, with reformers like Liang Qichao advocating for greater political participation through the institution of democracy. Contrary to the nationalists' intentions, by probing the relationship between society and the state, they had raised the question of opposition between society and the state, as well as the question of opposition between individual autonomy and the political collective, laying the foundations for the emergence of Chinese anarchist thought. These growing anarchic tendencies were even seen in Liang's own words, when he posed that his conception of nationalism "does not allow other people to infringe my freedom, nor does it let me impose on other people" and advocated for the cultivation of autonomous individuals by removing all political and social restrictions from them.
The collapse of the Self-Strengthening Movement because of the Chinese defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War gave rise to a number of new revolutionary nationalist organizations such as the Revive China Society, as well as organized political reform movements such as the Gongche Shangshu movement. From Hong Kong, the Revive China Society planned to launch an uprising in Guangzhou, but their plans were leaked and dozens of members were captured and executed by the Qing government. Meanwhile, the Guangxu Emperor had undertaken the Hundred Days' Reform, but this too was defeated in a coup d'état by the conservative faction led by Empress Dowager Cixi, who placed the reform-minded Guangxu Emperor under house arrest and ordered the public execution of the reform's chief advocates.
After the defeat of the Qing-backed Boxer Rebellion, the Qing government was finally forced to begin implementing reforms, in order to attempt to keep the dynasty in power. At the time, because of the activities of European anarchists in the late 19th century, they were frequently reported in the newspapers, but the translation used at the time was inaccurate, either phonetically as "Ya-Na-Ji-Si-De Party" (鴨那雞撕德黨) or as "Monarchless Party" (無君黨). In 1901, influenced by the Japanese translation, Liang Qichao, who was exiled in Japan, first called the American anarchist Leon Czolgosz a member of "Anarchist Party" (無政府黨) when he reported the assassination of President William McKinley in the Qing Yi Bao; because the Qing Yi Bao had great influence among intellectuals at the time, this translation soon became the most common one, however, it is generally believed that the first systematic introduction to anarchism was published much later, in a 1902 book called The Great Tide in Russia (), which was translated and expanded by Ma Junwu based on a chapter from Thomas Kirkup's A History of Socialism. Ma Junwu, Zhang Ji and the intellectuals of the time had already discussed the relationship between the Russian nihilist movement, the socialist movement in Europe and anarchism. These connections, especially with the nihilist movement, were also the general impression that anarchism left on the Chinese people at the beginning.
Early growth of anarchism
Although the emergence of anarchism as a distinct, formal political current did not occur until 1906, there were many people interested in anarchism as early as 1903. Paris was the home of the early Chinese anarchist movement, with a similar movement in Tokyo. After the failed Boxer Rebellion, local and central Chinese government groups sent students abroad for study, including some several hundred students to Europe and about 10,000 to Japan by 1906.
Paris group
Having fled the Boxer Uprising in 1900, Li Shizeng returned to Beijing the following year, where he met Zhang Renjie during a banquet at the home of a government official. The pair bonded over their mutual dissatisfaction with Chinese politics and society and discovered that they shared ideas for its reform. In 1902, the pair were appointed as attaches to the Chinese embassy in Paris, although they promptly resigned their positions so that Li should pursue an education in chemistry and biology, while Zhang founded a company to import Chinese goods. After making an acquaintance with the French anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus, Li introduced Zhang to the ideas of anarchism and they quickly began to analyze the situation in China through an anarchist lens. In 1903, Wu Zhihui fled China after having published an article in the revolutionary newspaper Su Bao, in which he criticized the Qing government and insulted the Empress Dowager. Having previously met Zhang and Li in Shanghai, Wu joined the pair in Paris, where he introduced them to his friend Cai Yuanpei, who had just published his short story the New Year's Dream, which predicted the great changes in the world with the passage of time.
In 1906 Zhang, Li, Wu and Cai founded the first Chinese anarchist organization, the World Society (), sometimes translated as New World Society. Shortly afterwards Zhang met Sun Yat-sen and was impressed by his revolutionary program, leading Zhang, Li, Wu and Cai to join the Revolutionary Alliance. But unlike their comrades in the Revolutionary Alliance, who desired a political revolution from above first-and-foremost, the Paris anarchists advocated for a social revolution from below to totally reorganize society. While the Paris anarchists tacitly supported the republican project, as they believed it would move China closer to socialism, they remained critical of republicanism and constitutionalism. According to the Paris group, political revolution was liable to bring new and more extreme inequalities, with more freedom and equality for the wealthy, while the conditions of the poor would remain the same. They observed that, in Europe, the institution of democratic and republican ideals through political revolutions had been utilized to further capitalist interests and impoverish the working classes, instead taking on a fundamentally anti-state and anti-capitalist conception for a social revolution in China. To the Paris anarchists, the goals of an anarchist revolution were the abolition of authority, laws, class distinctions and private property, for the establishment of humanitarianism, freedom, equality and communism in their respective places. The revolutionary methods they proposed to achieve these goals included propaganda, mass associations, mass uprisings, popular resistance and assassination.
Anarchist opposition to organization drew criticism from nationalists, who argued that only with an organized, strong military could China protect itself from aggressors.
Li Shizeng responded to their nationalist critics, stating the revolution that the anarchists advocated would be global, simultaneous, decentralized, and spontaneous. Thus, foreign imperialists would be too occupied with the revolutions in their home countries to bother invading or harassing China. He also argued that having a strong centralized coercive government had not prevented China's enemies from attacking her in the past anyway, and that a decentralized "people's militia" would be more effective than a standing army in defending the country.