X-Nico

Anarchism in China

In Europe, Paris was particularly popular because it was relatively cheap, the French government helped to subsidize the students, and because France was seen as the center of Western civilization.

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Japan, especially Tokyo, was the most popular destination because of its geographic proximity to China, its relatively affordable cost, and certain natural affinities between the two cultures (for example, the Japanese language uses Chinese characters extensively, facilitating communication and livability).

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Jiang Kanghu, who founded the Chinese Socialist Society in 1911, had been a contributor to the New Era (one of the publications of the Paris Group), and included the abolition of the state, the traditional family structure, and Confucian culture as planks of his parties’ platform.

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Nationalists also argued that only by building a popular front could the Nationalist movement defeat the Manchus and the Qing dynasties, and that in the long run if anarchism was to have any chance to succeed it must necessarily be preceded by a Republican system that would make China secure.

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Liu Shifu set out to remedy that situation in a series of articles in Peoples Voice, which attacked Jiang Kanghu, Sun Yet-Sen, and the Pure Socialists.

see also