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Title: Shifu (1884–1915) Author: Daniel Cairns Date: 2011 Language: en Topics: anarchist biography, biography, China, Chinese Anarchism Source: *The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest*, Edited by Immanuel Ness. DOI: 10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1802
Shifu, a Chinese revolutionary, anarchist organizer, and writer, was
born Liu Shaobin to a prosperous family in Guangdong. Classically
educated as a child, he performed exceptionally well in school but
disliked his formal education. In 1902, he traveled to Japan to pursue
western studies. There, he discovered radical politics and joined Sun
Yat-Sen’s Revolutionary Alliance (RA). The RA trained him in terrorism,
teaching him to construct and use explosives. He was assigned important
missions but never completed them; none of his targets was struck by his
bombs, and in fact, he was victim to two of his own devices, the latter
of which cost him the lower half of his left arm in 1907. Following that
abortive attempt, aimed at a Qing general in Guangzhou, he was jailed
for two years, escaping execution because of his father’s connections.
While imprisoned, he searched for insights in Buddhism, “national
essence” scholarship, and the Paris-based anarchist journal, Xin shiji
(New Era). After his release in 1909, he traveled to Hong Kong to resume
RA activities. Eventually, he abandoned reformism, changing his name
from Liu Sifu (a pseudonym connoting reforms) to simply Shifu (“teaching
renewal”). New Era, brought to him by his brother, clarified his own
ideas, and by 1911 he was a declared anarchist, dissociating himself
from terrorism. He moved to Shanghai and founded the Society of the Cock
Crowing in the Dark the same year.
Shifu transmitted anarchist theory but was not the originator of many
original ideas. Still, his particular amalgam of evolutionary theory,
moral principle, and autonomous revolutionary action was classified as
its own distinct ideology, Shifuism. After the fall of the Qing dynasty,
revolutionaries in China sought organizations offering systematic
programs, something anarchism was seen as lacking; Shifu developed and
espoused an appropriate, if utopian, response to this. Following
Tolstoy, he wanted to rebuild society in the form of sustainable,
collective, agrarian communes.
In 1913, he founded the Commitment Club, through which many
non-industrial workers were included in a labor union. The same year, he
famously debated Jiang Kanghu, the leader of the Chinese Socialist
Party, and Sun Yat-Sen, the leader of the Guomindang (Kuomintang), over
the relative merits of their socialisms. Because of his prominence as an
oppositional leader, the Yuan Shikai government suppressed him, forcing
him to shift locations between Guangdong, Macao, and Shanghai. In 1914,
he wrote a report on the Chinese anarchist movement for the
International Anarchist Congress. He died the next year. After his
death, his disciples formed other anarchist-inspired labor
organizations, like the workers’ Mutual Aid Society of 1921, an umbrella
organization for over 40 smaller labor unions.
Chan, P. (1979) Liu Shifu (1884–1915): A Chinese Anarchist and the
Radicalization of Chinese Thought. PhD thesis. Berkeley: University of
California Berkeley.
Krebs, E. (1998) Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism. Lanham, MD: Rowman, &
Littlefield.
Shaw, H. A. (1915) Chinese Revolutionist. Mother Earth 10, 8 (October):
284–5. Shifu (Ed.) (1913) Huiming lu [Crying in the Dark Weekly].
Guangzhou.
Shifu (Ed.) (1914) Min sheng [People’s Voice]. Macao (nos. 3, 4),
Shanghai (nos. 5–22).
Shifu. (1927) Shifu wencun [Collected Works of Shifu]. Guangdong: Gexin
shuju.
Zarrow, P. (1990) Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture. New York:
Columbia University Press.