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Title: Shifu (1884–1915) Date: 2011 Source: *The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest*, Edited by Immanuel Ness. DOI: 10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1802 Authors: Daniel Cairns Topics: China, Biography, Chinese anarchism, Anarchist biography Published: 2020-05-10 06:40:47Z
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,
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.
<biblio>
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.
</biblio>