The Curious Case of the Chinese Anarchist Movement
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- Twitter: / somas_academy
Zoe Baker article on He-Yin Zhen: anarchopac.com...
Anarchism is political philosophy grounded in opposition to heirarchy and state authority, which has its origins in 19th century Europe, co-evolving with ideologies like Marxism. These kinds of radical politics were all coming up in the same circles, and while Anarchism and Communism aren't interchangeable terms, there's a very high degree of overlap. The Self Strengthening movement in China, when you had this growing revolutionary Republican sentiment, saw the groundwork laid for the rise of Anarchism in China. Two groups of Anarchists based in Tokyo and Paris created their own unique strains of Anarchism, and would heavily influence political thought in China, with even non-Anarchists like Wang Jingwei, Mao Zedong, and possibly Sun Yat-Sen being influenced by the ideology. However, the Anarchists of both of these groups ultimately ended up working with a number of Right-Wing Authoritarian factions, in sharp contradiction to their ultimate values. How can we explain this?
You’ve clearly worked hard on this and definitely deserve more support.
Thank you!
@@SomasAcademy I second this! I found you through Project Ukraine. Love your content.
What an extraordinary turn of events. I think it demonstrates the power of culture over ideology, and the danger of excessive pragmatism.
Very true. The longer follow-up I plan to release down the line will make that point on pragmatism especially clear, when I get into the ideological factors behind the Paris Group's work with the GMD and the Four Elders' work with Chiang Kai-Chek especially; their particular brand of Anarchism had certain factors that made them particularly susceptible to working in conflict with their ultimate aims (in a way which almost reminds me of the Authoritarian Socialists who they firmly opposed, as both groups ultimately sought an egalitarian, libertarian society, but were able to justify actions that seem to directly contradict that end goal based on "pragmatism").
Imagine seeing you here
Nice video! It's interesting to see how such a large movement moves away from it's ideals for the sake of what they think is more practical, even if it seems like the complete opposite of their ideology.
I just discovered your channel! I love this stuff....origins of Easter/birthdays, Chinese & African history, and the only female Chinese emperor, and many other videos I have to watch. I have subscribed and liked.
Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying my content!
I really would’ve liked a more thorough demonstration of the link between “conservative” reverence for Daoist texts and the authoritarian turn. It’s not totally rare to see people with liberal impulses become very authoritarian within the specific context of a revolution, war, etc
Not that you should necessarily cater your videos specifically to me haha, but I’d be interested if you decided to cover that ground
I just found your channel and it's awesome! Thanks for this video!
Thank you!
This is a really good video. Do you still plan on making a follow up? Also, I was wondering if you had any recommendations for sources and further reading on this subject. I find Liu Shipei and He Zhen’s apparent turn to monarchism particularly interesting, I’d want to know what their justification for that was
Thank you! Yes, I do still plan on making a follow up! I don't have sources on hand right now, but there is a list of citations at the end of this video, I believe the last one has more information on the Tokyo group, and Peter Zarrow has also written some other good sources on Chinese Anarchism.
This is so interesting I did not know about the authoritarian strain in Chinese anarchism. Are you going to do something on the Korean anarchist commune?
Covering the KPAM is definitely on my list, though I haven't done enough research on that topic to make a video on it just yet!
@@SomasAcademy nice. There is so little written on it so I hope you can find something.
great video. with even greater research
Thank you!
Great video! I'm so new to chinese history as a mixed person who is half chinese, I am trying to connect to my culture and understand the flaws of Maoism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Dengism as a Emma Goldman fan, Anarcho-Communist, Ego-Anarchist.
Do you have recommandations on how I can learn about Chinese (and overall asian) politics, history, etc?
Thank you!
Getting into Chinese history as an independent researcher is hard, because China has such a long and complex history that it's hard to know where to start. I've gone through several college courses with heavy focus on Chinese history and I still feel like a complete beginner on everything but a few niche topics, like Chinese Anarchism! I'd suggest checking out the channel Teacup Media, they have a podcast covering diverse topics in Chinese history.
If you're interested in learning more about Chinese Anarchism in particular, you can check out my sources at the end of this video (I found all of them online), and stay tuned to my channel for a later video where I'm going to cover the topic in more depth and with more sources which you will also be able to find online for free. I may also make videos covering some of the other topics you mentioned (the development of Socialist ideology from Marx to Lenin to Stalin and of China's state ideology from Mao to Deng are both intriguing to me), so stay tuned for that too, though I have a pretty long list of other topics to cover first so I can't give you an estimate on when I'll get around to those topics lmao. In the meanwhile, you might want to check out Veritas et Caritas; he covers lots of topics, but he has several discussing modern East Asia from an Anarchist perspective.
For broader Asian history, I'd check out the channel Cool History Bros as a convenient place to start. Odd Compass is solid for South Asian history, and Linfamy is a good channel for Japanese history. All three of those channels focus on older history, though, I don't have a lot of recommendations for more recent Asian history. And as a general strategy for finding sources, try reading Wikipedia pages and checking their citations, which can lead you to solid academic sources a lot of the time!
@@SomasAcademy Thank you for the reply, I would find it interesting if you did the development of socialism. Maybe even covering Egoism since it does believe in socialism (just not sacred socialism.)
If its okay if I recommand a interesting topic that would fit for your channel, I say that you should cover nonbinary discrimination's interlinked history with hate aganist indiegnous people or maybe you can cover youth liberationism and animal liberation movements connections with anarchism.
There also is Adolf Brand who is very interesting since they were a complex queer ego-anarchist figure who I really like.
Your channel is really great for these topics in my opinion, I really enjoyed your Ito Noe video. I used it for a presentation for sources (if thats okay.)
I'm happy there is someone who covers interesting topics that many people don't know about like asian anarchism.
@@SomasAcademy I also forgot to say what are your pronouns, lol.
I have quite the backlog of video ideas but I'll definitely consider looking into those subjects! And I'm happy to hear that you used my Ito Noe video for sources, I'm glad for my videos to serve as a resource. As for pronouns, I don't have a preference, any are fine.
Very interesting video! My knowledge in regards to historical Anarchism in China is extremely limited so this is a good starting point.
Thank you! I will be making a substancially longer video covering this same topic in more detail (I wrote a 15 page essay about it that I plan to adapt), and may make an additional video talking about the locally-based Chinese Anarchist movement that developed after the Paris and Tokyo groups, so stay tuned for that!
just subbed yesterday and now you upload
Lol, good timing
@@SomasAcademy you should check out micahistory 2 as well :)
interesting video 😊
Thanks! Stay tuned for a longer, more in-depth version in the future.
I have noted a lot of accelerationism among anarchists in other places. Could this be a reason why some Chinese anarchists supported right-wing figures?
I don't believe so. It's possible in the case of Liu Shipei and He-Yin Zhen, as their motivations remain more of a mystery due to a lack of writing after their turn to working with the Qing (though I believe they were motivated by the belief that it was easier to have a hands-off monarch than Republic, as many of the ancient texts they drew from praised the notion of such types of monarch), whereas in the case of the Paris group, it seems very clear to me based on their writings that they believed that the GMD were the lesser-of-two-evils (between them and the CCP), and that they believed it was possible to make some progress towards their ideals under the GMD. It's also possible that Chu Minyi hid some accelerationist motivations, as his ultimate reason for working with the Japanese isn't fully clear (though it's likely it related to the counterintuitive anti-militarist reasoning I mentioned in the video, or to his personal loyalty to Wang Jingwei).
@@SomasAcademy thanks.
In fact, there are still some Anarchists in China on the internet, and I can only count them as the bottom of it. Moreover, we sometimes kick each other out of leftist nationality, and there are even Anarchists and communists cursing each other, which happens to me and my classmates sometimes
Very interesting subject! Makes me want to go down a giant ass rabbit hole of Chinese history
Friedrich Engels' On Authority always wins in the end, it's not hard to see why if you're familiar with Maoist dialectics or more broadly general dialectical materialism
On Authority is actually an extremely poor refutation of Anarchist ideas, it's essentially one big strawman refuted by any engagement with Anarchist theory. Here's an article if you care to check out the Anarchist response: libcom.org/article/authority-revisited
Isn’t “On Authority” about Italian Marxists?
Anarchism is opposed to having any government at all. The people you are talking about here don't seem to fit that description...
That's not accurate to Anarchist theory, which draws a distinction between government and the state, rejecting the latter but not necessarily the former. That said, these people were fairly unusual Anarchists; they were inconsistent in the application of their principles, like refusing to accept political positions, but working with states in other regards.
@@SomasAcademy Well, there are people of widely varying viewpoints who call themselves anarchists. I suppose I should just say I don't agree with their definition.
Anarchism has many different forms. What the video is talking about is Anarcho-Socialism (or Socialist Anarchism). It and its subschools are what were most popular throughout the 1800s and 1900s.
Chen jiongming
I'd like to cover the Guangdong Anarchists in a future video, but unfortunately they fell outside of the scope of my initial research into the slightly earlier Tokyo and Paris groups, so I still have a lot of reading to do about them.
@@SomasAcademy ok，Chen and Liu ShiFu are good friends.
Wrong 100% wrong,
Care to elaborate? I'm open to constructive criticism if I made any factual errors, but you're not giving me much to work with here.