Liu Shifu

Liu Shifu

Liu Shifu ( Chinese  劉 師 復 ; eigtl. Liu Shaobin; * 1884 in Canton ; † March 27, 1915 in Shanghai ) was a Chinese revolutionary and co-founder of the anarchist movement in China.

Life

youth

Liu Shifu came from a relatively wealthy family of scholars. His father was considered progressive and led his family in a relatively liberal manner. Liu Shifu initially took the traditional examination route, but turned away from it and tried various reform activities, including a girls' school. As a result, he came increasingly in contact with revolutionary circles and joined the Tongmenghui . Liu saw his contribution to the revolution in carrying out assassinations and went to Japan in 1905 , where he learned how to make bombs. After his return to China the following year, he became involved as a teacher and editor of revolutionary magazines. In his writings, Liu represented culturally conservative , nationalist and anti-Manchu positions, which he combined with elements of Buddhist philosophy .

Assassinations and struggle for the republic

In 1907, Liu made his first assassination attempt on the naval commander in Li Zhun Canton. He missed his target and was seriously injured himself when his bomb exploded prematurely. Liu's left forearm had to be amputated and he ended up in prison. He was detained for over two years, but in the absence of evidence, he could never be convicted. After Liu Shifu was freed, he, like other members of the Tongmenghui, set up his own assassination corps. The group carried out a successful assassination attempt on the commanding officer of the troops in Guangdong in 1911 and the assassins all escaped. Since the Wuchang revolt had broken out in the meantime , the corps joined the rebels. Liu Shifu also took part in the military campaign for the establishment of the republic . With the establishment of the republic, the assassination corps' purpose of eliminating the Manchus was fulfilled and it dissolved.

Turning to anarchism

Liu Shifu was disappointed with the results of the republican revolution . While traveling through the country, he witnessed rivalries between the new republican rulers and witnessed the machinations in Canton that also affected his own family. Liu now turned completely to anarchism, which he had already come to know while in prison. There he read the anarchist newspaper Xin shiji , published by Chinese students in Paris , which friends smuggled into prison for him, and was heavily influenced by Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Kropotkin . In order to clarify the new goals, Liu Shifu withdrew with friends to a monastery on the West Lake . The result was the formation of the heart society ( Xinshe ).

The heart society

Liu Shifu defined revolutionary morality as the rejection of any form of authority and the fight against the existing economic system by a morally disciplined personality with an ascetic way of life and made this the foundation of the new organization. The group identified 12 commitments that should be voluntarily followed:

1. Don't eat meat
2. Drink no alcohol
3. Do not smoke
4. Do not employ servants
5. Don't use rickshaws
6. Don't get married
7. Do not use a family name
8. Do not serve as a civil servant
9. Don't become a member of parliament
10. Do not join any political party
11. Do not serve in the Army or Navy
12. Do not adhere to any religion.

The first three rules could be broken in the event of illness and Liu himself was a vegan . Because of the obligation not to use family names, the group members discarded their family names and kept their first names or put on pseudonyms. Liu changed his old pseudonym Sifu to Shifu , which was a common term of respect for Buddhist monks. The society had no functionaries, statutes or penalties for non-compliance and membership was open to everyone, regardless of nationality or gender. After returning to Canton in the summer of 1912, Shifu and his friends propagated the heart society and met with a great response. The Society's maxims appeared in several magazines and newspapers, and a local paper set up an extra column in which Shifu commented on questions. Parts of the rules were later adopted by the newly formed Chinese Socialist Party .

The Cockcrow Study Center and Minsheng

In addition to the heart society , Shifu and friends and siblings founded the cock crowing study center ( Huiming xueshe ) in Canton, which was ultimately to publish the influential anarchist magazine Minsheng (voice of the people; Esperanto - subtitle: La Voĉo de la Popolo ). The magazine published many Chinese translations of Western anarchist writings and addressed the commune projects in Aiglemont, France, and Paris . The group planned their own commune project, but the political atmosphere under Yuan Shikai made this impossible. In the following, Shifu turned increasingly to labor issues and syndicalism . In the Minsheng he propagated anarcho-communist standpoints based on Kropotkin and placed a special focus on the concept of mutual help . Another undertaking of the group around Shifu was the commitment to Esperanto, which they saw as the coming world language and should promote peace . The group first learned it themselves in a summer course in Canton 1912. Later, their own courses were organized and their own Esperanto society was founded in Canton, which was associated with the World Esperanto Association.

Escape to Shanghai

Minsheng was banned by Yuan Shikai in the course of the suppression of the second revolution and Shifu and his group fled to Macau , where the magazine was continued to be published. The magazine presented itself increasingly internationally and there were reports on the anarchist movement in other countries, including international correspondence with Emma Goldman , Peter Kropotkin and undsugi Sakae, among others . Since Yuan Shikai's pressure also reached Macau, the group had to look for a new location and opted for Shanghai . In addition to the group, the Japanese anarchist and Esperantist Yamaga Taiji , who was a confidante of Ōsugi Sakae, also met. No Chinese anarchist could take part in the planned anarchist congress in London in 1914, and Shifu wrote a letter on behalf of the Chinese anarchists in which he presented anarchism in China and suggested his own discussion points. The congress did not take place because of the outbreak of the First World War . From the partisanship Kropotkin for the Allies Shifu was disappointed and printed the reviews of Errico Malatesta and Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis to Kropotkin's behavior in Minsheng .

death

Shifu's health deteriorated rapidly, on the one hand due to his restless propaganda activities, on the other hand due to the poor diet, since the group was in financial difficulties. Treatment was expensive, and Shifu refused to sell the printing press on his behalf. He also turned down the medical advice to at least consume meat for strengthening now out of principle. After Shifu's death in March 1915, he became a cult figure. Many of the later known anarchists had originally had contact with Shifu and he had thereby given the decisive impetus to an anarchist movement in China.

literature

• Edward S. Krebs: Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998, ISBN 0-8476-9015-6 .
• Gotelind Müller: (Liu) Shifu, the "personification" of Chinese anarchism . In: Gotelind Müller: China, Kropotkin and anarchism . Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-447-04508-6 , pp. 281-327.
• Robert Scalapino , GT Yu: Shih-fu and His Movement . In: Robert Scalapino, GT Yu: The Chinese Anarchist Movement . Greenwood Press, Westport 1980, ISBN 0-313-22586-9 .
• Jana S. Rošker: State Theories and Anarchist Thoughts in China at the Turn of the Century . University of Vienna, Vienna 1988 (Dissertation to obtain a doctorate, University of Vienna, Institute for Sinology, Faculty of Humanities).
• Jana S. Rošker: Anarchism in China on the threshold of the 20th century. A comparative study of state theory and anarchist thought in China and Europe . Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften, Saarbrücken 2016, ISBN 978-3-8381-5155-7 ( information from the publisher [accessed on March 5, 2017]).

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Liu is the family name here, Shifu is the first name.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cit. after Müller, p. 289.