Chinese Students Sent Abroad
Our story begins in Paris and in Tokyo during the period that immediately followed the ill-fated Boxer Rebellion. Even the decadent Manchu Court had at long last been forced to acknowledge the need for reform, albeit too late. Both the central and the provincial governments of China had begun to send sizeable numbers of students abroad. By 1906, there were over 10,000 Chinese students in Japan and about 500-600 in Europe. [1] Japan was the most Iogical training area for the majority of students for obvious reasons. It was closer to home and the costs were considerably less than elsewhere. The problem of cultural adjustment was much more simple. In addition, Japan represented the type of synthesis between tradition and modernity that could have meaning to China, particularly since it was a synthesis generally favorable to the values of political conservatism.
Perhaps the motives of Chinese authorities in sending students abroad were not entirely "pure." Chu Ho-chung, himself sent to Germany during this period, has written that local authorities in the Wuhan area sent student "activists" abroad to get rid of them, with the more radical being dispatched to Europe and the less radical to Japan! [2] He also reported that students interested in engineering and mining generally went to Brussels in this period, whereas those studying law, political science, and economics went mainly to Paris. Thus Paris became the natural locus of student radicalism. The Paris Group Whatever the factual basis of these remarks, Paris did indeed become the center of the early Chinese Anarchist Movement. When Sun Pao-ch’i went to France in 1902 as Chinese Minister, over twenty government and private students traveled with him. [3] Included in this group were Li Shih-tseng and Chang Ching-chiang, both young men from prominent families. Li was the son of Li Hung-tsao who for some twenty-five years prior to his death in 1897, had been a powerful figure in the national administration. [4] Young Li had come to France as an attaché in the Chinese legation, but soon he gave up this position to study biology and promote Anarchism. Chang came from a wealth: business family and thus was able to contribute substantial funds to the revolutionary cause. [5]
In 1902, Chang used his money to found the T’ung-yun Company as a Chinese commercial firm in Paris. Between 1902 and 1906, a number of young men from Chang’s village came to Paris with assurances of work while they continued their studies. Some of these, such as Ch’u Min-i, became active workers in the Anarchist ranks. [6] A Chinese restaurant-tea house was established under the auspices of Chang’s "Company" as an additional outlet for private students from China.
The entrepreneurial activities of the young Chinese in Paris underwent further expansion in 1906-7. A printing plant (Imprimerie Chinoise) was organized in Paris in 1906 by Chang, Li, Ch’u, and Wu Chihhui. The following year, a Chinese pictorial Shih-chieh (The World), was published, with ten thousand copies being widely distributed in many countries Due to high printing costs and a low income from sales, Shih-chieh did not last long; only two issues and one supplement were printed. Meanwhile, in the same year (1907), Li, Hsia Chien-chung, and several others organized the Far Eastern Biological Study Association, with a laboratory alongside the printing plant. Two years later, after various chemical experiments with beans, Li established a bean-curd factory which produced assorted bean products in addition to the traditional Chinese bean-curds. The idea of work-study was prominently involved in this experiment. [7] In the evenings and when not on duty, the workers were to practice Chinese and French, as well as studying such subjects as general science. Smoking, drinking, and gambling were strictly forbidden. Initially, five Chinese were employed, but the number eventually reached thirty.
These ventures had their very practical aspect; they represented attempts to finance the education of as many fellow countrymen as possible. But underlying them also ran a strong current of idealisrn, and the ideological base of this idealism lay in Anarchism as it was currently being propagated in Europe. All of the young Chinese associated with the enterprises noted above became ardent converts to the Anarchist creed. And to espouse this creed, Li, Chang, Ch’u and Wu began the publication of a weekly known as the Hsin Shih chi (The New Century) , on June 22, 1907. [8] For three years, this journal was to champion the causes of Anarchism and revolution, reaching Chinese students and intellectuals in all parts of the world. Very few copies penetrated China proper, of course, but at a later point, as we shall note, the Hsin Shih-chi message was to reach the homeland through various channels.
Senior in age and experience, Wu Chih-hui became the primary organizer of the Paris Anarchist Group, although Li Shih-tseng was perhaps its driving spirit. Wu was born in 1864 in Kiangsu province. [9] His early education was of the traditional Chinese type. He reached the Chih-shih examinations in Peking, but failed. (Li’s father was one of the four examiners). For some time after 1894, Wu taught at various schools in Peking, Tientsin, and Shanghai. At one point, he nearly entered the Hupeh Military Academy, not doing so only because he lacked the funds to get there.
In 1901, Wu made a brief trip to Tokyo, returning to Canton in December of that year. The first revolutionary seeds seem to have been planted in his mind during this period. His stay in Canton was unhappy, and in 1902, he returned to Japan. On this occasion, he became involved in an heated controversy with the Chinese Minister over educational policy and radical activities. At one point, Wu became so angry that he jumped into the sea, intent upon a protest suicide, and had to be rescued by the Japanese police. In May, 1902, he returned to Shanghai. In October, the Ai-kuo Hsueh-she, "Patriotic Association, " was founded. Wu joined and moved into its headquarters. By 1903, this Association was secretly promoting revolution, using the newspaper Su-pao as its organ. In May, 1903, Chinese authorities moved against Su-pao; Chang Ping-lin, to whom we shall later refer, was one of those arrested. But Wu escaped, first to Hong Kong and then to London.
The next several years were spent in London, with one brief trip to Paris. Finally, in 1906, Wu moved to Paris, living with Li and Ch’u Min-i. Li had first met Wu in Shanghai while en route to France in 1902; Chang had visited Wu in London in 1905. It was after Wu moved to Paris that these young men joined Sun’s T’ung Meng Hui and organized the Shih-chich-she, "The World Association, " to undertake publication activities. In the spring of 1906, Chang had returned home for a visit. En route, he purchased a printing press in Singapore and employed a Chinese printer to go to Paris as operator. [10] With these acts, the young conspirators were in a new business-that of turning out revolutionary propaganda.É
Influences Upon the Paris Group
Li Shih-tseng has given us some later recollections of the varied influences that played upon him and his colleagues during this period. [11] Perhaps these can be divided into three major categories: the Chinese classical philosophers; Darwin and the Social Darwinists; and the radical libertarians, brought up to date by the Anarchism of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin. As we shall note, the Paris group were in certain respects fervent anti-traditionalists who decried any attempt to equate Lao Tzu with the modern Anarchists, or the ancient well-field system with modern communism Yet almost without exception, these were young men who had received an excellent classical education. They had been exposed to a range of political ideas almost as broad as that existing in classical Western philosophy At the very least, this robbed most contemporary Western theories of their strangeness. It permitted an identification, a familiarity which could contribute powerfully toward acceptance even when the conscious act was that of rejecting traditionalism in favor of progress and modernity. [12]
This was the age of Darwinism. Li now recalls how greatly he was influenced by the writings of Lamarck and Darwin, how these men opened new doors for him in history and philosophy as well as in science. The influence was especially strong upon a young man studying zoology, botany and biology, but Li would have felt the Darwinian impact, no matter what his field. It was the truth—the science-of Darwinism that Socialists (and many non-Socialists) used as a point of commencement from which to analyze man in society, social and political evolution, and fundamental values. One started with Darwin, irrespective of where one ended.
The Paris group of young Chinese ended with Prince Peter Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus whose theories in certain respects constituted a sharp challenge to Darwinism. Their doctrines were those of Anarchist Communism, as originally set forth by Bakunin and subsequently carried forward by Kropotkin and Reclus, first at Geneva and then at Paris. [13] The two latter men were the foremost leaders of the late nineteenth century Anarcho-Communist movement Their journal, Le Revolté, was published in Geneva from 1879, and transferred to Paris in 1885. In 1895, a new organ, Les Temps Nouveaux, edited by Jean Grave, carried on the movement, publishing its final issue in August 1914. In this connection, it might be noted that the Esperanto title of Hsin Shih-chi was La Tempoj Novaj. And certainly no single work had greater influence upon the young Chinese Anarchists than Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid. If their movement had a bible, this was it. [14]
It is easy to understand how men like Wu, Li, and Chang might make a personal identification with such figures as Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Reclus. Despite the seeming cultural chasm, there were many common bonds. These were aristocrats, by birth as well as by intelligence. They represented the most sensitive and concerned segment of the leisure class. [15] Another bond was that of science. All of these men were committed to science - either as a profession or as a way of life. Kropotkin, for example, was an eminent geologist, Reclus a world-famous geographer, Li a budding biologist. Science, not Esperanto, was the true international language of this age. And if both nature and man could be explained, universally and rationally, what was more logical than to apply science to politics, to seek an universal, scientific theory of man in society, one case in an evolutionary mold? There was, perhaps, an additional tie of major proportions between our young Chinese radicals and the Russian Anarchists, that of political environment, Russia and China were the two sick giants of the early twentieth century. That a bond of sympathy should exist between the dissident intellectuals of these two societies was natural. The receptivity of the Paris group to the voices of Russian radicals—indeed, the general influence of Russian revolutionaries upon their Asian counterparts - must be related to this fact. [16]