Shifu: Can We Consider the Views of China’s Famous Anarchist ‘True’ Anarchy?

Born to an upper-class family as Liu Shaobin, Shifu (1884-1915) lived through the collapse of the Qing dynasty and converted to anarchism while studying in Japan.1 Known for his commitment to living anarchist principles, Shifu’s purist example and devotion to promoting the common good through his educational reforms influenced subsequent generations of Chinese anarchists, attracting others to the anarchist movement which reached its peak in the early 1920s.2 While Shifu’s early career mirrors other anarchists of the time in his support of assassination and revolution-driven violence, some argue that, because his later efforts depart somewhat and are marked by a renunciation of violence, he fell away from anarchy. Furthermore, in his book, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism, Krebs argues that Shifu’s later career has a conservative moral quality, because it is inspired by traditional Chinese literature, despite the radical reforms he espoused. So, can Shifu be considered an anarchist given his departure from a violent past and tendency toward cultural conservatism? And does it matter?

The current, popular view of anarchy often mistakenly reduces anarchism to terrorism and violence. According to political theorist John P. Clark, there are many ways to define anarchy and reaching a consensus on a singular definition is difficult. He argues that we should consider classical anarchist theory, history of anarchy movements, and the scholarly debate around anarchy when attempting to define ‘anarchism’.3

Greek for ‘without rule’, in theory, anarchy could apply to anyone who advocates for the necessary abolishment of government.4 For example, Shifu was familiar with Kropotkin and Bakunin’s ideas of anarchy, which Kropotkin defines as ‘a principle or theory of life and conduct in which society is conceived without government’ and Bakunin as the aim of abolishing the state.5 Other scholars define anarchism as the opposition of authority, or even society, itself—which Shifu also advocated for.6 Clark argues that to be a ‘true anarchist’ one must meet four criteria: ‘(1) a view of an ideal, noncoercive, nonauthoritarian society; (2) a criticism of existing society and its institutions, based on this antiauthoritarian ideal; (3) a view of human nature that justifies the hope for significant progress toward the ideal; and (4) a strategy for change, involving immediate institution of noncoercive, nonauthoritarian, and decentralist alternatives’.7 This definition allows for some flexibility in classifying anarchists (i.e. people that meet some but not all four of the criteria can be considered ‘weak’ anarchists).7

According to Clark, Shifu can be considered a true anarchist because he meets all four criteria, although his later views on anarchism just before his death might be better described as anarcho-communism due to their anti-capitalist rhetoric and communal nature.8 First, Shifu advocated for a classless society in which resources were held in common without government involvement.9 Second, Shifu criticised state socialism and Confucianism for encouraging idealogues to preach an empty ‘fake morality’ while advancing their own self-interest.10 Third, he believed in the capacity for human beings to change, which he argued could only be achieved through educating the masses. Lastly, Shifu developed a comprehensive, twelve-point plan for moral reform across China at a societal level. ((Ibid, 6.)) His solution for the eventual abolition of government (partly inspired by Tolstoy and Kropotkin’s philosophies) included the abstention of the following: partaking of meat, liquor, smoke, marriage, using family names, using servants, riding in rickshaws, serving in the government or military, joining political parties, and religion.11 Another way he hoped to implement his ideal society was through communal living and Esperanto projects.

Although Shifu failed to bring about his ideal society, his critiques of existing social institutions and politics were influential in shaping China’s transition into a modern republic, and he inspired hope in following generations of intellectuals for a brighter future.

  1. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism, (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 1-2, https://www.vlebooks.com/Product/Index/336439?page=0&startBookmarkId=-1. [↩]
  2. Krebs, Shifu, 13. [↩]
  3. John P. Clark, “What is Anarchism?” in Nomos, vol. 19, (1978), 3, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24219036. [↩]
  4. Clark, “What is Anarchism?” 4. [↩]
  5. Ibid, 4. [↩]
  6. Ibid, 5. [↩]
  7. Ibid, 13. [↩] [↩]
  8. Krebs, Shifu, 83. [↩]
  9. Ibid. [↩]
  10. Ibid, 102. [↩]
  11. Ibid, 8, 103. [↩]

How Male Reformers Reframed the “Woman Question” in China

The rise of feminist discourse in early twentieth-century China is typically framed as a battle between tradition and modernity. However, this is a simplified view overlooking the constraints of modernity. The modern Chinese legal and political system proved incapable of legislating genuine gender liberation. This is because the hierarchical logic of patriarchy was philologically embedded within the very textual and institutional fabric of the state.

Progressive male reformers appropriated the radical language of female “slavery” and “property” to articulate their own economic and psychological anxieties. In doing so, they minimised women’s constitutive historical oppression, recasting it as a mere symptom of male frustration. Part of the  “enlightenment and national self-strengthening, coded either “male” or “patriarchal”.1 This is a continuity that anarcho-feminist theorist He-Yin Zhen rejected as a “metaphysical-political principle” woven into the fabric of history.2 She demonstrated that this oppression was intrinsically economic, arguing that the “beginning of the system of women as private property is also the beginning of the system of slavery.”3

He-Yin Zhen grounded this theory in philological and historical evidence:

      • The character for “slave” incorporates the radical for “woman”
      • The character for “treasure” or “stored wealth”  had an alternative form meaning “women and children”, explicitly equating them with property.4

He-Yin Zhen concluded that the figure of “woman” embodied the “combined humiliation of being both prisoner and slave.”5 This was a continuous  feature of the Chinese social order and thus the the state was the defender of this property system, making its abolition a prerequisite for women’s liberation.6  Female slavery was a concrete, historical condition from which all subsequent social ills flowed.

Similarly, when male intellectuals addressed the “woman question,” they used the same vocabulary of subjugation but fundamentally reframed its meaning. For them, it was not a problem of systemic female enslavement, but one of national productivity and male identity. The liberal thinker Liang Qichao argued that because women could not support themselves, men were forced to “raise women as livestock or slaves.”7 This framed subjugation as a consequence of women’s economic uselessness, not its cause. Women were recast as consumers who impeded national self-strengthening.

This focus on male economic anxiety intensified during the New Culture Movement. Male reformers like Yi Jiayue and Luo Dunwei articulated their frustrations in journals like Family Research, placing immense faith in the state and its ability to legislate a new, rational xiao jiating (conjugal family).8  They linked the oppressive patriarch to forces of “power” and “class” that stifled China. Their fight for family reform was driven by a “search for a new identity” and the goal of “economic self-mastery.”9 They argued that patriarchal control over finances was not just shameful, but that it “restricted productivity and stunted the potential of China’s youth.”10. As this was deeply woven into the fabric of authority, law, and language, this validated He-Yin Zhen’s uncompromising view that the only solution was to “abolish all governments” and overturn the category of distinction itself.11 

For example, as Yi Jiayue noted, the patriarch could evade his duty to support children for education by simply claiming insufficient resources, a claim the “court’s investigations are unreliable”.12  Furthermore, one man lamented that divorce was “extremely difficult” and remarriage “against the law”.13 They even required state intervention to “prohibit parents from deciding their sons’ marriages”. demonstrating the practical limits of their individualistic approach. 14 

The central contradiction emerges when these male anxieties merged with the rhetoric of female dehumanization. Their ideal of modern manhood, built on “moral autonomy” and “economic self-mastery,” required educated wives who could provide “enlightened companionship.”15  Confronted with the reality of uneducated, parent-chosen brides, the reformers inverted He-Yin Zhen’s logic. In extreme fictional accounts, the traditional woman was depicted not as a victim, but as a parasitic “ghostly fire” or a “corpse that gets smellier day by day.”16

Thus, the concept of woman-as-property was co-opted and flipped. The male reformers, despite their progressive aims, ultimately recentered their own plight. In reframing female oppression as a barrier to male self-realization and national progress, young men remodelled and “joined” the patriarchy.17 The profound, systemic critique articulated by He-Yin Zhen was thus contained, demonstrating how the language of emancipation can be harnessed not to abolish hierarchy, but to renegotiate the terms of power within it.

  1. Dorothy Ko, Lydia He Liu, Rebecca E. Karl [ed.], The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p.7 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p.21 [↩]
  3. Ibid, p.22 [↩]
  4. Ibid.114-115 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p.118 [↩]
  6. Ibid, p.70 [↩]
  7. Ibid, 24 [↩]
  8. Susan Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953, (Berkeley, 2003), p.44 [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.36 [↩]
  10. Ibid, p.34 [↩]
  11. Ko, Liu and Karl, The Birth of Chinese Feminism, p.107 [↩]
  12. Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, p.43 [↩]
  13. Ibid, p.51 [↩]
  14. Ibid, p.79 [↩]
  15. Ibid, p.52 [↩]
  16. Ibid, p.55 [↩]
  17. Ko, Liu and Karl, The Birth of Chinese Feminism, p.159 [↩]

Anarchist Roots vs Authoritarian Reality of Maoism

Of all the ideological contradictions within Maoism, none is more profoundly ironic than its relationship with Anarchism. The core conflict between the two can be defined as a centralised vanguardism vs decentralised spontaneity.1 But the true irony lies not just in their methodological divergence, but in the complete reversal of Mao’s own stance. A central paradox is revealed, as Mao’s quest to destroy one form of authority became a reproduction of the very power it sought to overthrow.

Mao’s early thought was saturated with an anarchist spirit. As seen in his declaration that “the value of the individual is greater than that of the universe” and his condemnation of the “four evils,” which are the church, capitalism, monarchy, and the state. This reveals a pure, radical individualism.2 His seminal essay published in 1919 titled “The Great Union of the Popular Masses”, was less a blueprint for a party-state and more a vision of a collectivist anarchist society, deeply resonant with the Confucian ideal of Datong, or Great Unity. 3  This is influenced by the early Chinese reception of Marxist texts, including the Communist Manifesto, as seen by the intellectual Li Dazhao (1888–1927). He was influenced by the popular Western anarchist writings he encountered at the Beijing library, and  interpreted Marxism not as a call for a vanguard party, but as a theoretical reinforcement for anarchist ideals.4 He perceived a similarity between Marx’s egalitarian society and Confucian utopianism, and was particularly drawn to Marxism’s critique of Western imperialism, which resonated with the anti-Qing movement. This made  anarcho-communist ideals seem inevitable in China. Similarly, intellectual Chen Duxiu returned to China in 1908 after studying for seven years in Japan. His exposure to the growing anarchist movement abroad led to him and Li joining forces and developing poltical theories and philosophies, applying Marxist theory to their current Anarchist movement.5 At this stage, Mao was not drawn to anarchism for its destructiveness, but for its ultimate, utopian goal in a social order where government itself would wither into obsolescence.6  But, the irony becomes clear as the future architect of one of the most centralised states in history began by dreaming of its abolition. 

This initial collusion made the subsequent departure more significant, as the early anarchist movement was absorbed by the more successful Communist movement. The Communist Party, for Mao, became the indispensable instrument of liberation. Functioning as a necessary, temporary concentration of power to guide the masses. In June of 1949 he states that “our present task is to strengthen the people’s state apparatus of the people’s army, the people’s police and the people’s courts”.7 This pragmatic approach departs from the strong anarchist spirit. For anarchists, this increasing form of centralised power was not a means to an end, but the creation of a new elite, a new enemy in the very form of the liberating party itself.8 The revolution was an ironic contradiction as it had to build a powerful, hierarchical institution in order to achieve its stated goal of a stateless, classless society.9 As historian Dirlik argues, anarchism nourished the radical culture that made the communist revolution possible, only to be systematically purged once that revolution succeeded.10 

 The anarchist slogan to “doubt everything and overthrow everything” which was once the rallying cry of his own May Fourth generation was no longer a form of revolutionary fervor.11 The ultimate irony is that Maoism, in its ruthless suppression of anarchism, proved the anarchists’ core argument that power, once centralized, inherently corrupts and seeks to perpetuate itself. 

  1. Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, (Berkeley, 1991), p.176 [↩]
  2. Robert Elliot Allinson, ‘Mao in the Margins: Mao’s Commentary on Freiedrich Paulsen’s, A System of Ethics’ in Jean-Claude Pastor, One Thousand Years of Chinese Thought: Song Dynasty to 1949 (2015), pp.14-16 [↩]
  3. ‘The Great Union of the Popular Masses’, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project. <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_04.htm> [Accessed 5 October 2025]. Ibid, p.57 [↩]
  4. Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, p.72 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p.15 [↩]
  6. Ibid, pp.56-57 [↩]
  7. Mao Zedong, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, ed. Stuart R Schram (New York: Frederick A. Praeger), p.20 [↩]
  8. Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, p.101 [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.77 [↩]
  10. Ibid, p.25 [↩]
  11. Ibid, p.114 [↩]

Shamanic Nationalism and Colonial Drag: Queer Cultural Resistance to Authoritarianism in Colonial Korea

Merose Hwang’s chapter in Todd A. Henry’s Queer Korea analyzes the ongoing battle for cultural representation in occupied Korea, just after the 1919 revolution, in the context of shamanic rituals. These popular performances acted as sites of gender and sexual fluidity, questioning heteronormative practice. Subsequently, both colonial and nationalist intellectuals attempted to subvert, regulate, and co-opt these practices, distorting historical understandings and erasing their queerness in the process. Queerness, Hwang concludes, allowed shamanic ritual spaces to question Japanese authoritarianism in Korean culture by ‘dragging’ colonialism. 

Merose Hwang presents shamanistic ritual as an archive of queer community, erased by nationalist and colonial ethnohistoriographical memory. Her analysis of these rituals as ‘colonial drag’ provides historians with a way to ‘queer’ the Korean historical landscape, bypassing the ethnonationalist and eurocentric limitations of Korean studies and queer studies. 

In order to reveal silences created in the historical narrative. Hwang utilized queer forms of analysis. The frameworks provided by José Esteban Muñoz and Petrus Liu, that being the ideas of postcoloniality, the mandate of queer futurity, and neoliberal queer theory, allow Hwang to elucidate the queer nature of ritual specialist performance in colonial Korea. Using this framework, she reveals that shamanistic performers seemingly spiritually assimilated with colonial rule, but were actually mimicking and mocking imperial attempts at cultural modernization.  

Colonial forces used bureaucratic and intellectual institutions, such as the establishment of anthropological schools and commissioning of ethnographic studies of Korean history through the lens of shamanistic ritual, to subvert Korean cultural identity as backwards. Representations of shamanistic practice in media and popular memory shaped the lives of the shamanists, as queerness in ritual practice and social life was punished by the authoritarian regime. Colonial media portrayed shamanists as non-normative, hypersexualized, and perverse.1 Shamans were criminalized as morally inept.2 Thus, shamanism was used as a scapegoat for national demise and a roadblock to modernization.3  

Nationalist resistance focused on the indigenous nature of shamanistic ritual practices as to draw Korean cultural origins away from Japan, inwards towards Siberia and China, co-opting shamanism as a form of resistance but simultaneously erasing its queerness.4  Despite problematically depicting shamans, nationalist thinkers offered a formula for decolonizing, utilizing queerness on the continent as an origin myth for Korean culture.

Shamanism was not simply used for colonial or nationalist reasons, but for the purpose of mocking the empire.5 Hwang argues that ritualists paid homage to imperial spiritual imagery as a form of mockery.6  Regulations on indigenous decentralized religious practice turned performances into a form of ‘colonial drag’, maliciously complying and satirizing Japanese rule in Korea in a distinctly queer way. Ritual experts disguised themselves as devotees of imposed Shinto deities to scrutinize state driven patriarchy and imperial policing of culture.7

In colonial and nationalist cases, anthropology and ethnohistory were used to paint a particular view of Korean culture, silencing the queerness of shamanistic practice along the way. Hwang’s recognition of the anti-modern, queer practices of shamans as a form of resistance has carved a path for historians operating between the fields of Korean studies and queer studies. Korean studies tends to maintain heteronormative, nationalist assumptions, and queer studies tend to privilege the western perspective.8 Hwang bridges this gap in her analysis of Korean culture, effectively ‘queering’ the landscape. She displays the fact that queerness is not imported but native to Korean life, and integral to the preservation of Korean culture.

  1. Merose Hwang, ‘Ritual Specialists in Colonial Drag Shamanic Interventions in 1920s Korea’, in Todd A. Henry (ed.), Queer Korea (Durham, 2020), p. 56. [↩]
  2. Ibid.,  p. 58. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 62. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 64. [↩]
  5. Ibid., p. 69. [↩]
  6. Ibid., p. 70. [↩]
  7. Ibid. [↩]
  8. So-Rim Lee, ‘Review of Queer Korea (Durham, 2020), by Todd A. Henry,’ Journal of Korean Studies 26, no. 1 (2021), p. 155. [↩]

He Zhen, Qiu Jin & Anarchism

Feminism movements emerged in modern China since the lase decades of the Qing dynastic rule. He Zhen (also known as He Yin-Zhen) was among the most famous Chinese feminists during this period, while she was also very well-known for her anarchist ideologies. Qiu Jin, while was not usually recognised as an anarchist as He, was indeed a “feminist warrior” and radical in advocating of anarchism-patterned ideologies, as claimed by Louise Edwards.[1] While if we look into He and Qiu’s positions of thoughts, we could see that both of their feminist thoughts were going side-by-side closely with anarchism (and some communism characteristics) that was also popular in the last decades of Qing dynasty and the early years of Republican China.

 

He Zhen’s speech delivered in 1907 unveiled the connection of her beliefs in both feminism and anarchism, and she further combined these two ideologies together into one to develop a datong-style society. He Zhen in her speech outright rejected the traditional and repressive attitudes against women in Chinese society that existed for thousands of years since the Yellow Emperor until Manchu (Qing government) reign.[2] He Zhen heavily criticised the traditional Confucian and Neo-Confucian led customs in Chinese society such as a woman must remain ‘true’ to one man until death as a cult of purity, and to categorise women struggles in China as a result of the establishment of a patriarchal society which put men over women in social hierarchy.[3] Her solution to eliminate the suppressions against women by men in Chinese society was to remove the old social institutions and rites through radical social transformations, not only in customs and culture, but also to redistribute wealth and to abolish old social classes.[4] Her plan to redistribute social wealth was to transform land and property into communally owned without either a Manchu government or a Han Chinese government, and this was the only way to ensure the existence of “universal equality” and “universal justice” for women and men.[5] In this way, He Zhen’s feminist efforts to approach her “universal” values – absolute equal distribution for everyone without the existence of a state – was very similar to the contemporary anarchist and communists’ scholars in the early 20th century China.

 

Qiu Jin’s approach to feminism was also in line with anarchist ideologies by advocating using violence and assassination to be a “warlike female hero”, which she was even in planning to assassin key officials in the local provinces to seek for social changes before her arrest and execution in 1907.[6] However, Qiu seemed to only apply some but not most of anarchist ideologies to help her develop early feminism in China, as she’s goal of these actions was to save the Chinese state from the Manchurian Qing government reign and to seek for the nation’s survival, rather than to eventually abolish the state system and to achieve economic equality in society to create a datong society as many anarchists and communists planned in early 20th century China.[7]

[1] Louise P. Edwards, Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China (Cambridge, 2016), p. 40.

[2] ‘On the Revenge of Women’, in Dorothy Ko, Lydia He Liu, Rebecca E. Karl [ed.], The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), pp. 119 – 120.

[3] Ibid, p. 124.

[4] Ibid, p. 121.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Louise P. Edwards, Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China (Cambridge, 2016), p. 41.

[7] Ibid, p. 43.

Uchiyama Gudō’s Anarchist Buddhism – The Impact of International Socialism on Japanese Buddhism

Anarchism, described by Fabio Rambelli as part of the international socialist movement, inspired Japanese Buddhist intellectuals to synthesize their respective philosophies for the benefit of the newly emerging working class. The Buddhist priest Uchiyama Gudō sought to utilize the revolutionary concepts of anarchism in order to implement theoretical Buddhist social principles. Gudō believed that both Buddhism and socialism, at their core, ‘aimed to improve the living conditions of the people’.1 Thus, the communication of both Buddhist ideas and socialist anarchism to the working-class villagers were not dissimilar; Gudō understood his Buddhist sermons to be inherently socialist, as well. Uchiyama Gudō’s background in Buddhism inspired his socialist beliefs; therefore, he understood socialism and anarchism not as departures from Buddhism, but as natural expressions of Buddhist egalitarianism. What he failed to grasp, however, were the conflicting natures of Buddhism’s inner liberation and anarchism’s outer revolution.

Rambelli’s Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharma of Uchiyama Gudō highlights Gudō’s connections between Buddhism and anarchism. In a 1903 serialization of Heimin shinbun, a socialist newspaper, Gudō cites three excerpts from prominent Buddhist sutras as his reasoning for becoming a socialist. However, Rambelli argues that the excerpts were taken ‘out of context and re-signified…in a socialist fashion’, highlighting Gudō’s core Buddhist beliefs, attempting to utilize socialist motivations for societal change.2 Moreover, Gudō established links between the social equality of anarchist communism and that of traditional Buddhist monastic life, still present in China. In doing so, Rambelli claims that Gudō shifted the ‘idealized utopia’ of the Buddhist sangha to a smaller scale to include a ‘self-contained social space’, more in line with the beliefs of socialist utopias.3

Gudō’s belief that social change begins through moral example reveals the Buddhist foundation of his activism. His support of the anarchist concept where the working class follows ruling-class leaders who renounce their property reflects his commitment to a radical, egalitarian ideal of shared equality.4 The working class should not revolt and take down the ruling class, as that would deem the latter as lesser than the former in the new anarchist society, according to Gudō. Furthermore, he firmly believed that the awakening of the masses by the aforementioned examples supports the ‘Zen Buddhist soteriology of…responsibility’; it was the responsibility of the leaders and workers5 Gudō’s ideological stances on these issues reveal his Buddhist core and depict him as a Buddhist involved in the anarchist movement.6

Gudō initially hesitated to support the anarchist violence necessary for a successful revolution, as it fundamentally opposed Buddhist principles. By the time Gudō fully accepted anarchism, however, the anarchist movement had begun to shift toward ‘direct, sometimes violent, action’.7 This shift had a clear impact on Gudō, as a key argument in his work Museifu kyōsan kakumei states that ‘readiness to use violence’ was necessary ‘to achieve’ a ‘revolutionary movement’.8 Despite his reluctance, the deteriorating medical condition of his socialist colleague Kōtoku Shūsui provided the final push toward his acceptance of the violence required to initiate a revolution.9 Gudō’s evident internal difficulty to accept violence revealed itself in his depiction of a god who ‘loves revolutionary martyrs’ in his writings, as no buddhas would love such individuals ‘in a modern Japanese context’.7 This internal difficulty demonstrates his inability to accept the inherent conflicting natures of Buddhism and anarchism.

Uchiyama Gudō’s growing acceptance of a violent revolution led him to distance himself from his original, more Buddhist understanding of anarchism. Gudō originally accepted socialism , and subsequently anarchism, as social methods for change and revolution, as they aligned well with his Buddhist beliefs. However, as he became more involved with socialism, it began to take precedence in his life, molding him into a Buddhist who was involved in the anarchist movement. Furthermore, Gudō came to embrace violence as necessary for a revolution and the success of anarchism in Japan. This acceptance created internal strife, as the anarchist path to outer revolution diverged significantly beyond the Buddhist path to inner liberation.

  1. Fabio Rambelli, Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharma of Uchiyama Gudō (Berkeley, 2013), p. 15. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 13. [↩]
  3. Ibid., pp. 20-21. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 16. [↩]
  5. Ibid., pp. 27, 13. [↩]
  6. Ibid., p. 30. [↩]
  7. Ibid., p. 23. [↩] [↩]
  8. Ibid., p. 18. [↩]
  9. Ibid., p. 26. [↩]

Japanese Influence on the Memory of the Tonghak Rebellion

The Tonghak rebellion is remembered as one of the most influential events in modern Korean history. For reference, scholars consider its significance to be on par with the Taiping rebellion in China. The rebellion was led by members of the Tonghak religion. Their doctrine provided poor, rural Korean folk with an outlet for the hardships experienced under a corrupt government. The basic texts of the faith espoused regionalism and anti-foreignism.1 An adherence to these values in the face of foreign threats led to revolution. The Tonghak rebellion would eventually lead to the Sino-Japanese war, as foreign powers fought to quell the conflict and preserve their interests. Since then, the rebellion has become a symbol of Korean national identity, representing resistance to authoritarian power and foreign interference in the nation, as well as a rejection of Japanese interpretations of Koreans.

The Kabo reforms imposed by the Japanese occupants in the wake of the rebellion attempted to restructure the Korean government and social life, receiving much pushback from the Korean people.2  The sweeping reforms eliminated slavery, punishment by association, class distinction, and altered the calendar.3 Anti-Japanese irritation persisted in the wake of these edicts that attempted to ‘modernize’ Korea.

In addition to altering Korea’s structure and identity, Japanese occupation shaped interpretations of the rebellion. Japan’s aggressive foreign policy was validated through portrayals of the conflict in Western facing chronicles. An installment in the February 18, 1903 edition of the Japan Chronicle claimed that ‘the history of Japan’s foreign troubles may be traced almost entirely to her relationships with Korea’.4   This article represents the destruction of the Tonghak ‘disturbance’ as protecting Japanese settlers from danger.5  Blaming Korea for interfering with Japan’s interests in the Far East, the author of this article suggests that Korea must be annexed immediately, or else what is the purpose of the Anglo-Japanese alliance?6

This excerpt reflects Japanese attitudes before stripping Korea of sovereignty and making it a protectorate. It calls into question what is to be done about problems in Japanese foreign policy, and validates feelings of anxiety around the question of Korea. The article clearly shows the connection between the foreign policy of the British empire and Japan’s aggressive policy of expansion. It also provides grounds for Korean nationalism’s use of the rebellion as a source of nationalist pride. 

Another article from the Japan Chronicle in 1907 describes the behavior of the Japanese troops in quelling the rebellion. The author claims ‘the Japanese took excessive pains to see that the Korean troops did not ill treat the people… Unless Japanese soldiers were with them the Koreans committed great excesses’. 7 Japan portrays itself as ‘big brother’ to the selfish, backwards Koreans, seemingly validating its annexation of the nation. 

Japan’s representation of the Korean people as violent, underdeveloped, and in need of paternalistic leadership after the Tonghak rebellion led to the religion’s association with nationalistic zeal. For modern Koreans, the Tonghak rebellion and Cheondogyo have come to represent Korea’s history of resistance to foreign intervention. Subsequently, Tonghak is used to downplay the impact of external forces in shaping Korea, rejecting the idea of history portrayed in the Japanese Chronicle. The political importance of the goals and ideals of the Tonghak rebellion tend to be back-projected by historians looking to find evidence of a uniquely Korean form of anti-authoritarian resistance. As a result of it being co-opted by nationalists the religion has become stuck in the past.8 Perhaps if Koreans had not needed a source of optimism to rally behind after Japanese colonization, followers of Cheondogyo would represent more than 1% of the population, and the Tonghak rebellion might be remembered differently.

 

  1. George L. Kallander, Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea (Honolulu, 2013), p. 68 [↩]
  2. Peter H. Lee, William Theodore De Bary, and Yongho Ch’oe, eds. Sources of Korean Tradition, (New York, 1997), p. 272. [↩]
  3. Ibid, 274-5. [↩]
  4. ‘Date 18 February 1903’, in Robert Young (ed.) Japan Chronicle Weekly Edition, no. 288–339, 2nd section, (Kobe, 1903) Japan Chronicle Online. p. 146. [↩]
  5. Ibid [↩]
  6. Ibid,. [↩]
  7. ‘Date 24 January 1907’, in Robert Young (ed.) Japan Chronicle Weekly Edition, no. 497–548, 2nd section, (Kobe 1907) Japan Chronicle Online. p. 112-3. [↩]
  8. Kirsten Bell, ‘Cheondogyo and the Donghak Revolution: The (Un)Making of a Religion’, Korea Journal, vol 44: no. 2 (2004), p. 141. [↩]

Anarchism in Qing – Republican China and the Maoist Movements

While not often being discussed in major scholarships, anarchism in China played an important role in shaping the thinkings of Chinese society during the late Qing and early Republican periods and beyond by suggesting radical social changes and emphasising cultural transformations. The Great Leap Forward during 1958 – 1960 and the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976 in China were also major events that reshaped Chinese society by radical transformations and struggles. Interestingly, though anarchism and the revolutionary ideologies (especially by the Red Guards) during the Maoist movements years seemed not to be very relevant, I found some similarities of these movements in different periods of modern China.

 

Anarchism emerged in China around 1905 when Sun Yat-Sen’s Revolutionary Alliance was established.[1] During the time of a weak Qing government and huge rise in anti-Manchu nationalist thinking among the public, anarchists also sought to overthrow the Qing empire and to begin a “cultural transformation”.[2] The anarchists’ expected “cultural transformation” included almost all aspects of life, such as property, family, nation and race.[3] Especially in traditional Chinese society during the imperial dynasties that the Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism-oriented family system has always been the cornerstone of the fundamental structure in terms of social relations, and thus the traditional family system and gender role was under fierce attack of the anarchists as “wasteful” and unhelpful for individuals to be economically independent.[4] Similarly during the Maoist period, traditional gender roles and family concepts were also being rejected, and anti-Confucian style of gender equality was emphasised through the famous slogans such as “Woman Holds Up Half the Sky” and “Iron Girls”, which the latter was a well-spread praise word for the “degendered behavioural patterns” of Chinese women participating in the “battles” during the Cultural Revolution years.[5]

 

Another similar aspect was about the over-idealised economics. From the Paris anarchists that they defined social revolution as aiming to abolish private property and class distinctions, which this radical Western thinking was introduced for Chinese socialists.[6] This also influenced Chinese anarchists such as Chu’s claim that “a self-interested society is not a fair (gongping) society” as it was “contrary to the very “organic structure””.[7] The anarchists’ chase for an absolute economic equality in the society was also in coincidence with the fanaticism of the abolish of all private property and to establish People’s Commune (renmin gongshe) to create a utopia-like society which the production was done by all and the economic distribution was equal for all, with the slogan “Run into communism” – which was overly idealistic to be achieved, just as the anarchists’ beliefs to abolish all economic inequality and social classes by radical transformations during the last Qing decade and early Republican periods when the productive forces of the society were still inadequate to do so.

[1] Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (University of California Press, 2023), pp. 78 – 79.

[2] Ibid, pp. 79 – 80.

[3] Ibid, p. 99.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Iron Girl of Dazhai: Once an Icon of an Era”, Shanxi Evening News, accessed 7 October 2025, <https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cul/2014/03-07/5926021.shtml>.

[6] Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (University of California Press, 2023), pp. 80 – 82.

[7] Ibid, pp. 96 – 97.

Social Uprising Behind Taiping and Tonghak Religions

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in the last decades of Qing dynasty of China and Tonghak Movement in the last decades in the kingdom of Joseon of Korea both had significant influence to the nation, which both brought major social transformations and spread of a religion, but also caused devastating results to the occupied regions’ economy and population during a short period of time. Also, it was coincidently similar that the Taiping rebellion in China and Tonghak rebellion in Korea were both known for their religious-led characteristics, one claimed to be Protestant Christianity, and the latter to be Cheondogyo, developed from Tonghak “Eastern Learning”. However, different with many religious-led reformations, warfare or revolutions in early modern Europe, these two movements in East Asia were more likely to be socioeconomic-led peasant uprisings under the ‘guise’ of religious beliefs.

 

For the Taiping Heavenly kingdom’s case, Christopher Hill’s book The English Bible

and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution provided an insight of the major use of the Bible and Christian religious beliefs in the English Revolution – while his study of an European revolution also provided a comparison between the role of the Bible and Christianity in a more ‘traditional’ sense of religious-oriented revolutions and the Taiping Rebellion.[1] Hong Xiuquan’s Taiping Heavenly Kingdom indeed claimed to uphold Christianity as the only official religion, and thus put much effort in the publishing of the Bible and to spread religious texts to churches and to implement weekly worships, all seemed to be formal Christian practices.[2] However, the Taiping’s version of the Bible was altered to conform to the moral values of Taiping theology, and some text were either deleted or rewrote to fit Hong’s own personal understanding of Christianity.[3] In this way, Taiping’s version of ‘Protestant Christianity’ was somehow far from original Protestant teachings, and was more like a combination of Protestantism and local Chinese customs and ideologies – even with some Confucianism beliefs that Hong was taught to before he established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.[4]

 

While the Taiping’s use of Christianity as the official religion was not aimed to bring Western-patterned Christian practices to China, but to self-establish legitimacy to start a social uprising against the Qing emperor’s reign. By using Christianity in its name (on the surface), Hong agreed with English missionary Medhurst’s claim that the title of Chinese emperors (huangdi) was blasphemous to the God (shangdi) by using the word di since Qin dynasty, and they needed to overthrow the blasphemous imperial system.[5] This way of applying and interpreting Christian theology provided Hong a new form of legitimacy to start his Taiping rebellion. However, the reason for the Taiping rebellion could be in a deeper level rather than Christianity itself. After the defeat of Qing forces in the First Opium War in 1842, the legitimacy of Qing’s imperial government began to be challenged, as the perceived ever-strong empire was suddenly in threats by more powerful Western forces. The devastating economic compensations from the Qing court to British authorities was in no doubt to put extra burdens on normal Chinese people, while the defeat of Qing forces in the Second Opium War at the mean time of Taiping rebellion only made the economic situation worse for the Chinese public, and therefore the breakout of a peasant rebellion was only a matter of time which eventually broke out in 1851, and Christianity was more like an excuse.

 

Tonghak rebellion in Korea was also in similar situations. The Tonghak believers self-established legitimacy by raising a “Righteous Army” and to resist Japanese and Chinese influences in Korea, and also publicly claimed to carrying patriotic duties in the anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese campaign, which was obviously not oriented from the spread of Catholicism into Korean peninsula in the mid-19th century and the subsequently emerged “Eastern Learning”.[6] From the Twelve Reforms Proclaimed by the Tonghak Overseer’s Office we could also see that the breakout of the Tonghak rebellion was also related to the economic burdens on Korean peasants since the mid-19th century when foreign powers’ influence increased in Korea, as the Tonghak believers aimed to void “all past debts, private or public”, to redistribute farmland, and to reduce sundry taxes as their resorts to reduce Korean people’s economic burden – this was also obviously emerged from the very real socioeconomic difficulties in late 19th century Korea, rather than solely the spread of Catholic beliefs, as Catholicism was rather more irrelevant from this rebellion in Korea.[7]

[1] Thomas H. Reilly, The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire (Seattle, 2011), p. 57.

[2] Ibid, p. 74.

[3] Ibid, p. 75.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, pp. 87 – 88.

[6] Peter H Lee, William Theodore De Bary and Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, Sources of Korean Tradition (New York, 1997 – 2000), p. 267.

[7] Ibid, pp. 265 – 266.

Emerging scholarship on chongbu highlights the nuanced relationship between women and Neo-Confucianism in Choson Korea

In the past, both Western and Eastern scholarship have been guilty of oversimplifying the history of Confucian women. Some put forth a narrative of women as simply victims of Confucian society, conflating Confucianism with patriarchy and arguing that it suppressed their rights and offered little opportunity to recognise their achievements.1 However, recent scholarship is challenging these kinds of stereotypes about the complex relationship between East Asian women and Confucianism, specifically the relationship between Choson women and Neo-Confucianism. Recent revisionist histories focus on how women expressed themselves through art and literature, and how they used their agency within their social, ideological, and political confines. In addition, scholars are beginning to study marginalized women, including widows and nonelite women, by looking at census records and legal texts.2
In Women and Confucianism in Choson Korea: New Perspectives, Youngmin Kim and Michael J. Pettid advocate for the replacement of the Confucian oppression narrative and other generalisations by more nuanced portrayals of Choson history that consider how different women’s experiences varied from one another based on personality, class, and situation.3 Women of Korea’s Choson dynasty (1392-1910) used various strategies to work within and around the confines of their Confucian society and were sometimes protected by the state.
One example of this is the tradition of chongbu rights in mid-Choson. In China and Choson, the chongbu was the eldest daughter-in-law of a family, meaning the wife of the eldest son of a family lineage. She was treated with deference by other daughters-in-law and given special privileges. According to the Lizhi (the Book of Rites, one of the core texts of Confucianism), the chongbu’s role was to serve during ancestor rites (jesa) and treat honoured guests.4 Traditionally, if her husband died and she had no child, the chongbu’s role in jesa passed down to the second son of the family. Over time, the role and rights of the chongbu in Choson expanded. By adopting a son to act as an heir (iphu) (traditionally one of her nephews, but tended to be a distant blood relative), the chongbu could bolster her position in the family and maintain her status. This was essential for the chongbu, who faced the disastrous possibility of being expelled from her home if or when the ancestral rites duties were given to the second son of the family.5 The adopting of heirs by women to maintain their chongbu status not only shows how these women were able to protect their position and power within a Confucian context but also demonstrates how women helped shape the dynamics of families and practice of ancestral rites throughout Choson.6
Contrary to popular narratives that Confucianism generally oppressed women, women received support from the state on several occasions. In Lee SoonGu’s ‘The Rights of the Eldest Daughter-in-Law and the Strengthening of Adoption of Lineage Heirs in the Mid-Choson Period,’ they note that in 1547, the Office of the Censor-General defended the rights of chongbu to adopt a son and continue jesa duties, a decision also supported by the king.7 Another example of the state protecting Choson women was the fact that women were state sanctioned to petition the king by striking a gong and kneeling despite the doctrine of separate spheres, a pillar of Confucian gender ethics that dictates that women are to be relegated to the domestic realm.8 When considering these examples, it is apparent that the way Choson women experienced Confucianism varied greatly and is not as simple as it appears at first glance.

  1. Youngmin Kim and Michael J. Pettid, Women and Confucianism in Chosǒn Korea: New Perspectives, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 11, Accessed September 24, 2025, ProQuest Ebook Central [↩]
  2. Jisoo M. Kim, “Neo-Confucianism, Women, and the Law in Chosŏn Korea,” in Dao Companion to Korean Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 11, ed. Yong Huang (Dordrecht, 2019), unpaginated, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2933-1_17. [↩]
  3. Kim, Women and Confucianism, 4 [↩]
  4. Lee SoonGu, “The Rights of the Eldest Daugher-in-Law and the Strengthening of Adoption of Lineage Heirs in the Mid-Choson Period” in Women and Confucianism in Chosǒn Korea New Perspectives, eds. Youngmin Kim and Michael J. Pettid (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), Accessed September 24, 2025, 91, ProQuest Ebook Central. [↩]
  5. Ibid, 98 [↩]
  6. Ibid, 102 [↩]
  7. Ibid, 99 [↩]
  8. Kim, “Neo-Confucianism, Women, and the Law,” unpaginated [↩]