Chinese Anarchism, Nationalism,and Universalism:An Inquiry into an Intellectual Approach within Modern Chinese Political Thought
Author: Shinsuke Yasui
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
In the years before the Xinhai Revolution, Chinese anarchists rejected nationalism, and instead advocated universalism and anarchism as the only way to save China and human society as a whole. What kind of theories were used to counter nationalism? What did they have to say about relations between individual nations and the world as a whole? What did the universalism they advocated mean? These are the main questions that this article tries to answer.
First, this article explores the concept of the nation and the way to overcome nationalism as argued by the Chinese anarchists. They recognized a nation as being a substantial entity with distinct characteristics, and claimed that nationalism was a reflection of egoism and was prone to induce imperialism. These arguments were made under the influence of the gongsi theory (公私) that was popular in traditional Chinese thought. Second, this article analyzes the worldview of Chinese anarchism and points out that Chinese anarchists did not take autonomy as their core theory. Therefore, their vision of the ideal society was one of uniformity, without space for individual diversity.