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Anarchism in Taiwan first developed out of the anti-imperialist resistance to the Empire of Japan, when a number of young Taiwanese nationalists were exposed to anarchism during their studies abroad. Influenced by the anarchist movements in China and Japan, and in close cooperation with a number of Korean anarchists, the Taiwanese anarchist movement reached its height during the 1920s, before being suppressed by 1931.
Following the First Sino-Japanese War, the island of Taiwan was ceded by the Qing dynasty to the Empire of Japan. Attempts to form an independent Republic of Formosa were defeated by the Japanese invasion, which brought the island under Imperial rule. In the wake of the occupation, Taiwanese social movements started to focus on calls for democracy and self-determination, with more radical and revolutionary ideas also beginning to take shape. Following the events of the Russian Revolution and with the outbreak of the May Fourth Movement in the Republic of China, many young Taiwanese nationalists experienced a sharp turn towards left-wing politics, with a number picking up on the ideas of anarchism and communism during their studies in Tokyo or Beijing.
In 1919, when the Japanese colonial government of Den Kenjirō started to implement a policy of cultural assimilation in Taiwan, the Taiwanese anarchist Yu Gingfang led an uprising against imperial rule, but it was put down. [1] In Beijing, where the Chinese anarchist movement was rising to prominence, the Taiwanese anarchist Fan Benliang founded the "New Taiwanese Anarchist Society" and the anarchist newspaper New Taiwan. [2]
During the early 1920s, anarchist and communist ideas took hold within the youth faction of the Taiwanese Cultural Association. [3] On 30 July 1923, the Taipei Youth Association was founded, and by December 1926, the organization had expanded into the Taiwan Black Youth League . This organization used the Cultural Association as a platform to promote anarchist ideas publicly, even openly opposed the Petition Movement for the Establishment of a Taiwanese Parliament. The Black Youth League organized hundreds of public meetings and lectures that were attended in the thousands, [1] with one meeting that was called in support of the Korean independence movement being attended by prominent Japanese anarchists such as Iwasa Sakutarō and Hatta Shūzō. [4] On January 2, 1927, the Black Youth League began to take steps to organize trade unions in Taiwan, but on January 31, the organization was discovered by Japanese police. [3] In February 1927, the Black Youth League was banned and its members were subjected to mass arrests, [1] with many being sentenced to months in prison. [3] In November 1929, the anarcho-syndicalist Taiwanese Workers' Mutual Aid Association was established by Chang Weixan. But by August 1931, a number of its members were charged with illegally possessing weaponry and another wave of mass arrests followed. [1]
Meanwhile, in mainland China, many Taiwanese anarchists found themselves collaborating with Korean anarchists due to their shared anti-imperialism, [5] notably together establishing the Eastern Anarchist Federation (EAF) in Shanghai. [6] The Korean anarchist leader Sin Chaeho even collaborated with the Taiwanese anarchist Lin Bingwen in an attempt to forge banknotes for funding the EAF's activities, but they were both arrested by the Japanese authorities in Taiwan and would later die in prison. [7] The EAF also established anarchist schools in Quanzhou, which included two Taiwanese teachers in the faculty at the Dawn Advance Middle School. [8]
The suppression of the Taiwanese anarchist and communist movements in 1931 marked the beginning of Japan's turn towards military dictatorship, culminating in the Pacific War, when the Empire of Japan was finally defeated by the Allies. Taiwan was subsequently retroceded back to the Republic of China, and when the Kuomintang was defeated in the Chinese Civil War, the nationalist government retreated to Taiwan. [9] Among those that fled to Taiwan were a number of Chinese anarchists, two of which included the anarchist elders Wu Zhihui and Li Shizeng, supporters of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government. [10] The new Taiwanese government subsequently oversaw a "White Terror" against left-wing political dissidents, implementing martial law that lasted until the end of the Cold War. [11]
Since democratization, there has been a renewed interest of anarchism in Taiwan. In 2003, the Atayal community of Smangus adopted a form of Christian anarchist organization, where community assets are managed cooperatively by the villagers. [12] In 2016, the newly elected President Tsai Ing-wen recruited Audrey Tang, a self-described "conservative anarchist", to join the Democratic Progressive Party's government as a member of the Executive Yuan. As a government minister, Tang has since voiced her support for e-democracy and radical transparency in Taiwanese politics. [13] [14] [15]
Anarchism and nationalism both emerged in Europe following the French Revolution of 1789 and have a long and durable relationship going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the pan-Slavic movement prior to his conversion to anarchism. There has been a long history of anarchist involvement with nationalism all over the world as well as with internationalism.
Anarchism in China was a strong intellectual force in the reform and revolutionary movements in the early 20th century. In the years before and just after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty Chinese anarchists insisted that a true revolution could not be political, replacing one government with another, but had to overthrow traditional culture and create new social practices, especially in the family. "Anarchism" was translated into Chinese as 無政府主義 literally, "the doctrine of no government."
Shin Chae-ho, or Sin Chaeho, was a Korean independence activist, historian, anarchist, nationalist, and a founder of Korean nationalist historiography. He is held in high esteem in both North and South Korea.
Kim Chwa-chin, sometimes called by his art name Baegya, was a Korean general, independence activist, and anarchist who played an important role in the early attempts at development of anarchism in Korea.
Post-colonial anarchism is a term used to describe anarchism in an anti-imperialist framework. Whereas traditional anarchism arose from industrialized Western nations—and thus sees history from their perspective—post-colonial anarchism approaches the same principles of anarchism from the perspective of colonized peoples. It is highly critical of the contributions of the established anarchist movement, and seeks to add what it sees as a unique and important perspective. The tendency is strongly influenced by indigenism, anti-state forms of nationalism, and anarchism among ethnic minorities, among other sources.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to anarchism:
Anarchism in Korea dates back to the Korean independence movement in Korea under Japanese rule (1910-1945). Korean anarchists federated across their end of the continent, including forming groups on the Japanese mainland and in Manchuria, but their efforts were perforated by regional and world wars.
Anarchism in Japan began to emerge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Western anarchist literature began to be translated into Japanese. It existed throughout the 20th century in various forms, despite repression by the state that became particularly harsh during the two world wars, and it reached its height in the 1920s with organisations such as Kokuren and Zenkoku Jiren.
Anarchism in Vietnam first emerged in the early 20th century, as the Vietnamese started to fight against the French colonial government along with the puppet feudal dynasty for either independence or higher autonomy. Some famous radical figures such as Phan Bội Châu and Nguyễn An Ninh became exposed to strands of anarchism in Japan, China, and France. Anarchism reached its apex in Vietnam during the 1920s, but it soon began to lose its influence with the introduction of Marxism-Leninism and the beginning of the Vietnamese communist movement. In recent years, Anarchism in Vietnam has attracted new adherents.
Among scholars of nationalism, a number of types of nationalism have been presented. Nationalism may manifest itself as part of official state ideology or as a popular non-state movement and may be expressed along civic, ethnic, language, religious or ideological lines. These self-definitions of the nation are used to classify types of nationalism, but such categories are not mutually exclusive and many nationalist movements combine some or all of these elements to varying degrees. Nationalist movements can also be classified by other criteria, such as scale and location.
Pak Yol was a Korean anarchist and independence activist who was convicted of high treason in Japan for conspiring to attack the Imperial House of Japan and assassinate Emperor Hirohito. His name is also spelled Bak Yeol, and he is also sometimes known by his birth name Pak Jun-sik. In Japanese his name was rendered Boku Retsu. Park was sentenced to death in March 1926, albeit his sentence was commuted to life in prison the following month. He was released from prison by U.S. military occupation authorities in October 1945, following the end of World War II.
Anarchist from Colony is a 2017 South Korean biographical period drama film directed by Lee Joon-ik about the life of independence activist Park Yeol, with Lee Je-hoon taking on the title role. It premiered in South Korea on June 28, 2017.
The Korean People's Association in Manchuria was a self-governing autonomous prefecture in Manchuria, populated by two million Korean refugees. Following the Japanese occupation of Korea, many Korean anarchists had fled over the border into Manchuria, where they began organising a network of mutual aid for displaced Koreans in the region. Together with some Korean nationalists, they established the KPAM in order to provide food, education and self-defence to its members. Before long, the association found itself under attack by both Korean communists and Japanese imperialists, who assassinated their leadership. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria put an end to the anarchist experiment, with many of its members fleeing to China in order to fight against the Japanese Empire.
Baek Jeong-gi was a Korean anarchist and independence activist. A participant in the March First Movement, he was attracted to socialism and anarchism while he was a student in Japan, going on to join the Korean anarchist movement after moving to China. There he plotted the assassination of a Japanese consul, but he was arrested before he could make the attempt and died in a Japanese prison.
Anarchism in Mongolia was present during the revolutionary period of the 1910s and 1920s, closely linked with the Russian anarchist movement in Altai, Buryatia and Tuva.
Anarchism in Malaysia arose from the revolutionary activities of Chinese immigrants in British Malaya, who were the first to construct an organized anarchist movement in the country, reaching its peak during the 1920s. After a campaign of repression by the British authorities, anarchism was supplanted by Bolshevism as the leading revolutionary current, until the resurgence of the anarchist movement during the 1980s, as part of the Malaysian punk scene.
Yi Jeong-gyu known by his pen name Woogwan was a Korean anarchist. He spent much of his youth in China, where anarchists were relatively freer than in occupied Korea, and collaborated with not only Chinese anarchists but also with ones from various countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and Russia. He was one of the pioneers of the Korean anarchist movement in the early 1920s, and one of the most prominent Korean anarchists in China of that period.
Kim Hyeok was a Korean independence activist and militant. He was later known as Kim Seung-eun.
The Korean Independence Army (Korean: 한국독립군) was the military branch of the Korean Independence Party, which was founded and was active in North Manchuria during the Japanese Occupation of Korea. Meanwhile, between 1929 and 1934, the Korean Revolutionary Army was separately organized and active in southern Manchuria under the Korean Revolutionary Party and the National People's Prefecture. Afterwards, the Korean Revolutionary Military Government was established.
