Editing China (section)

=== Late Qing Crisis and Buddhist Anarchism, 1898–1921 ===
The Chinese encounter between Buddhism and radical politics began under the pressure of a series of domestic crises that discredited received tradition as a whole. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) had already devastated Buddhist institutions across the Lower Yangtze; the crushing defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 then convinced a generation of reform-minded literati that not merely China's material strength but its inherited "culture" itself stood in need of wholesale reconstruction.<ref>Hong, Lijian (1991). "Chinese Marxist Historiography and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production." PhD thesis, Australian National University, p. 11, cited in Shields, James Mark (2022). "Buddhist Socialism in China, 1900–1930: A History and Appraisal". In: Graeme Kirkpatrick, Peter McMylor, & Simin Fadaee (Eds), ''Marxism, Religion, and Emancipatory Politics'': 81–102. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 83.</ref> A handful of late Qing intellectuals responded by turning to Buddhism as a source of revolutionary rather than merely devotional value. Kang Youwei (康有為/康有为, 1858–1927) built a Buddhicized utopianism into his ''Book of the Datong'' (大同書/大同书), envisioning the abolition of nations, the establishment of a world parliament, and eventual universal Buddhahood.<ref>Zarrow, Peter (1990). ''Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture''. Columbia University Press, p. 19, cited in Shields (2022), "Buddhist Socialism in China", p. 85.</ref> Tan Sitong (譚嗣同/谭嗣同, 1865–1898) fused Buddhist metaphysics with Western science and the activist epistemology of the Ming Neo-Confucian Wang Yangming into an idealist philosophy that he sealed with his own martyrdom after the failed Hundred Days' Reform of 1898, a self-sacrifice explicitly modeled on the bodhisattva ideal.<ref>Shields (2022), "Buddhist Socialism in China", p. 85, n. 15.</ref> Zhang Binglin (章炳麟, 1869–1936), already a prominent philologist and revolutionary, began to study and apply Buddhism to his revolutionary work during a three-year imprisonment from 1903 to 1906, developing a "national essence" (國粹/国粹) current that looked past centuries of what it regarded as degenerate Confucian orthodoxy toward an imagined, purer indigenous past.<ref>Shields (2022), "Buddhist Socialism in China", p. 85, n. 16, and p. 86.</ref> Other Buddhist-inflected revolutionaries of this generation included the ordained monk Huang Zongyan (黃宗仰/黄宗仰, 1865–1921) and the iconoclastic poet and artist Su Manshu (蘇曼殊/苏曼殊, 1884–1918).<ref>Shields (2022), "Buddhist Socialism in China", p. 85, n. 17.</ref>

Kropotkin's ''The Conquest of Bread'' (麵包與自由/面包与自由) appeared in Chinese translation as early as 1906, and excerpts soon circulated in the anarchist journal ''Natural Justice'' (天義/天义), catalyzing a Buddhist-anarchist milieu that drew equivalences between the bodhisattva vow, the classical utopia of Datong, and the anarcho-communist vision of voluntary cooperative society.<ref>Shields (2022), "Buddhist Socialism in China", pp. 85–86, n. 18, and pp. 90–94.</ref> From 1907 until at least the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, anarchism rather than Marxism was the dominant framework of Chinese radicalism, and it was frequently anarchists, many educated in Japan, who first introduced Marxist texts and ideas into China.<ref>Zarrow (1990), p. 3, cited in Shields (2022), "Buddhist Socialism in China", p. 84.</ref> The central figure of this milieu, and the acknowledged leader of Chinese anarchism as a whole after 1911, was Shifu.