User:Sentryward/Liu Shipei

Liu Shipei (1884 - November 1919) was a Chinese scholar and a key theorist and activist of the Tokyo anarchist group.

Born in Yizheng in Yangzhou province. Liu had come from an established scholarly family and subjected to a classical Chinese education. As a student he had encountered the works of Taiyan and Zuo Zhuan which were influential on him.

In 1907 along with his wife He Zhen, he founded Society for the Study of Socialism (Shehui zhuyi jiangxi hui) in Tokyo among the Chinese emigree community. Although the group would not last for a long time, and not hold the same sway of the more modernist Paris group, it would put out two journals and have a limited influence. The groups journals were Natural Justice (Tianyibao) and Balance (Hengbao). The group and its propaganda would draw its influence from Tolstoy, incorporating an agrarian utopian outlook. In addition, it was through the conduit of He Zhen that the group had a strong feminist slant.

"The reason people are unequal is because they are not independent. It is because of dependence that enslavement of people is possible. Because of dependence, they lose their right to freedom. As they lose freedom, they also lose the right to equality. Humankind has been imprisoned for a long time, which is contradictory to the principle of equality."