Spiritual Mother and Intellectual Sons: Emma Goldman and Young Chinese Anarchists

Abstract

This paper tackles contacts and interactions between Emma Goldman and Chinese anarchists in the 1920s, during her exile in Europe and Canada, illuminating littleknown transpacific anarchist networks in a period when both Goldman's career and anarchism as an international movement were in decline. The study sheds light on the ways by which and extent to which Goldman sought to kindle the young generation's interest in anarchism and on the latter's creative adaptation of her ideas in a cross-cultural context. Showcasing the interactions of Qin Baopu, Lu Jianbo, and Ba Jin with Goldman, the article reveals how young Chinese anarchists helped forge a transpacific network of anarchist advocacy that crossed gender, generational, and national divides. I argue that these young anarchist intellectuals exhibited masculine rationality, philosophical creativity, and pragmatic flexibility in adapting Goldman's ideas to the increasingly oppressive political climate in China. In sum, the article unveils the multivalent effects of Goldman's thought—including her views on Bolshevism, anarchists' place in national revolution, and free love—on her Chinese interlocutors in the 1920s.