In the political arena of the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, various ideologies and figures of various factions took the stage one after another, and an unprecedented period of ideological activity appeared in China, and there were two most mainstream ideological currents, one faction was the constitutional faction headed by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, and the other was the republican faction that supported Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing. In fact, the more radical trend of thought in society has loomed, but its energy was still particularly weak at that time. Snow, the foreign journalist who wrote "Red Star Shines on China" decades later, once said that Mao Zedong once mentioned a person in a conversation with him, and it was this person who slowly made him understand what "socialism" is.
Who is this person?
He was Jiang Kanghu, born in 1883 in Geyang, Jiangxi. In order to go abroad, he studied Japanese at the Beijing Bunko Bureau. In 1901, he went to Japan to study Japanese politics. After returning to China, he was hired by Yuan Shikai as the general office of the General Office of the Beiyang Education Bureau, responsible for compiling primary school textbooks in the five provinces of North China. Since then, he has become a member of the Beiyang Department, and Jiang Kanghu has won the favor of Yuan Shikai, and was soon promoted by Yuan Shikai to be the editor-in-chief of the Beiyang Official Daily. Later, with the support of Yuan Shikai, four girls' schools were founded in Beijing, mainly to cultivate teacher morality.
Jiang Kanghu, who became famous as a teenager, did not live a comfortable life. At this time, like countless enthusiastic young people of that era, he was worried about the country and the people.
In the decade from 1902 to 1912, he went to Japan many times to study English, French, and German, trying to find ideas from these rising countries, and it was also during this time that he came into contact with socialist theory, and in the spring of 1910, Jiang Jiang went to Europe to travel to various countries, taking the opportunity to promote his "Three Noes" (no religion, no state, no family).
In the summer of 1911, Jiang Kanghu was the first to put forward the concept of "socialism" in China. Four months later, the Chinese Socialist Party was established in Shanghai, the first political party in China's modern history.
The republicans called on the masses to fill up the Xinghan, overthrow the autocracy with a bloody revolution, and establish a democratic republic. The constitutionalists, on the other hand, believe that the people's wisdom has not yet been enlightened, that the revolution will inevitably shed blood and waver, and that it will put the great powers in danger of dividing up China, so they should start with a gentle constitution and reform society step by step. Jiang Kanghu's Socialist Party takes freedom of love, equality in education, and the return of inheritance to the public as the primary goal, and takes each of them to do his best, take what he needs, and take non-private property, non-family, and non-religion as the stage goals, and personal autonomy and world unity as the ultimate goal. From the very beginning of its founding, the Socialist Party has transcended the political products of the times and has not been favored by the times in the end.
The Socialist Party had little influence at the time. However, due to the low threshold of the Socialist Party, "no need to introduce people, everyone can become a party member", the country quickly developed 250 grass-roots organizations, more than 20,000 party members. It also included some famous scholars of the time, such as Li Dazhao and Ye Shengtao. These people later became China's elite.
In order to expand the Socialist Party, in 1912, Jiang Kanghu went to Beijing several times to meet Yuan Shikai and expound his "socialist" views, hoping that Yuan Shikai would adopt them. In order to gain Yuan Shikai's support, Jiang Kanghu united with the National Chamber of Commerce and the Education Association to oppose Sun Yat-sen's armed courtship against Yuan. Unfortunately, in 1913 Chen Yilong, secretary of the Tianjin branch of the Socialist Party, was arrested for his involvement in the Second Revolution. Yuan Shikai was furious and ordered the banning of social organizations. Jiang Kanghu could only go abroad to hide, and successively served at the University of California and the Oriental Library of the Library of Congress.
In 1921, Jiang Kanghu returned to China and actively contacted the old ministry, hoping to re-establish the Chinese Socialist Party. Later, he went to Moscow to meet with Lenin and others, hoping to get the support of the Soviet Union. But his "socialism" was not endorsed by Lenin.
In 1925, jiang Kanghu participated in the "aftermath conference" convened by Duan Qirui as a representative of the Socialist Party and became a member of the Constitutional Committee. In August of the same year, Jiang Kanghu was notorious for being exposed by the press about two scandals: one was to meet with the Qing Emperor Puyi; the other was that Feng Yuxiang seized a compliment letter written by Jiang Kanghu to Puyi. People suddenly found that the new figure Jiang Kanghu was nothing more than a restoration party that "missed the old favors and did not forget the original." Suddenly, the whole country set off a wave of driving the river. Jiang Kanghu was forced to disband the Socialist Party. Flee to Hong Kong.
In 1940, Wang Jingwei organized a pseudo-"National Government" in Nanjing, eager to debut and open, struggling to find like-minded people. Jiang Kanghu had some fame in the past, so he invited Jiang Kanghu, who was living in Hong Kong at that time, to participate in Wang's pseudo", the "peace movement". At this time, Jiang Kanghu was no longer the spirited young man he had been. When he hit a wall again and again, his thinking changed dramatically. At this time, he was a politician who was drilling around. When Jiang Kanghu was the vice president of the examination institute of the Wang puppet government, he vigorously preached "saving the country through curves" and even defended the Nanjing Massacre for the Japanese army, completely losing the backbone of intellectuals. Later, he was elected as a member of the "State Government" and became one of the core leaders of the Wang puppet government.
However, with the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Jiang Kanghu's performance on the political stage also ended with Japan's defeat in the war. Jiang Kanghu, a traitor, was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in 1954 in Shanghai's Tilanqiao Prison.
Wang Jingwei, a revolutionary who dared to assassinate the regent Zaifeng and one of the elders of the Kuomintang, eventually became a Japanese puppet and traitor.
Jiang Kanghu was once a tidal wave in the ideological circles and a pioneer of "socialism," and finally degenerated into a shameful traitor.
Similar beginnings, similar endings, and life with tiger heads and tails are even more lamentable now.
Looking at the ups and downs of Jiang Kanghu's life, the author believes that his transformation comes from the oppression of those in power, but more often than not, it is caused by his own personality. In fact, he was not a qualified leader, the party he built was loose and crumbling, according to Gu Jiegang, who had joined, "Every day when he stepped into the branch, it was like stepping into a teahouse, everyone said some gossip and jokes to pass the time, and they had already left behind what doctrines, and some people even let go of flirting with female comrades." "
Why is a person confused, because the goal is not firm enough, why is it not firm enough, because there is no faith. What they lack is faith.