13 Facts About Liu Shifu

Liu Shifu known as Sifu, was a Chinese assassin and politician.

Liu Shifu was an Esperantist and an influential figure in the Chinese revolutionary movement in the early twentieth century, and in the Chinese anarchist movement in particular.

Liu Shifu was a key figure in the movement, particularly in Guangdong province, and one of the most important organizers in the Chinese anarchist tradition.

Liu Shifu is sometimes considered as the Pierre-Joseph Proudhon of China.

Liu Shifu's father, Liu Biancheng was a local official and engaged in business ventures.

Liu Shifu disliked his formal education, and thought China needed to reform.

Alongside these reform activities Liu Shifu maintained a quest for knowledge to meet his country's needs, and for a viewpoint, some broader sense of how China ought to be transformed.

Liu Shifu read widely in the works of the heterodox thinkers of the Hundred Schools of Thought.

Liu Shifu was later arrested and jailed for about three years due to the failed assassination.

In early 1910, after the releasement, Liu Shifu co-founded the China Assassination Corps with Xie Yingbo, Zhu Shutang and others.

Liu Shifu was one of the first Chinese Revolutionaries to seriously advocate Peasant organizing as a key element of his revolutionary strategy.

Liu Shifu was a skilled expositor of anarchist doctrine and his polemical exchanges with the socialist leader Jiang Kanghu helped to popularize anarchism as a "pure socialism" and to distinguish it from other currents in socialist thought.

Liu Shifu was very active in the movement for the international language Esperanto, in which he used the pseudonym Sifo.