Jiang Kanghu

Jiang Kanghu (born July 18, 1883, Shangrao, Jiangxi province, China—died Dec. 7, 1954, Shanghai) was a Chinese scholar, teacher, and reformer who was a leading proponent of socialism in China in the early 20th century.

Born into a scholar-official family, Jiang studied at home and briefly in Japan before returning to China in 1901 to take a position as head of the Zhili Northern Translation and Editing Bureau (Beiyang Bianyiju) and editor-in-chief of an official newspaper, Beiyang Guanbao. He became a professor at Peking University in 1904 and also organized a succession of teacher-training schools for women in that city. Jiang became interested in socialism during his second trip to Japan, in 1907. Returning to China in 1910, he gave what were perhaps the first public lectures on socialism ever delivered in China. In his application of socialism to China, Jiang advocated the abolition of the family and of inherited wealth, the emancipation of women, and the establishment of universal and equal education as the means to end the class divisions and status hierarchies that plagued Chinese society. He envisaged a mixed economy utilizing both private enterprise and selective state ownership of industry.

Upon the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Chinese republic in 1911/12, Jiang began openly propagandizing for socialism. The Chinese Socialist Party developed in 1912 in Shanghai from a study society he had started, and under his leadership the party quickly established 250 branches in other Chinese cities, with a membership of perhaps 20,000. However, in 1913 Pres. Yuan Shikai suppressed the party, and Jiang fled to the United States, where he spent his time teaching at the University of California (Berkeley) and working for the U.S. Library of Congress until 1920.

After visiting the Soviet Union in 1921–22, Jiang returned to China once more to try to establish socialism there. He organized the Southern University at Shanghai with himself as its president and in 1924 revived the Chinese Socialist Party, which he reorganized in 1925 into the Social Democratic Party, giving it a platform similar to those of western European social-democratic organizations. Jiang’s growing political momentum came to an abrupt end in 1925, however, when a correspondence between him and the deposed Qing emperor Puyi was published as evidence that he was plotting to restore the Qing dynasty to power (Jiang had merely wished to convert Puyi to socialism). Hounded out of the presidency of Southern University by outraged students and recognizing that the disgrace had ended his political career, Jiang went to Canada. He soon underwent an ideological about-face, abandoning socialism and becoming a resolute Confucian and Chinese traditionalist. He returned to China in 1934, taught courses on Chinese civilization, and in 1940 took a post at Nanjing under the Japanese-sponsored government of Ching Jingwei supervising civil-service examinations. He was arrested by the Nationalist Chinese government after Japan’s surrender and was sent to Nanjing in 1946. After the communist takeover in 1949, he was transferred to a prison in Shanghai, where he died.