Chinese Assassination Corps

The Chinese Assassination Corps (or China Assassination Corps or Sina Assassination Corps, ) was an anarchist group, active in China during the final years of the Qing dynasty. One of the first organized anarchist movements in China and fiercely anti-Manchu, it aimed to overthrow the then-ruling Aisin Gioro and the Empire of China through the use of revolutionary terror. In 1910, the left-wing Tongmenghui nationalist (and later anti-communist pro-Japanese collaborator and President of the Reorganized National Government of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War) Wang Jingwei, who had been influenced by Russian anarchism while studying in Japan, planned to assassinate Prince-Regent Chun (father of the young Xuantong Emperor). The plan, which was to be carried out in April, failed as Wang and his associates were arrested in Beijing in March. In response to the plot's failure, the Chinese Assassination Corps was formed later the same year to carry on the imprisoned would-be assassins' mission. Founded in Hong Kong, it had about ten active members in the beginning, most of which were Tongmenghui activists disillusioned with the tactic of revolutionary mass action. Instead, they turned to individual action, the propaganda of the deed, in the form of assassination. This was deeply inspired by roughly contemporary groups like the Russian People's Will, a left-wing terrorist group most well known for killing Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and the Black Hand, a Serbian pan-Slavic nationalist organization which would later go on to trigger World War I by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. These first members included people like Chen Jiongming, Gao Jianfu, Xie Yingbo, and Liu Shifu. Liu Shifu (1884–1915) especially would go on to become prominent within the Chinese anarchist milieu. Having been radicalized while studying in Japan (much as did Wang Jingwei), Liu, a Tongmenghui member, was involved in several assassinations before a 1907 attempt on the life of a Guangdong military commander, Li Chun, cost him one of his hands and two years in prison after his explosive device detonated by accident.