| Abstract: | Russian populism spread in China at the turn of the twentieth century in the name of anarchism, nihilism, and socialism, and gradually contributed to the formation of modern Chinese populism. Populism around the time of the 1911 Revolution had two characteristics: one was its deep hatred of capitalism which regarded capitalism as an ugly, decadent, and regressive historical phenomenon; the other characteristic was an attempt to get around the developmental stage of capitalism in order to proceed directly into socialism. Compared with Russian populism, modern Chinese populism did not have well-organized proponents, nor did it have any systemic system of populist political thought. It manifested itself more as a populist intellectual tendency without a strong self-awareness. Agrarian civilization and Confucianism provided the hotbed for populism, and a superficial understanding of Western capitalism was the main cultural drive that bred populism. The most important feature of modern Chinese populism was the fantasy of leaping from a backward agrarian country into socialism by surpassing capitalist industrialization. |
