The paper opens with an introduction of the Chinese anarchist movement, which emerged at the dawn of the 20th century and spanned three different anarchist groups. The author presents its historical development and points to the reasons for its impact upon the formation of the Chinese communist movement in the first half of the 20th century. She analyzes the main causes for the movement’s later gradual weakening and its subsequent collapse, which took place parallel to the establishment and increasingly wide influence of the Communist Party of China. The article also presents the main reasons for the immense impact of anarchist theories upon the Chinese socialist revolution and shows that anarchist ideational systems, which were widely spread among Chinese students in the beginning of the 20th century, contained a huge number of notions, ideas and concepts that later formed the central elements of Chinese communism. In this context, the author points to the fact that the majority of Western revolutionary theories were first translated into Chinese in the scope of the Chinese anarchist movement. In doing so, the author exposes the notions, ideas and concepts that have later become famous as ’specifically Chinese’ elements of Chinese communism.
