anfu

Updated: June 15, 2025

Another little incident is connected with the Chancellor of the University. Although he is not a politician at all, the Militarist party holds him responsible for their recent trials and the student outbreaks. So, although it announced that the Chancellor is coming back, the Anfu Club, the parliamentary organization of the militarists, is still trying to keep him out.

Alice Chipman Dewey - Letters from China and Japan

The political turnover was as complete as it was sensational. The seemingly impregnable masters of China were impotent fugitives. The carefully built up Anfu Club, with its military, financial and foreign support, had crumbled and fallen. No country at any time has ever seen a political upheaval more sudden and more thoroughgoing.

John Dewey - China, Japan and the U.S.A. : Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference

By the time the scene of action was transferred to Peking in order to secure the confirmation of the central government, the Anfu regime was no more, and as yet no confirmation has been secured. The new government at Canton has declined to recognize the contract as having any validity.

John Dewey - China, Japan and the U.S.A. : Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference

Beginning two years ago, one heard experienced Chinese with political affiliations saying that it was impossible for things to go on as they were for more than three months longer. Some decisive change must occur. Yet outwardly the situation has remained much the same not only for three months but for two years, the exception being the overthrow of the Anfu faction a year ago.

John Dewey - China, Japan and the U.S.A. : Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference

The latter saw Tuan, told him that he was surrounded by evil advisers, demanded that he cut loose from little Hsu and the Anfu Club, and declared open war upon little Hsu the two had long and notoriously been bitter enemies. Even then people had great difficulty in believing that anything would happen except another Chinese compromise.

John Dewey - China, Japan and the U.S.A. : Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference

This flock took the name of the Anfu Club. It did not control the entire cabinet, but to it belonged the Minister of Justice, who manipulated the police and the courts, persecuted the students, suppressed liberal journals and imprisoned inconvenient critics. And the Club owned the ministers of finance and communications, the two cabinet places that dispense revenues, give out jobs and make loans.

John Dewey - China, Japan and the U.S.A. : Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference

Hence it is enough to say that two weeks after Tuan and little Hsu had intimidated the president and proclaimed themselves the saviors of the Republic, they were in hiding, their enemies of the Chili party were in complete control of Peking, and rewards from fifty thousand dollars down were offered for the arrest of little Hsu, the ex-ministers of justice, finance and communications, and other leaders of the Anfu Club.

John Dewey - China, Japan and the U.S.A. : Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference

But now even the generals do not care for Japan any more." It is hardly logical to take the easy collapse of the Japanese-supported Anfu party as a proof of the weakness of Japan, but prestige is always a matter of feeling rather than of logic.

John Dewey - China, Japan and the U.S.A. : Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference

During this period, Kwantung province was governed by military carpet-baggers from the neighboring province of Kwangsei, which was practically alone of the southern provinces allied with the northern government, then under the control of the Anfu party.

John Dewey - China, Japan and the U.S.A. : Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference