Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement
[1]: 35 The programs were organized between 1912 and 1927 largely by a group of Chinese anarchists who had come to Paris and wanted to introduce French science and social idealism to China.
They included future leaders of the Chinese Communist Party such as Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, as well as others who went on to prominent roles in China.
Wang Jingwei,[2] Wu Yuzhang, and Cai Yuanpei — supported Sun Yat-sen but urged him to add a social and cultural aspect to his program of political revolution.
Li aimed to take these worker-students, who he called "ignorant" and "superstitious," and make them into knowledgeable and moral citizens who on their return home would become models for a new China.
[5] The Society prepared students for inexpensive study (¥600 a year) in France and "by labor and a simple life to cultivate habits of diligence and hard work."
The Association established a workers' school near the factory, in which Li and Wu taught the Chinese and French languages, and general scientific knowledge.
[7] In addition to making workers more knowledgeable, work-study would eliminate their "decadent habits" and transform them into morally upright and hard-working citizens.
Li wrote extensive articles in the Chinese Labor Journal (Huagong zazhi), which introduced readers to Western science, arts, fiction, and current events.
The preparatory schools at Baoding and Changxingdian required only that applicants have basic Chinese and that they not possess "bad habits" such as smoking or gambling.
The low tuition fees charged by the preparatory schools and the specially reduced boat fares Li Shizeng negotiated with French authorities also increased the numbers of students who could come on the program.
[16] In 1921, word spread that Wu Zhihui was bringing one-hundred students from Guangdong and Guangxi provinces who were to be given first preference in enrolling at the Institute in Lyon.
The "Lyon Incident" turned the younger generation of students into angry critics who dismissed anarchism as a revolutionary doctrine and rejected older leaders such as Wu, Li, and Cai Yuanpei.
Cai Hesen wrote to Mao in August and September 1920 to share his experiences and expound on the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat which he learned in France.
Participants in the program or those who worked with them who went on to prominent roles in other areas included Li Huang, founder of the Chinese Youth Party.
[21] The Historical Museum of French-Chinese Friendship (French: musée historique de l'Amitié franco-chinoise; Chinese: 中国旅法勤工俭学蒙达尔纪纪念馆, lit.
[23] The museum occupies the three main floors of a house in which several Chinese students resided in the era of the Work-Study Movement, on 15 rue Raymond Tellier in the historical center of Montargis.
