Reclus spent his childhood in Scotland then Belgium, becoming a journalist in Paris' anarchist community in the early 1920s.

He left China after the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and the persecution of foreigners, returning to France.

Reclus' work as a Chinese-French translator helped to introduce classical Chinese literature to Francophone circles.

[6] In 1922, Jacques was arrested durting an anarchist protest in support of André Marty after the Black Sea mutiny.

[7] In 1923, he was involved in the creation of the Group for the Defense of Revolutionaries Imprisoned in Russia (Groupement de défense des révolutionnaires emprisonnés en Russie), and he published the pamphlet Repression of Anarchism in the Soviet Union (Répression de l’anarchisme en Union soviétique).

[9] After coming into contact with Chinese anarchist students, Jacques went to China in 1927 where he became a professor of French at the newly founded National Labour University, Shanghai (which operated for five years from 1927 to 1932).

[11] As the Second World War began, he moved to French Indochina where his home became a meeting place for Free France, as the region was then controlled by the vichy government.

Jacques struggled to return to teaching, instead he became a proofreader and then editor at the Revue bibliographique de sinologie.