The Red Spear Society began as a rural self-defense movement in Henan, Hebei and Shandong in northern China during the Warlord Era in the 1920s.
These were local groups of small-holders and tenant farmers organized to defend villages against roaming bandits, warlords, tax collectors or later Chinese communists or Japanese.
Because of a large immigration to Northeast China to escape the chaos in North China they were also active in Manchuria forming part of the Anti-Japanese volunteer armies resisting the Japanese establishment of Manchukuo in 1932.
In Manchuria members of the brotherhood were described as "primitive-minded people" who placed their faith in rustic magics and belief in the righteous character's Heavenly reward.
Red Spear bodies formed in the countryside around Harbin were in many cases led by Buddhist monks as they went into battle, they and their weapons decorated with magic inscriptions similar to the earlier Boxer rebels.