Biography:
Zikui Wei is a third-year PhD student in Sociology. He holds a MA from the University of Chicago and a BA from Zhejiang University, both in Sociology. He is interested in historical and political sociology.

Project Title: Fascism and Modern China: The Case of the Society for Vigorous Practice

Abstract

This project seeks to explore fascist influence on modern China in the 1930s through a case study of a Chinese fascist movement—the Society for Vigorous Practice (Lixing she). As such, it tries understand why the Society emerged with significant momentum in the early-1930s, took over several crucial functional domains of the Nationalist Party and state, ultimately failed in the late-1930s. The project intends to embed the Society into comparisons with other fascist movements around the globe and its family of radical right-wing movements within China in the 1930s. In addition, this project seeks to explore how the members of the Society themselves understood their political project and the Society’s varying institutional reach into the party, the state, and everyday life.