Like the word "communism", the word "collectivism" also has a different literal meaning in Chinese than when it is commonly used in English. In Chinese, the word for a "collective enterprise" (Ji-ti Qi-ye) literally means an assembly of people in a bureaucracy (a "tree of people") very different from our understanding of Michael Bakunin's Collectivism or a workers' collective more like Bolshevism or Fabian Socialism The Chinese Anarchist Shih Fu substantiated this translation by identifying Karl Marx as the father of "collectivism" in his writings.
Historically, Marxism was unable to make inroads into China until after the Russian Revolution of 1917 when Lenin's followers, bankrolled by the Bolshevik government, began their attacks on Anarchists in Russia and neighboring countries. This book describes some of the early history of Chinese Anarchism up to the period after the Bolshevik counter-revolution when Russia began to send Marxist-Leninist missionaries like Chou En-lai to try to try to infiltrate and take over the student movements in Europe. It includes some of the ideological debates which ensued between Chinese Anarchists and their Marxist-Leninist adversaries.