Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement

The Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement (Chinese: 留法勤工儉學會; pinyin: Liú Fǎ qíngōng jiǎnxué huì; French: Mouvement Travail-Études) was a series of work-study programs which brought Chinese students to France and Belgium to work in factories as a way to pay for their study of French culture and Western science. 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.

After organizing smaller-scale programs starting in 1908, in 1916, after the outbreak of First World War, the Chinese organizers worked with the Chinese and French governments to establish the Diligent Work-Frugal Study program, which brought less educated Chinese workers, and continued to bring students after the 1919 end of the war. In all, several thousand Chinese came to France as student-workers, though not all as formal members of a program. 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.

Well before Marxist socialism entered China, Chinese anarchists took up the cause of labor and educating the working class. The leaders of the Chinese Anarchist movement in Paris -- Li Shizeng, Wu Zhihui, Zhang Renjie. Wang Jingwei, 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. They argued that individuals could not liberate themselves, but that educated men had the responsibility as teachers to use moral education and personal rectitude to show others the way. They were eager to establish interchange with France, which they regarded as a progressive and secular society.

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