2. Origins
 Parallels and connections to 1898 reforms
 Warlord Era, Japan’s 21 Demands
 Treaty of Versailles - Shandong
 New intelligentsia: 5 million educated in
West
 Beijing University (Peita) founded 1898 –
promoted free expression
 New Youth magazine started 1915: edited by
Chen Duxiu – attacked Confucianism
 Literary Revolution: attacks on traditional
language led by Hu Shi

3. Q1
 The May 4th Movement can best be described as a
reaction against foreign involvement in China?
B) True
C) False

4. Chen Duxiu

5. May 4, 1919
 3000 student demonstrators at Gate of
Heavenly Peace against Versailles Treaty,
Japanese demands and general state of China
 Cabinet minister’s house burned
 Manifesto declared:
“China’s territory may be conquered, but it
cannot be given away. The Chinese people
may be massacred, but they will not
surrender…”

6. 4 May 1919, Beijing
 The May 4th Incident
 House burned
 Former Chinese envoy to Japan beaten with iron bed
legs
 So heavily bruised his body looked like “it was covered
in fish scales” –Rana Mitter

7. Movement Spreads
May-June 1919
 Mass demonstrations throughout China
 Warlord cabinet resigns
 Students joined by the press and the middle class
 Sun Yatsen supported protest (but was ambivalent
about movement as a whole)
 Japanese goods boycotted
 Schools closed

8. Intellectual Revolution
 Explosion of new magazines
 Attacks on Confucianism
 Western ideas promoted
 Marxism promoted – New Youth spring 1919 edition (CCP founded 1921)
 Women’s rights (Ding Ling),
 Workers rights, trade union activity
 Peasant rights and education
 New educational ideas
 New literature, vernacular – Lu Xun

9. Lu Xun-author of “The
True Story of Ah Q”
“Our vaunted Chinese civilization is only a
feast of human flesh
prepared for the high and mighty”

10. Intellectual Conflict
Hu Shi: PROBLEMS
Beware of isms, simple solutions to complex
problems. Solve problems one at a time without
revolution but with PRAGMATISM
Vs
Li Dazhao: ISMS
Solve problems with a complete and thorough socio-
political transformation – revolution - MARXISM

11. Li Dazhao

12. CCP Founded
 Beijing University converts: Chen Duxiu, Li
Dazhao, Mao Zedong
 Comintern agent Voitinsky set up study
groups
 July 1921: First Congress of CCP in Shanghai
 Organized labour centres, workers’ schools,
strikes
 Chinese Seamen’s Union strike: union
recognition, increased pay

13. Key Features
 Nationwide student demonstrations against the Versailles Treaty and Japan
 Criticism of China’s past – attacks on “Confucius and Sons” – look to the West for solutions –
“keep young while growing old”
 New intelligentsia – five million by 1919 – Western schools
 Peking (Beijing) National University – founded 1898 – leading scholars: Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao,
Hu Shi
 Chen Duxiu’s New Youth magazine – attacks Confucianism – promotes social Darwinism
 Language Reform – rejection of classical Chinese – phonetic form of written characters
 Literary Revolution – Hu Shi – “Overthrow the painted and powdered literature of the aristocratic
few” – plain, simple expression – literature of the people
 Marxism – Bolshevik Revolution in Russia – promoted in special edition of New Youth May 1919 –
‘My Marxist Views’ (Li Dazhao)
 Rejected by Hu Shi – more study of problems, less talk of “isms” – argued for pragmatism of John
Dewey
 Lu Xun – China dying of suffocation – China as a cannibalistic society due to Confucianism etc

14. Recap
 Direct connections to 1898 Reforms e.g.: Beijing University
 New Culture movement related but different to May 4th
 New Culture focused on literature and culture less than
politics
 May 4th Movement an example of ‘Unstable Pluralism’,
e.g.: Weimar Germany
 Foreign models popular e.g.: Edison, Ghandi,Marie Curie,
Ataturk and Marx