W’s
Who
Educated folk, literary critics, educators and writers, had a great impact especially on younger adults and college students
Mostly Beijing college students and urban workers protested at Tiananmen Square on May 4th, 1919, but the phenomenon also spread across the country in less intense ways.
When
Started when Chen Duxiu founded the New Youth magazine in 1915 and roughly ends around 1923-1924. The May Fourth protest occurred on May 4th, 1919, and can be seen as a turning point in the movement.
The May Fourth Movement was created as a direct result of the protests in 1919, and can be considered the successor. But they’re both highly interlinked and are commonly referred to as one (like what I’m going to do here).
Where
Occurred mostly in urban centers and city populations, where there were a greater number of intellectuals, students, and educators.
What/Why
Movement can largely be split into two: a cultural movement, and a political movement. Started off as purely cultural, but after May 4th protests slowly started evolving to become a discussion on Chinese nationalism and the people’s roles in political action.
The addition of politics also split the movement into two groups of thought about the how fast their proposed changes should occur, separating the culture people and the politics people.
Early in the movement: cultural changes
- Marked by anti-traditionalism and anti-Confucianism. Many called for a complete 180 on traditionalist Chinese values, to be replaced with individualism
- Increased presence of Western ideals and thinking within discussions about a “modern” Chinese government and culture, but also very strong rejections of Western values; lots of literature on both sides was produced
- Literary renaissance: formation of vernacular Chinese, came out of a need to educate the common folk on the new government. Completely changed the way people wrote and read Chinese literature.
Example: abandonment of “classical” Chinese
It is because of this literary transition that some have called the New Culture Movement the “Chinese Renaissance,” because historically the Western Renaissance marked the transition from classical Latin to modern Western vernacular languages like French, Spanish, Italian, and more.
- Attacks on family system and the ultimate rejection of Filial piety, heavily supported by younger adults that increasingly rejected family and everything “old” about Chinese culture and government
People believing in cultural changes believed that change cannot be rushed and wanted to take things slow. This makes sense because by definition culture cannot change overnight.
Later in the movement: May Fourth protests, political changes
- Beijing students started protesting Treaty of Versailles’ unfair treatment of Chinese land, and the government’s willingness to accept the terms
- It worked, eventually those government officials were forced out and Chinese representatives refused to sign treaty
This would jumpstart the May Fourth Movement, which placed an emphasis on Chinese nationalism and discussing what that looks like. This is likely the first time that the idea of “a Chinese people as a whole” was discussed this broadly.
Marks a shift in thinking from imperial times e.g. Sacred Edict assumes that people would stick to local circles and villages, no notion of “unified” China exists.
Cultural movement ultimately lost
During the May Fourth Movement, cultural people largely lost out and were left in the dust for what was to come.
- Marked increased emphasis on dramatic, instant political changes, decreased interest in long term cultural movements
- Spurred by everyone’s interests to save China as a nation now, which required immediate political leadership
- Cultural movement was increasingly associated with intellectuals, who were slowly being discarded and ignored by political party leaders