May 4th Movement

May Fourth Movement

Causes :

• Intellectual Revolution 1917 - 1921

- New intelligentsia of 5 million by 1919, educated in western type schools as a result of the Hundred Days Reforms in 1898.

- Elite who attended school abroad were concentrated in coastal cities. As a result, there was urban population growth eg Shanghai. It was the emergence of bourgeoisie political force.

- The West were seen as a solution to China's problems.

New Youth Magazine

- Magazine founded by Chen Duxiu in 1915.

- Became focal point for all out assault on Confucianism, regarded as a fundamental cause of China's weaknesses.

- Social Darwinism was regarded as old and the rotten are incessantly eliminated to be replaced by the fresh and the living. It supports the idea that the youth is strong and the old is weak.

- It gives the idea that the society is sick, Chinese society is sick and should die, New Society should be born.

- The First magazine was called "The Way Of Confucius and Modern Life" by Chen Duxiu. 

     - It denounced restrictions on women and women's rights. 

     - It advocates that Confucius lived in a feudal age.

     - Essays attacking all Confucius ideas were posted.

Language & Literature Reform

- Classical Chinese (wen yuan) was replaced by the vernacular (baihua)

- From 1910, there was an outpouring of urban popular fiction.

- They plan to overthrow the painted, powdered literature of the aristocratic few, and create the plain, simple literature of the people.

- This movement sprang from disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture following the failure of the Chinese Republic to address China's problems.

- Led by scholars like Chen Duxiu, the movement created a desire for change across China.

- Lu Xun, another scholar, abandoned a medical career to awaken the Chinese people.

- Many key works of Western philosphy were translated.

• Impact of WW1 

- In 1917, China had joined WW1 on the Allied side, with the condition that all German spheres of influence in China (Shandong province), be returned to China.

- American advocacy of self-determination at the Versailles Conference was attractive to Chinese intellectuals, so the failure to award China Shandong province was seen as a betrayal.

- China declared war with Germany on March 1917. 

- They did not send troops to Germany. They sent 140,000 workers to work on the Western Front. 40,000 worked for the French, 100,000 worked for the Brits. 

- Their jobs were to carry trunks and risk their lives on the trenches. 

- They were known as Chinese Labour Corps, a.k.a China's forgetten army.

- They were treated by the British and the French as they were racist. 

- 10,000 died from Shelling, poor treatment and the flu pandemic of 1918. 

Events :

• They May 4th Movment was the name given to an explosion of yearning for change and national rebirth, particularly amongst the young students.
• In 1919, news reached people in China that the Allies at the Versailles Peace Conference in Paris were planning to allow Japan to keep the German concessions in Shandong province.
• Students at Beijing University began an explosive protest. 
• On Sunday 4th May, 3000 students from 13 colleges assembled in Tiananmen Square.
• They demanded their government assert itself against the Japanese.
• They wrecked the houses of the goverment minister responsible for the treaty.
• A city-wide student union was then established devoted to change; the May Fourth Movement.
• This was replicated across China in cities like Shanghai, Wuhan and Tianjin.
  

Effects :

• Protests

- The rising tide of protest prevented the Chinese delegation from accepting the terms of the treaty.

- China refused to sign however Japan still had control of Shandong.

• Cultural Turning Point

- The movement proved that China's social classes could successfully collaborate given proper motivation and leadership.

- Traditional Chinese values began to be questioned.

- People became more willing to support the change from the warlords.

• Intellectual Turning Point

- The movement encouraged many people to become more political.

- It showed that Western-styled democracy was the wrong path to take.

- It hypocritically ignored China's pleas for fairness.

• Marxism

- Political revolutionary theory of Karl Marx and assissted by Freidrich Engles.

- This encouraged many Chinese intellectuals to turn to new ideologies like Marxism.

- Working class rise up and overthrow Capitalist bosses.

- Formation of the CCP in 1921.