2· THE MAY FOURTH MOVEMENT CH.I INTRODUCTION 3 allying itself with the Nationalists to overthrow the warlord Peking regime. tors,such as anarchism,upon the students.Their view is not accepted by Western attitudes shifting from sympathy to antagonism towards the move- many who have closely observed and studied the history of the May Fourth ment constituted one major factor in this split.Thereafter socialism and na- Movement.3 tionalism became ascendant,and a multitude of complicated controversies were Still another group,who recognized the close relation between the students precipitated. aspects of the May Fourth Movement and the new culture movement,re- The effects of the movement were widespread.It contributed to the rise of jected the idea that the term May Fourth Movement should cover the latter. the student and labor movements,the reorganization of the Kuomintang,and The principal proponents of this opinion were Hu Shih and certain other the birth of the Chinese Communist Party and other political and social groups. scholars.Basically,Hu regarded the May Fourth Movement as a patriotic move- Antiwarlordism and anti-imperialism developed.A new vernacular literature ment of the students and emphasized the significance of its cultural rather than was established and popular education was greatly facilitated thereby.The its social and political activities.He accepted Sun Yat-sen's view that the stu- Chinese press and public opinion made great progress.The movement also dents'activities in the May Fourth Movement had a close relation to the literary accelerated the decline of the old family system and the rise of feminism.And and intellectual movements.While Sun rated the new thought movement above all,the authority of Confucianism and traditional ethics suffered a funda- higher than the others,Hu paid more attention to the new literature move- mental and devastating stroke and new Western ideas were exalted. ment,and the vernacular problem in particular.Works in English by Hu and At first the term "May Fourth Movement"as used by the students and the others who hold the same view have familiarized many Westerners with the press did not refer to all of the events mentioned above.It was rather applied new culture movement under the epithet,"the Chinese Renaissance." only to the student demonstration in Peking on May 4.By analogy the mass Though the adoption of the vernacular in writing was one of the most arrests that occurred after June 3,191g,were called the "June Third Movement." prominent achievements of the movement,the literary revolution should be In later years,people talking of the May Fourth Movement may not consciously considered merely one aspect of the great general advance which occurred have taken such a narrow view,but they rarely failed to equate the movement during the period.To this writer the political,social,and ideological events of with the May Fourth Incident (Wa-sst shih-chien)and its consequences.The the time do not seem less significant than the adoption of the vernacular. term May Fourth Movement was,then,in many cases interchangeable with Moreover,the movement cannot be regarded solely as a student or youth move- the term May Fourth Incident. ment.The term"student"(hstieh-sheng)as employed in China denotes only a A second and more serious question of scope has also been raised:should person studying in a school.This usage,which is followed in this study,differs the term May Fourth Movement embrace on the one hand both the social and from the English use of the word,which may also refer to scholars or learners political activities of the students and intellectuals,and,on the other,the new not engaged in active study in an institution.5 While it is true that students or literature and new thought movements,which started earlier,in 19I7,and later youths provided the most powerful driving force in the movement,adult in- came to be called the new culture movement?Some people held that the May tellectuals such as the professors and writers of the new thought group assumed Fourth Movement and the new culture movement were different and bore little the leadership of the ideological aspects of the movement,and both young and relation to each other.They thought that the movement was not directly caused adult intellectuals played a part in its development outside of the schools also. by the new culture movement and the leaders of the latter did not in general Consequently,though the movement may properly be viewed from the angle guide or even support the former.They admitted only that the new culture of a student or youth movement,it should not be regarded exclusively as such. movement probably somewhat facilitated the May Fourth Movement,while the The question whether to give primary emphasis to the literary or to the latter served to intensify and to aid in the expansion of the former.2 youth and political aspects of the May Fourth Movement has been a subject The advocates of this interpretation overlooked the necessary relation be- of political controversy in China.In March 1939,when the Communist-spon- tween the students'actions and the development of their thought.They seem sored Youth Association of China (Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien lien-ho-hui)was to have adopted such a view with the intention of belittling the significance established in Yenan,it suggested that May fourth of each year be proclaimed of the new culture movement and of exaggerating the influence of other fac- "Youth Day"(ch'ing-nien chich).Its proposal was accepted by many other