May 4th, the Chinese Renaissance of 1919.

Awaiting a Democratic Hong Kong (repost from May 4th)

Today marks the May 4th movement, some scholars have called it “the Chinese Enlightenment.” A time when Chinese students and intellectuals banded together and attempted to rid China of feudalism and colonialism at the dawning of the democracy in China and the fall of the Qing dynasty.

The way I perceived it, it’s more akin to the Harlem Renaissance, and also the comings of the jazz age, then the medieval one. In a time when Hong Kong feels so at lost and without an anchor and our hopes of democracy seems dashed, I feel we should go back and look at a time when history was changing and take some lessons learnt before, and remember that Chinese culture has moved from Confucius a good century ago. We have been in the last 97 years a country and culture of social change and revolutions: from the end of the Imperial Court, to the Republic, a period of Japanese rule, to civil war and the Communist party, and as of now -a time of splintering into a search for independence and universal suffrage.

I am so tired of hearing what “Chinese” means, especially in terms of behavior of elders, treatment of women, and a general willingness to accept what is wrong in order to placate the power-elite. Especially when the “Chinese” they are referring to harks back to an age so long, a history so ancient, that it’s close to not relevant anymore. In that way I align myself with the spirit of May 4th and even the social change envisioned by Chairman Mao, for as much as I dislike the communist regime of now, and cannot accept the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, I still think he was a visionary and a poet.

Here are two articles. An overview from Wikipedia and one from the Selected Works of Mao Tse Tung.

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The effect of the New Cultural Movement

The New Culture Movement, which started in the early republican period, helped many Chinese intellectuals work towards the future. The movement aimed to introduce western concepts in China, such as democracy, equality and liberty; also a new style of writing as well as the latest science and technology of the time. The most famous leaders of the movement were Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei and Hu Shih. Their ideas influenced many Chinese students who joined together to protest against Japan’s aggression. It was in this intellectual atmosphere that the dissatisfaction with the Paris peace settlement brought about a massive outburst throughout the country on May 4, 1919.

On May 4, 1919, more than 3000 students from 13 colleges and universities in Beijing gathered together in Tiananmen Square to demonstrate. As the news spread, students, merchants and workers in other cities responded by organizing more demonstrations, along with strikes and boycotts of Japanese goods. These activities were held to denounce Japanese aggression. The movement possessed a unity of purpose among patriotic Chinese of all classes.

Actually, the effect of China’s dissatisfaction and the New Cultural Movement were equally important to the May Fourth Movement. Due to China’s dissatisfaction, Chinese increased their nationalism and anti-Japanese feeling. They wanted to oppose foreign rule and aggression, and to strengthen themselves. The New Culture Movement advanced the intellectual Chinese towards the future. This movement provided the intellectual background which made it possible for the dissatisfaction with the Paris peace settlement to develop into a nationwide anti-foreign movement.

Under public pressure, the government had to release the arrested students. The unpopular Foreign minister was removed. On June 28, 1919, the Chinese delegates refused to sign the peace treaty, because it did not grant China’s requests. It really afforded the Chinese an intellectual background for those Chinese who love their nation. It raised their nationalism in order to protect the nation.

The May Fourth Movement signaled the beginning of Chinese nationalism. It was the first time that different classes of people joined together to express their resentment against foreign aggression. In the following decades, the anti-foreign movement continued to work toward abolishing all the unfair treaties.

The May Fourth Movement also served as a intellectual turning point in China. It was the seminal event that radicalized Chinese intellectual thought. Previously Western style liberal democracy had a degree of traction amongst Chinese intellectuals. However the Versaille Treaty was viewed as a betrayal. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, cloaked as they were by moralism, were specifically and Western centerist more generally seen as hypocritical and was jettisoned by the Chinese intellectual community. The adoptation of Marxist/Leninism began to take hold on the left. It was during this time that Communism was studied seriously by some Chinese intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. Correspondingly the right would ultimately look to Facism as an model. The rise of both the CCP and the KMT, and their fundamentally irreconcilable philosophical conflict can thus be ultimately traced to the events surrounding the May Fourth Movement.

THE MAY 4TH MOVEMENT
By Mao Tse Tung
May 1939

The May 4th Movement twenty years ago marked a new stage in China’s bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism. The cultural reform movement which grew out of the May 4th Movement was only one of the manifestations of this revolution. With the growth and development of new social forces in that period, a powerful camp made its appearance in the bourgeois democratic revolution, a camp consisting of the working class, the student masses and the new national bourgeoisie. Around the time of the May 4th Movement, hundreds of thousands of students courageously took their place in the van. In these respects the May 4th Movement went a step beyond the Revolution of 1911.

If we trace China’s bourgeois-democratic revolution back to its formative period, we see that it has passed through a number of stages in its development: the Opium War, the War of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894,[1] the Reform Movement of 1898,[2] the Yi Ho Tuan Movement,[3] the Revolution of 1911, the May 4th Movement, the Northern Expedition, and the War of the Agrarian Revolution. The present War of Resistance Against Japan is yet another stage, and is the greatest, most vigorous and most dynamic stage of all. The bourgeois-democratic revolution can be considered accomplished only when the forces of foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism have basically been overthrown and an independent democratic state has been established. From the Opium War onwards each stage in the development of the revolution has had its own distinguishing characteristics. But the most important feature differentiating them is whether they came before or after the emergence of the Communist Party. However, taken as a whole, all the stages bear the character of a bourgeois-democratic revolution. The aim of this democratic revolution is to establish a social system hitherto unknown in Chinese history, namely, a democratic social system having a feudal society (during the last hundred years a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society) as its precursor and a socialist society as its successor. If anyone asks why a Communist should strive to bring into being first a bourgeois-democratic society and then a socialist society, our answer is: we are following the inevitable course of history.

China’s democratic revolution depends on definite social forces for its accomplishment. These social forces are the working class, the peasantry, the intelligentsia and the progressive section of the bourgeoisie, that is, the revolutionary workers, peasants, soldiers, students and intellectuals, and businessmen, with the workers and peasants as the basic revolutionary forces and the workers as the class which leads the revolution. It is impossible to accomplish the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution without these basic revolutionary forces and without the leadership of the working class. Today, the principal enemies of the revolution are the Japanese imperialists and the Chinese traitors, and the fundamental policy in the revolution is the policy of the Anti-Japanese National United Front, consisting of all workers, peasants, soldiers, students and intellectuals, and businessmen who are against Japanese aggression. Final victory in the War of Resistance will be won when this united front is greatly consolidated and developed.

In the Chinese democratic revolutionary movement, it was the intellectuals who were the first to awaken. This was clearly demonstrated both in the Revolution of 1911 and in the May 4th Movement, and in the days of the May 4th Movement the intellectuals were more numerous and more politically conscious than in the days of the Revolution of 1911. But the intellectuals will accomplish nothing if they fail to integrate themselves with the workers and peasants. In the final analysis, the dividing line between revolutionary intellectuals and non-revolutionary or counter-revolutionary intellectuals is whether or not they are willing to integrate themselves with the workers and peasants and actually do so. Ultimately it is this alone, and not professions of faith in the Three People’s Principles or in Marxism, that distinguishes one from the other. A true revolutionary must be one who is willing to integrate himself with the workers and peasants and actually does so.

It is now twenty years since the May 4th Movement and almost two years since the outbreak of the anti-Japanese war. The young people and the cultural circles of the whole country bear a heavy responsibility in the democratic revolution and the War of Resistance. I hope they will understand the character and the motive forces of the Chinese revolution, make their work serve the workers and peasants, go into their midst and become propagandists and organizers among them. Victory will be ours when the entire people arises against Japan. Young people of the whole country, bestir yourselves!

* Comrade Mao Tse-tung wrote this article for newspapers in Yenan to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the May 4th Movement.

NOTES

[1] The Sino-Japanese War of 1894 was started by Japanese imperialism for the purpose of invading Korea and China. Many Chinese soldiers and some patriotic generals put up a heroic fight. But China suffered defeat because of the corruption of the Ching government and its failure to prepare resistance. In 1895 the Ching government concluded the shameful Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan. [p. 237]
[2] For the Reform Movement of 1898 see “On Protracted War”, Note 8, p. of this volume. [p. 237]
[3] The Yi Ho Tuan Movement was the anti-imperialist armed struggle which took place in northern China in 1900. The broad masses of peasants, handicraftsmen and other people took part in this movement. Getting in touch with one another through religious and other channels, they organized themselves on the basis of secret societies and waged a heroic struggle against the joint forces of aggression of the eight imperialist powers — the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, Italy and Austria. The movement was put down with indescribable savagery after the joint forces of aggression occupied Tientsin and Peking. [p. 237]