May Fourth Movement
The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist protest movement in China that began on 4 May 1919 with demonstrations by university students in Beijing protesting the decision of the Paris Peace Conference to transfer German concessions in Shandong Province to Japan, rather than returning them to Chinese sovereignty.[1] The immediate trigger stemmed from China's declaration of war on Germany in 1917 and expectation of territorial restoration, undermined by prior secret agreements among Allied powers favoring Japan.[1] These initial protests, involving resolutions against perceived traitorous officials and appeals to international delegates, quickly expanded into a mass mobilization across cities, encompassing merchant boycotts of Japanese goods, worker strikes, and broader calls for political accountability.[1] Under public pressure, Chinese representatives ultimately refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles.[1] The movement's intellectual dimension, overlapping with the contemporaneous New Culture Movement since around 1915, rejected traditional Confucian values—such as hierarchical obedience and classical literary forms—in favor of Western-inspired principles including scientific rationalism, individual emancipation, democratic governance, and the use of vernacular Chinese (baihua) to disseminate ideas widely.[2] This cultural iconoclasm blamed entrenched traditions for China's vulnerability to foreign domination, fostering a drive for national rejuvenation through modernization.[2] Politically, it amplified anti-imperialist nationalism and introduced diverse ideologies, from liberalism to Marxism, influencing the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and shaping subsequent revolutionary trajectories.[3] While celebrated in the People's Republic of China as a precursor to communist victory, its legacy encompasses both progressive reforms and the radicalization of youth activism amid warlord-era instability.[3]Historical Context
Republican China's Weakness and Warlord Era
The death of Yuan Shikai on June 6, 1916, marked the onset of severe political fragmentation in the Republic of China, initiating the Warlord Era that persisted until roughly 1928.[4][5] Yuan's authoritarian consolidation of power, including his brief monarchy in 1915–1916 and suppression of parliamentary institutions, had undermined republican structures, leaving no viable central authority upon his demise from uremia.[4][5] The nominal Beiyang government in Beijing, derived from Yuan's Beiyang Army, devolved into a puppet regime manipulated by rival military cliques, including the Anhui Clique under Duan Qirui, the Zhili Clique led by figures like Feng Guozhang and Cao Kun, and the Fengtian Clique commanded by Zhang Zuolin.[5][6] These factions, often comprising former Beiyang officers, controlled vast provincial territories through personal loyalties rather than national allegiance, resulting in over 20 years of intermittent civil conflicts such as the 1920 Zhili–Anhui War and the 1924 Zhili–Fengtian Wars.[5] Central authority's weakness manifested in the proliferation of private armies, which ballooned from about 500,000 troops in 1916 to over 2 million by 1928, sustained by extortionate local taxes, opium production, and loans from foreign powers like Japan.[5][6] The Beijing regime cycled through seven heads of state and lacked the capacity to enact social or economic reforms, fostering widespread corruption, banditry, and economic stagnation that left millions in poverty and fueled social discontent.[5] This disunity invited foreign exploitation, as warlords granted concessions to imperial powers unable to be resisted by a fractured state, exacerbating national humiliation and eroding public faith in republican governance.[5][6]China's Role in World War I
China declared neutrality upon the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, amid internal instability following the 1911 Revolution and the death of President Yuan Shikai in 1916, which fragmented the Beiyang government into competing factions.[7] Germany's initiation of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 prompted China to sever diplomatic ties in March, aligning with Allied pressures and the pro-intervention stance of Premier Duan Qirui's Anfu faction, which sought to bolster China's position for postwar territorial recovery.[8] On August 14, 1917, China formally entered the war by declaring war on Germany and Austria-Hungary, motivated chiefly by the aim to reclaim the Shandong Peninsula—leased to Germany since 1898—and to secure Allied guarantees against Japanese expansionism there, while gaining leverage to abolish extraterritorial rights and other unequal treaties.[8] [9] China's military involvement was negligible, as no combat troops were deployed; instead, the government mobilized the Chinese Labour Corps, recruiting around 140,000 primarily illiterate peasants from northern provinces like Shandong and Hebei between 1916 and 1918.[7] These workers, enlisted under secretive contracts to evade neutrality constraints, were shipped via Canada or the Pacific to the Western Front, where they performed vital support tasks for British and French forces, including unloading supplies at ports like Dunkirk, constructing camps and railways, digging trenches, and exhuming unexploded ordnance.[7] Approximately 2,000 to 20,000 died from influenza, artillery fire, or industrial accidents, with survivors repatriated by 1920 amid Allied efforts to suppress knowledge of their role to avoid anti-Chinese sentiment.[7] Smaller contingents, totaling about 10,000, aided Allied operations in the Middle East and European Russia.[7] Domestically, China's war participation allowed seizure of German economic privileges in cities like Hankou and Tianjin, but Japan’s early 1914 conquest of Qingdao rendered direct gains illusory, as Tokyo extracted secret Allied pledges—later revealed in the Nishihara Loans scandal—to maintain influence over Shandong.[9] The Beiyang government's alignment with the Allies, financed partly by Japanese loans totaling over 140 million yen, deepened elite divisions, with conservative parliamentarians decrying it as a ploy for personal power rather than national interest.[9] Ultimately, China's peripheral role underscored its weakness as a sovereign power, reliant on labor exports for diplomatic leverage, yet expecting the Paris Peace Conference to affirm its claims to Shandong and elevate its status among victors.[7]Origins of the New Culture Movement
The New Culture Movement arose amid widespread disillusionment with China's political instability and cultural stagnation following the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the Qing dynasty but failed to consolidate a stable republic, leading instead to Yuan Shikai's brief imperial restoration attempt in 1915-1916 and subsequent warlord fragmentation.[2] Intellectuals, many of whom had studied abroad and encountered Western Enlightenment ideas, increasingly critiqued Confucian orthodoxy as incompatible with modern governance and scientific progress, viewing it as a root cause of China's weakness against imperial powers.[10] This sentiment gained traction in urban centers like Shanghai and Beijing, where returned scholars sought to reform education, language, and social norms to foster national renewal.[11] The movement's formal origins are traced to September 15, 1915, when Chen Duxiu, a radical educator and former revolutionary, launched the monthly journal New Youth (Xin Qingnian) in Shanghai as a platform for advocating cultural overhaul.[12][13] Initially titled Youth Magazine, it was renamed New Youth by its second issue and became a seminal outlet for iconoclastic essays that rejected feudal traditions, emphasizing individualism, vernacular Chinese (baihua) over classical literary style, and the adoption of "Mr. Democracy" and "Mr. Science" as antidotes to autocracy and superstition.[14] Chen's editorial in the inaugural issue urged youth to embrace autonomy and reject servility, framing cultural regeneration as essential for China's survival in a Darwinian world of nation-states.[15] Early contributors, including Hu Shi and later Li Dazhao at Peking University, expanded the journal's influence by 1917, promoting pragmatic literary reform and Marxist thought, respectively, which laid intellectual groundwork for broader activism.[14] These efforts were not isolated but reflected a causal link between domestic failures—such as Yuan's monarchical bid, suppressed by provincial opposition—and exposure to global events like World War I, which highlighted China's semicolonial status and the need for internal strength over ritualistic heritage.[2] By prioritizing empirical rationality over dogmatic authority, the movement's origins embodied a first-principles critique of inherited systems that had empirically failed to prevent national humiliation.Precipitating Factors
Japanese Twenty-One Demands
The Japanese Twenty-One Demands were a set of ultimatums issued by Japan to the Republic of China on January 18, 1915, during World War I, exploiting the preoccupation of European powers to expand Japanese economic and political influence in China.[16] Presented secretly to President Yuan Shikai by Japanese Minister Hioki Eki, the demands comprised 21 articles divided into five groups, with Groups 1–4 focusing on territorial and economic concessions and Group 5 containing the most intrusive political stipulations.[17] Japan justified the demands as a basis for negotiation, building on prior agreements like the 1901 Anglo-Japanese Alliance and Japan's seizure of German-held Tsingtao in Shandong Province in 1914, but they effectively sought to supplant Western spheres of influence with Japanese dominance.[18]- Group 1 (Shandong concessions): Required China to consent to Japan's inheritance of German rights in Shandong, including ports, railways, and mining privileges, following Japan's declaration of war on Germany.[19]
- Group 2 (Manchurian extensions): Demanded renewal and expansion of Japan's South Manchuria Railway lease beyond 99 years, plus rights to railways, forests, and mining in eastern Inner Mongolia and South Manchuria.[20]
- Group 3 (Infrastructure and loans): Sought Chinese consent for joint Sino-Japanese banks to fund railways in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, alongside unspecified railway constructions.[21]
- Group 4 (Industrial control): Aimed to integrate the Chinese-owned Hanyeping coal and iron works near Wuhan under Japanese management, citing prior loans, to secure raw materials for Japanese steel production.[22]
- Group 5 (Political oversight): The most controversial and initially secret provisions, including mandatory Japanese advisers in China's central government and finance ministry, Japanese control over key police and military matters, and a veto on foreign loans or concessions without Japanese approval—provisions that risked transforming China into a Japanese protectorate.[18]