[2] During the Republican period, translations of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many other works were produced in China.
Liberalism was to suffer in the wake of the immense challenges China faced from Japanese militarism and the impact of the Chinese Communist Revolution.
Writers such as Chu Anping, however, made a strong case against the Kuomintang; educators and scholars such as Fei Xiaotong and Tao Xingzhi made a case for revolution as a cause worthy of liberal support; while many more liberals left China, including the rural reformer James Yen, the university president Chiang Monlin, and many less well known figures.
Liberal ideals like intellectual freedom, the separation of powers, civil society and the rule of law were reexamined in the light of the destruction wrought by the Chinese Communist Party which had been so vociferous in denigrating them.
[6][7] In the 1990s the liberal wing of the remnant of the pro-democracy movement re-emerged following the Tiananmen crackdown, including figures like Qin Hui,[8] Li Shenzhi,[9] Wang Yuanhua,[10] Zhu Xueqin, Xu Youyu, Liu Junning and many others.
The writings of Gu Zhun (1915–1974) were rediscovered, providing evidence of a stubborn core of liberal values that the communist movement had failed to extinguish.