[8] Hu wrote many essays attacking communism as a whole, including the political legitimacy of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party.

[14] While at Cornell, Hu led a campaign to promote the newer, easier to learn Modern Written Chinese which helped spread literacy in China.

[15] After receiving his undergraduate degree, he went to study philosophy at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City, where he was influenced by his professor, John Dewey and started literary experiments.

During his tenure there, he received support from Chen Duxiu, editor of the influential journal New Youth, quickly gaining much attention and influence.

"[19] Hu devoted a great deal of energy to rooting his linguistic reforms in China's traditional culture rather than relying on imports from the West.

As his biographer Jerome Grieder put it, Hu's approach to China's "distinctive civilization" was "thoroughly critical but by no means contemptuous.

He died of a heart attack in Nankang, Taipei at the age of 70, and was entombed in Hu Shih Park, adjacent to the Academia Sinica campus.

Feng Youlan criticized Hu for adopting a pragmatist framework and ignoring all the schools of Chinese philosophy before the Warring States period.

Before he encountered Dewey's works, he wrote in his diary that he was in a search of "practical philosophy" for the survival of the Chinese people, rather than deep and obscure systems.

He appreciated the universality of such a scientific approach because he believed that such a methodology transcends the boundary of culture and therefore can be applied anywhere, including China during his time.

After Hu took over as the chief editor at Weekly Commentary (每周評論) in 1919, he criticized Li Dazhao and engaged in a heated debate regarding ideology and problem (問題與主義論戰).

[43] Feng Youlan, the author of A History of Chinese Philosophy, criticizes Hu for adopting a pragmatist framework in Outline.

[44] Current Former Unlike many of his contemporaries who later joined the Socialist camp, liberalism and democracy had been Hu's political beliefs throughout his life.

In "A Second Discussion on Nation-Building and Autocracy" (再談建國與專治), Hu comments that an autocratic system needs professionals to manage it while democracy relies on the wisdom of the people.

[51] A large portion of Hu Shih's scholarship in his later years is dedicated to finding a Chinese root for democracy and liberalism.

[52] He claimed that Chinese tradition included: In 1928, Hu along with Wen Yiduo, Chen Yuan, Liang Shih-chiu, and Xu Zhimo founded the monthly journal Crescent Moon, named after Tagore's prose verse.

Hu criticized and rejected Sun Yat-sen's claim that people are incapable of self-rule and considered democracy itself a form of political education.

As a supporter of the Communist Party, Lu Xun was hailed by its leader Mao Zedong as "the greatest and most courageous fighter of the new cultural army".

By contrast, Hu Shih was criticized by Communist-leaning historians as "the earliest, the most persistent and most uncompromising enemy of Chinese Marxism and socialist thought".

He writes in "The Conflict of Ideologies": "The desire for uniformity leads to suppression of individual initiative, to the dwarfing of personality and creative effort, to intolerance, oppression, and slavery, and, worst of all, to intellectual dishonesty and moral hypocrisy.

[56][57] Hu was an advocate for the literary revolution of the era, a movement which aimed to replace scholarly classical Chinese in writing with the vernacular spoken language, and to cultivate and stimulate new forms of literature.

In an article originally published in New Youth in January 1917 titled "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform",[58] Hu originally emphasized eight guidelines that all Chinese writers should take to heart in writing: In April 1918, Hu published a second article in New Youth, this one titled "Constructive Literary Revolution – A Literature of National Speech".

In it, he simplified the original eight points into just four: In the 15 July New Youth issue, Hu published an essay entitled, Chastity (贞操问题).

In the traditional Chinese context, this refers not only to virginity before marriage, but specifically to women remaining chaste before they marry and after their husband's death (守贞).

Published in the March 1919 issue (Volume 6 Number 3) of New Youth, this Hu Shih's one-act play highlights the problems of traditional marriages arranged by parents.

They will fall back in time soon if they are not trying to find changes that encourage writers in old China to follow the new revolution and start using the new vernacular style of writing.

Hu had a vision of the May Fourth Movement in China as part of a global shift in philosophy, led by Western countries.

As fellow thinkers and students of the movement looked towards socialism, Hu also gained a more favorable view of the collective, centralized organization of groups like the Soviet Union and the Third International.

[65] Towards the end of Hu's life, he expressed disappointment at the politicization of the May Fourth Movement, which he felt was counter to the primarily philosophical and linguistic issues that drove him to participate in it.

[66] Despite the implications of the May Fourth Movement, Hu Shih ultimately expressed regret that he was unable to play a larger role in his nation's history.