New Culture Movement

[1][2][3] Arising out of disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture following the failure of the Republic of China to address China's problems,[4] it featured scholars such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Chen Hengzhe, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, He Dong, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong, Bing Xin, and Hu Shih, many classically educated, who led a revolt against Confucianism.

[13] Chen Duxiu, as well as other intellectuals who would later become a part of the New Culture Movement in China such as Li Dazhao contributed articles, poetry, letters, and more to The Tiger.

Hu Shih had argued for the use of the modern written vernacular Chinese (白话文 baihuawen) in literature before[9] and especially in his essay published by New Youth in January 1917 titled Preliminary Discussion on Literary Reform (文學改良芻議 wenxue gailiang chuyi) with the guideline: "Do not imitate the ancients."

On April 18, 1918, he published the followed landmark article Constructive Literary Revolution – A Literature of National Speech (建设的文学革命论 jianshe de wenxue geming lun).

[10] The first vernacular Chinese fiction was the female author Chen Hengzhe's short story One Day (一日 yi ri), published 1917 in an overseas student quarterly (《留美学生季报》 liumei xuesheng jibao).

This was a year before the publication of Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman on April 2, 1918, and The True Story of Ah Q (second was not published until 1921), which has often been incorrectly credited as the first vernacular Chinese fiction.

[25] When he died in 1916, the collapse of the traditional order seemed complete, and there was an intensified search for a replacement to go deeper than the changes of the previous generations, which brought new institutions and new political forms.

Daring leaders called for a new culture,[26] as the death of Yuan Shikai in June 1916 had opened the possibility of fundamental reform in the Chinese political sphere anew.

[27] The literary output of this time was substantial, with many writers who later became famous (such as Mao Dun, Lao She, Lu Xun and Bing Xin) publishing their first works.

"Diary of a Madman" directly implied that China's traditional culture was mentally cannibalistic,[24] and The True Story of Ah Q showed typical Chinese people as weak and self-deceiving.

Chen Duxiu founded the New Youth journal, which was a leading forum for debating the causes of China's weakness, as it laid the blame on Confucian culture.

He charged that Literary Chinese was understood by only scholars and officials (ironically, the new vernacular included many foreign words and Japanese neologisms (Wasei-kango), which made it difficult for many to read).

[11]: 24 While serving as an editor for various newspapers and journals, Li Dazhao campaigned for a new culture and opposed the enshrinement of Confucianism in China's constitution, and implored Chinese people to defend the nascent republicanism.

The historian Gu Jiegang, for instance, pioneered the application of the New History he studied at Columbia University to classical Chinese texts in the Doubting Antiquity Movement.

The business side gained importance and with a greater emphasis on advertising and commercial news, the main papers in Shanghai such as Shenbao, moved away from the advocacy journalism that characterized the 1911 revolutionary period.

[44] New Culture intellectuals advocated and debated a wide range of cosmopolitan solutions that included science, technology, individualism, music and democracy, leaving to the future the question of what organization or political power could carry them out.

[47] Research over the last fifty years also suggests that while radical Marxists were important in the New Culture Movement, there were many other influential leaders, including anarchists, conservatives, Christians, and liberals.

[48] Other historians further argue that Mao's communist revolution did not, as it claimed, fulfill the promise of New Culture and enlightenment but rather betrayed its spirit of independent expression and cosmopolitanism.

[50] Xu Jilin, a Shanghai intellectual who reflects liberal voices, agreed in effect with the orthodox view that the New Culture Movement was the root of the Chinese Revolution but valued the outcome differently.

Like a "wild horse", Xu continued, "jingoism, once unbridled, could no longer be restrained, thus laying the foundations for the eventual outcomes of the history of China during the first half of the twentieth century.