In front of Tiananmen, students protestors march on their government. Smashing into the houses of officials, they beat up one official so badly that his skin resembles fish scales. The day is not June 4, 1989, but May 4, 1919.
When non-Chinese people think of student protests at Tiananmen, the date that likely comes to mind is June 4, 1989, the day when Deng Xiaoping infamously suppressed pro-democracy students with violence. However, it is another protest at Tiananmen that holds even more significance in 20th century Chinese history. For Chinese people, the date 5/4 needs no qualification to bring to mind the protests in 1919. This iconic date, May Fourth, is the name of a movement sparked by the protests that would shape modern China. Both the Chinese government and the student protestors of 1989 sought to claim the legacy of May Fourth (Mitter 2005, 24). To understand the path that China has taken through June 4, 1989 and up to today, understanding the May Fourth Movement is essential.
By the start of the 20th century, China was in decline and under threat of foreign domination, but in 1911, it had a republican revolution against the Qing Dynasty which its people hoped would turn around China's fortunes. China, the fledgling republic, joined the Allied powers of World War I against Germany in the hopes of reclaiming Shandong, a German colonial possession, and winning respect on the world stage. However, the Allies snubbed China in the Treaty of Versailles by handing Shandong to Japan instead. Japan, another power on the Allies, had seized Shandong from Germany during the war and forced the Twenty-One Demands on China, stipulating that China acknowledge Japanese control over Shandong among other imperialist claims. On May 4, 1919, furious students called on the Chinese government to reject the Treaty of Versailles and repeal the Twenty-One Demands, mobbing officials they deemed pro-Japan.
China and Japan were rivals. From 1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860, the British Empire waged and won two opium wars against Qing China. At the end of the First Opium War, Britain imposed the first "unequal treaty," the Treaty of Nanjing, onto China, which ceded Hong Kong to Britain and opened up five Chinese ports for trade. The Second Opium War ended in the Treaty of Tianjin and this time, France, Russia, and the USA joined in. Japan watched cautiously as the once mighty China fell to imperialism. In 1853, when Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived at Japan from the USA with his gunboats, Japan knew it needed to strengthen itself if it wanted to avoid China's fate. Japan embarked on the Meiji Restoration, an ambitious period of reform that saw Japan overturn its own unequal treaties. In the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan bested Qing China for influence over Korea. In the aftermath of the war, Japan forced China to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ceded Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan and required China pay Japan a large war compensation, though other countries soon pressured Japan to relinquish possession over Liaodong. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was the worst of the unequal treaties forced onto China in the 19th century, severely threatening Chinese sovereignty: Japan had joined in on the exploitation of China (Jansen 2000, 432-433). By 1912, the last year of both the Meiji Era and the Qing Dynasty, Japan was a triumphant empire while China was just beginning to catch up with the other powers.
By 1916, people perceived that the 1911 revolution had failed to create a strong republic that could defend China from imperialism. Blaming Chinese culture for holding China back, intellectuals abandoned traditional views such as Confucian hierarchies and explored foreign ideas such as nationalism, equality, democracy, and soon Marxism. These intellectual currents were known as the May Fourth Movement and the related New Culture Movement. (Though many refer to the May Fourth Movement and New Culture Movement interchangeably, the New Culture Movement technically refers to elite backlash against President Yuan Shikai's attempts from 1915 to 1916 to restore Confucianism and become emperor (Mitter 2005, 18).) In 1915, amidst this atmosphere of change, Chen Duxiu founded the magazine New Youth. Chen Duxiu traded Confucius for "Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy," anthropomorphizations that would come to symbolize the May Fourth ideals. In 1921, Chen Duxiu together with Li Dazhao founded the Communist Party, which would go on to rule China in 1949.
Another major intellectual of the May Fourth era was Hu Shih. Hu Shih forcefully advocated for writing in vernacular Chinese, the style that people use when speaking. Before the May Fourth era, Chinese was written in literary style, which was inaccessible to ordinary people akin to Latin in Western civilization. Today, people predominantly write in vernacular style, in part due to Hu. (Aside: Literary versus vernacular Chinese should not be confused with traditional versus simplified Chinese characters.) New Youth was a mouthpiece for Hu Shih's ideas: in 1917, he published an article in New Youth entitled "A Preliminary Discussion of Language Reform," which he followed up with a second article in 1918, "Constructive Literary Revolution - A Literature of National Speech." However, by 1920, Hu Shih stopped publishing in New Youth and had a falling out with Chen Duxiu over his magazine's shift from literary topics to Marxist politics (Grieder 1970, 184). Hu Shih would later caution the May Fourth radicals around him, "You are ashamed to follow blindly Confucius and Chu Hsi, and you should be ashamed, too, when you blindly follow Marx, Lenin, and Stalin."
An early pioneer of vernacular Chinese was Lu Xun, who utilized the style in stories that reflected the May Fourth ethos. In 1918, he published "Diary of a Madman” to attack Confucian traditions in an indirect format, evading censorship (Yang 1992, 66). In 1921, Lu published The True Story of Ah Q, a story taking place around the time of the 1911 revolution that satirized the Chinese people through the bumbling character Ah Q (Yang 1992, 74-76). Alas, the May Fourth culture of openness that welcomed Lu Xun's criticisms would not last. Although Mao hailed Lu Xun as "the saint of modern China," by the Yan'an Rectification Campaign in 1942, Mao sought to exorcise Lu Xun's biting spirit from his regimented communist movement. "But in our communist bases, where democracy and liberty are granted in full," Mao claimed, "we do not need to be like Lu Xun." Today, the Chinese government also seeks to de-emphasize the critical nature of Lu Xun's works. Ironically, the May Fourth Movement led to the rise of an ideology that would banish the freedom that made the May Fourth Movement possible.
The May Fourth culture faded away as both the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party enforced regimentation under Soviet influence, stamping out free thought. However, after Mao died and Deng and his allies took over the Communist Party, a new opening for criticism appeared. On May 4, 1989, during the massive pro-democracy movement that rocked China, student leaders published the "New May Fourth Manifesto," which called upon protestors to once more uphold the "May Fourth spirit of science and democracy." Exactly one month later, tanks would roll down the streets of Beijing. The authority of the Communist Party triumphed over the May Fourth spirit for then.
Last year, China experienced the largest protests since 1989, this time against the government's zero-COVID policies. In September, when a bus transporting people to COVID quarantine crashed and 27 people died, people were outraged. In October, a man hung banners from a bridge and lit a fire to protest Xi Jinping's COVID policies days before a party meeting to secure his rule for the next five years. The dissident's act sparked messages of solidarity in universities across the world. Then, in November, ten people died in an apartment fire. When rumors spread that COVID lockdown restrictions may have prevented the people from evacuating or obstructed rescue efforts, a nationwide movement against zero-COVID erupted. The Chinese government relented and eased its COVID restrictions. Whether 1919, 1989, or 2022, youth protests have a strong legacy in Chinese history.
Would-be revolutionaries should perhaps heed Hu Shih's warnings against blindly following ideology - after all, movements can have unexpected consequences, and May Fourth led to the rise of a communist dictatorship. Revolutions intended to liberate can lead to the suffering of millions. Nevertheless, for better or for worse, history has not ended, but is still being made. Will the future of China be made by the powerbrokers in government or all of the 1.3 billion or so people who call the country home? A spirit is watching over China - the spirit of May Fourth.
Bibliography
Grieder, Jerome B. 1970. Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917-1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Jansen, Marius B. 2000. The Making of Modern Japan. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjf9vr7.
Mitter, Rana. 2005. A Bitter Revolution : China's Struggle with the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated. Accessed May 17, 2023.
Yang, Vincent. “A Stylistic Study of ‘The Diary of a Madman’ and ‘The Story of Ah Q.’” American Journal of Chinese Studies 1, no. 1 (1992): 65–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44289180.