Development and Breakup of The Movement
The May Fourth Demonstrations of 1919 initially united these leaders but soon there was a debate and falling out over the role of politics. Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei, and other liberals urged the demonstrating students to return to the classroom, but Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, frustrated with the inadequacy of cultural change, used their roles as Peking University faculty to organize Marxist study groups and the first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party. Li called for "fundamental solutions," but Hu criticized this as abstract, calling for "more study of questions, less study of isms." Many of their younger followers followed Li and Chen into organized politics, including Mao Zedong.
Others of the May Fourth students heeded Hu Shi's call to return to their studies, taking them in new directions which shaped scholarship for the next generation. 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. Gu also inspired his students in the study of Chinese folk traditions which had been ignored or dismissed by Confucian scholars. Education was high on the New Culture agenda. Cai Yuanpei headed a New Education Society, and many university students joined the Mass Education Movement of James Yen and Tao Xingzhi which organized literacy classes.
In 1924, Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore held numerous lectures in China. Tagore argued the detrimental consequences China could encounter by integrating too much western civilization into Chinese society. In spite of Tagore's efforts, two western ideals were quickly garnering support throughout China. These two theories were democracy and science, both major components of the New Culture Movement. Democracy became a vital tool for those frustrated with the unstable condition of China, whereas science became a crucial instrument to discard the "darkness of ignorance and superstition."
In short, the New Culture Movement advocated and debated a wide range of topics that included science, technology, individualism, music and democracy.
Read more about this topic: New Culture Movement
Famous quotes containing the words the movement, development and/or movement:
“It was not till the middle of the second dance, when, from some pauses in the movement wherein they all seemed to look up, I fancied I could distinguish an elevation of spirit different from that which is the cause or the effect of simple jollity.—In a word, I thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp.... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)