New Culture Movement

After the Xinhai Revolution the Republic soon fell into political chaos, and a fashion for revering Confucius and restoring the old ways spread. After painful reflection, some progressive intellectuals concluded that political reform alone could not save China; the thinking of the people had to be remade. In September 1915 Chen Duxiu founded Youth Magazine in Shanghai, renamed New Youth the next year, opening the New Culture Movement. In 1917 Chen was appointed Dean of Letters at Peking University, the New Youth editorial office moved to Beijing, and the university became the movement's center. Its basic slogans were democracy and science. Democracy, “Mr. De” (Democracy), meant opposing feudal autocracy and demanding democratic politics; science, “Mr. Sai” (Science), meant opposing superstition and blind obedience. They attacked the “ancient sages” represented by Confucius and criticized feudal ethics. In the literary revolution, Hu Shi published “A Preliminary Discussion of Literary Reform”, advocating vernacular Chinese in place of classical Chinese; Chen Duxiu published “On Literary Revolution”, calling for the overthrow of the old literature and building of a new one; and in 1918 Lu Xun published “Diary of a Madman”, the first vernacular short story in modern Chinese literature, exposing the “man-eating” nature of feudal ethics. The New Culture Movement was an unprecedented movement of intellectual emancipation. It dealt a heavy blow to the feudal orthodox thought that had ruled China for over two thousand years and created conditions for the spread of Marxism in China, though some of its participants tended to wholly affirm or wholly reject Eastern or Western culture.