May 4th Movement

Students in Beijing during a demonstration on May 4, 1919

The May 4 movement is a massive anti-imperialist (mainly anti-Japanese) movement in China in May - June 1919, which arose under the influence of the October Revolution in Russia ^[1] . Unfolded in response to the decision of the Paris Peace Conference not to return to China the former German concessions captured by Japan in Shandong province. It began on May 4, 1919 in Beijing with a student protest against this decision, as well as against the betrayal of China's national interests by corrupt officials of the Beijing government. In early June, the workers joined the active struggle along with the broad middle urban strata and the petty bourgeoisie. The main center of the movement moved from Beijing to Shanghai , where 50-70 thousand workers, as well as almost all traders, went on strike. Under pressure from the masses, the Beijing government was forced to declare its non-recognition of the Versailles Peace Treaty and remove the most compromised statesmen from their posts. The May 4th Movement accelerated the spread of Marxism in China. This movement became, as it were, the prologue of a united anti-imperialist front that formed five years later.

In a broad sense, the May 4 movement marked a turn in the views of the Chinese intelligentsia: a massive reorientation from traditional culture to Westernization. The movement affected all aspects of the intellectual life of China: it was marked by the spread of the colloquial Baihua language, a revision of Confucian ethical standards, criticism of traditional historiography, new requirements for education, an understanding of the republican form of government along with the spread of new political theories: nationalism , social Darwinism and socialism .