May Fourth Movement

The May Fourth Movement began with student protests in Beijing against the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Germany's rights in Shandong to Japan even though China had been on the winning side in the First World War. Thousands of students gathered at Tiananmen, and some attacked the house of a pro-Japanese official. The protests spread, with strikes and boycotts across the country, and the Chinese delegation finally refused to sign the treaty. The movement merged with the New Culture Movement, which promoted science and democracy, writing in the vernacular language, as seen in the work of Hu Shi and Lu Xun, and criticism of Confucian tradition, while Marxist ideas also spread. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 by activists from this milieu.

Open on the timeline