Newsletter

Viewing landscape of centennial of China’s May 4th Movement

This year marks the 100thanniversary of the May 4th Movement along with the March 1st Movement. The May 4th Movement, which was initiated as anti-Japan protests by Beijing University students in 1919 and spread as a nationwide popular campaign, became the starting point of China’s modern history by developing into a political and cultural movement opposing all unreasonable practices and oppression. So, how did Chinese authorities commemorate the centennial of the May 4th Movement? China made it customary to mobilize history to secure the regime’s legitimacy and has suggested its contemporary significance by commemorating the May 4th Movement every 10 years. So I wondered how China would straighten out the last 100 years and forecast about the future in celebration of the centennial of the May 4th Movement. Just to tell you the conclusion, however, this year’s May 4th Movement anniversary passed quietly, unlike the past. It was the same both in form and content. Except for a few minor meetings, there were no bigger conferences than Beijing University’s conference entitled “May 4 and Modern China” (March 30) and an “international conference commemorating the centennial of the May 4th Movement” (April 27-28) supervised by the Institute of Modern History under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The former was a public discourse and academic forum without debate and it is said that the latter was held in the form of an expert discussion without the presence of a general audience at a hotel far away from downtown Beijing. “Nonpolitical” and “peripheral” elements like literature, everyday life, and culture can be discussed under the name of “modernity” in connection with the May 4th Movement, but the general tendency seems to be that the meaning of the May 4th Movement as an epoch-making event has weakened. Namely, China is extremely restraining political interpretation about the May 4th Movement. Given Xi Jinping’s interpretation that “the May 4th Movement was young people’s patriotic movement, but their excessive anti-tradition was erroneous,” this can be said to be a phenomenon beefing up authorities’ monopolistic interpretation of history.

Also, there are accusations that the patriotism Chinese authorities mention cannot be fundamentally compatible with the values of the May 4th Movement highlighting such enlightenment factors as democracy and science anti-dictatorship resistance because patriotism is akin to autocratic logic alleging that every value could be sacrificed for the sake of a stronger China. In fact, China’s past regimes called the May 4^th Movement a Youth Day or a Literary Day, but used to make it depoliticized and suppress it. However, as tension is inevitable when it comes to persecution, the May 4th Movement was often summoned as the symbol of the civilized resistance movement in China’s modern history in which the authority of the revolution prevails over all other things. Democracy (德先生你好: hello democracy) and May 4th (再又五四: May 4^th once again) were raised as slogans in every resistance movement by liberal intellectuals ranging from the liberal movement in the Nationalist government to the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. And like in the cases of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, it led to a massive disaster when an impatient leader crushed the May 4th spirit while being engrossed in national mobilization under the pretext of patriotism and revolution. Unlike the national commemoration concerning the May 4^th Movement, democracy, freedom, and science raised by it have been handed down as the civilized resistance spirit opposing an anti-civilization tyranny coercing all sacrifices under the name of “group interest.” It remains to be seen until when foolish attempts to monopolize history interpretation and control the nation under the name of patriotism will go on.

Joseon’s eyes looking at the May 4th Movement and East Asian space of thoughts

What we need to think about in relation to the May 4th Movement is the so-called East Asian space of thoughts. The May 4th Movement is related to the March 1^st Movement. While it’s true the two movements are adjoining in time, the May 4th Movement was also one of the national movements triggered in protest of German concessions in Shandong after World War I. As a matter of fact, Joseon’s March 1^st Movement and China’s May 4th Movement were the object of active interest by intellectuals from the two countries at the time.

Chinese news outlets like the Republican Daily News and Chenbao actively supported the March 1^st movement from the beginning as a revolutionary movement based on the “principle of national self-determination” and East Asia’s premier national movement. They were completely different from Japanese newspapers that hit out at the movement as rampage and riot. Such protagonists of the May 4th Movement as Chen Duxiu and Fu Xenen, in particular, understood the March 1^st Movement as a new “axiom” that replaced “national self-determination” and “democracy” after World War I and the “high-handed” order that had ruled the world since the 19^th century and spread it. And they welcomed the fact that these new historic changes began in East Asia.

So, how did Joseon’s intellectuals look at the May 4th Movement? They carefully took note of the movement and China’s trend thereafter. They defined the May 4th Movement as a “day Beijing students revolted in righteous fury, students across China responded to this, new cultures stood up against old power, democracy rose in defiance of bureaucracy, and the principle of national self-determination declared war against aggressions.” The May 4th Movement began as an anti-Japan movement originating from disappointment with the Paris Conference, but Joseon intellectuals at the time witnessed it evolve into a new movement of thoughts, culture, and social innovation soon. They thought that because the May 4th Movement was affected by the March 1st movement in substance and form, Joseon’s independence movement went beyond one country and was influencing overall changes in East Asia. Therefore, their conclusion was that the new social and cultural movement under way also must be pushed aggressively.

These circumstances show that the public’s unprecedented experiences arising from the two movements could serve as an occasion to kick start new ideological tasks in East Asia’s changing space of thoughts. Just as China carried out a new academic movement after the March 4th Movement, scholars in Joseon also pushed for Joseon studies aggressively. The new academic campaigns conducted simultaneously in both countries meant the transformation of East Asia’s space of thoughts as well as its intensification. What needs to be remembered here is that such changes were not necessarily expressed in the form of Korea-China solidarity. For example, Beijing University changed its school system after the May 4th Movement and opened lectures on Joseon history from interest in Joseon. However, this was done by inviting Ryu Imanishi, a colonial historian. That was because Joseon had no system led by Joseon people and researchers who could study and lecture on Joseon history. In the same context, Beijing University’s archaeological laboratory formed an East Asian society of archaeology with Japanese scholars to carry out academic exchanges. As part of such efforts, Prof. Ma Hyeong of Beijing University observed the excavation of Nakrang. Of course, it appears that these academic exchanges didn’t work well. Yet all the research results on Joseon history produced by imperial Japan were approved by China’s academic circles and spread. Down-market books like “Joseon” by Huang Yanpei and “East Asian History” by Fu Xenen are such examples. All this shows that East Asians must create values they could share and communicate with each other academically.