Daniel Plaat

5/23/12

Modern China
(Topic C)

Final Paper

Assured Uncertainty: Modern Ideas in 20th century China

The history of China in the 20th century is a varied patchwork of events,

governments and what seem to be contradictory socio-political movements
in each decade. What can account for this? One lens in viewing history is to
look at the ideas which dominate at one time or during a stretch of time. For
two thousand years China was dominated by a combination of Confucian,
Taoist, and Buddhist beliefs of ritual and order. In the 20th Century these
institutions gave way to a set of modernist ideas known as the New culture
was represented by an early event that occurred on May 4th. From then on
the ideas of the May 4th era are seen in every cultural and political trend
thereafter. But how does one set of ideas come to create such a varied set of
events and named periods? In Rama Mitters book A Bitter Revolution. The
May 4th culture is argued to have a legacy in all that is modern china, as May
4th represents the idea of modern china. But this idea changes based on
personalities, circumstances and collective emotions. It is a pattern which
may exist everywhere but is most clear when we look at China.
On May 4th of 1919 there was a protest action, planned and conducted
by student. It was an expression of dissatisfaction with the outcome of the
peace talks concluding World War 1. Just as in this case, the Great War was
an earth shattering event from which all more recent history is an aftershock.
The march and following riot was an expression of pride influenced by
nationalist ideas from Europe. It was an expression of democracy as young
men in their 20s who wanted their demands to be met by the crumbling
Qing dynasty at the head of their country but were not in control of it as
foreign diplomats were the puppet-masters of Chinas policy. The incident
was an act of violence on a minister of state and his foreign guests at the
time. In the years after the young and educated of the times were part of
what can be called, the May 4th movement. It was not as much political but a
movement of ideas. Ideas that would take hold in the Chinese conscious for
many years to come.
The May 4th movement was foremost a debate, a pluralism of thought,
beliefs and dogmas. Competing solutions for how to not only fix the country,
but save the nation. But in the concepts adopted are faults and problems
which led to future mistakes and tragedies. Some of these voices were for
Marxism, others entrepreneur capitalism, hawkers of liberal democracy and
all manners in-between. Importantly there were central values that were
shared and continued in each group from then into the future. An important

one is iconoclasm, the support of figures who challenge traditional beliefs

and break established images. Its a rejection of common norms like strict
ritual, superstitious customs, arranged marriages and especially the
philosophy of Confucius. Two other ideas that were rhetorical partners as
Mitter puts it were Science and Democracy. The two terms are similar in that
they were used by anyone in power as the answers to Chinas woes. Science
was understood as a provider of greater technology but without first
understanding the process of science, the fact it is an action of testing and
guesswork, not one of absolute cerntainty. Democracy is the same; its
meaning changed with every leader who uses it to refer to their goals but not
their means. And as Linguists like Noam Chomsky can point out, the more
definitions there are for something the less meaning it has. And democracy
in China has had very little actual meaning. But according to them, science
and democracy are the answers.
Another truly important aspect of the May 4th culture was the fact it
was a movement of young people as Mitter cross compares; Youth had
become a catchword of many liberation movements of the late 19th and early
20th centuries, among them the Young Ireland and the Young Turks. The
destruction of much of Europes youth in World War I led to an even greater
focus on the virility and power of the youth (Mitter,73 )This was also
another flip on the Confucian value of the old, as well as in Europe. Other
values which are just as modern are the individualism and free thinking
which was promoted among the intellectuals of the time. The main theme of
all of these concepts and the May 4th era (1920s) is the pluralism of times.
With the fall of the old dynastic order there were real choices the Chinese
people could make to establish their own path to modernity. Whether it that
path is an extreme one or a reformist one they all carried both the rejection
of western domination and imperialism, but also the attraction to western
thoughts and ideas as almost all of these concepts were imported by the
very groups opposed by the May 4th movement.
With time the atmosphere of intellectual exploration was replaced with
one of competing ideologies of the Nationalist and Communist Parties. Crisis
and War forced an end to such ideas in the public discourse as extremes and
power won out. May 4th culture were pushed to the side as distorted versions
of Modern ideas held sway, including Marxs in the form of Maos China and
the Communist victory in 1949.

The next time we can clearly see the influence of May 4th is in the 60s
during the Cultural Revolution. But by now things have changed dramatically
in China. The Communists led by Mao Zedong, a member of the May 4th
generation himself had transformed the political landscape and were at the
end of the 1950s were finished ending their failure of economic policy called
the Great Leap Forward. During the program of the 60s we will not only see

a resurrection of the structure of the May 4th era and beyond, but also the
reasons such ideas can be used to create a reverse pluralism of ideas, a
monoculture of Mao Zedong thought. There lies clues to understanding the
fluid nature of ideas in the minds of people important and not.
The application of ideas in the minds of those shaped by them is the
first aspect to notice. The personality of Mao was a strong reason for the
Cultural Revolution to have existed. As time went on and Mao became older,
he became more dogmatic; during the war of resistance and the civil war, he
would purge those who disagreed with him. From the May 4th movement, he
becomes convinced violence had to be used and he had the idea of the
iconic, romantic hero who shapes the whole nation with his will. There are
then multiple ways one can interpret his next move after the Great Leap
Forward. First that that he was not satisfied with the gradual progress of the
past decade as economic equality did grow and private ownership was being
phased out. Stemmed from his belief that the revolution is ongoing; Trees
would like to be quiet, but the wind never stops blowing.(Li, 193) combined
with his belief that change is not civil. This is like iconoclasm, that there is
always an establishment to challenge, whether it be Qing, Nationalist, or
even Communist. It is also a Marxist attachment to history. The other and
more realistic is that with the failure of the Great Leap Forward Mao wanted a
way to stay on top and assert his power of the state against any challengers
and ensure the loyalty of others in the future.
Because of his paranoia regarding class conflict, and his personal
version of May 4th, he waged poster campaigns, and like the movement
before stressed the young. At first it was the children of the cadres that
made up the government, but with massive rallies and a manufactured cult
around him of millions of teens who were urged to Hold high the great red
banner of Mao Zedong Thought--thoroughly smash the rotting
counterrevolutionary revisionist line in literature and art (1967). But who
were the counterrevolutionaries of the 1960s? The first targets were in fact
moderating office holders who disagreed with Maos leadership. For the
young of this decade to rebel meant to defend Mao from his detractors. But
as the meaning of words held no weight in a country smashing all culture
and authority Mao redefined who the enemies were to other party members,
teachers and bureaucrats. Class warfare was continuing because of the
present meaning of ideas of class and counterrevolutionary. An
atmosphere of chaos reigned which impacted everyone, showing the power
of one man and his version of modern ideas.
Another transformer of ideas and how they are used, are current
circumstances. Whether during World War 2 or the following Cold War, there
was as there usually is a sense of crisis. With it a pressure to stay the
course, stick to the main line and have no deviation from the untied, uniform
ideology of ones side. It prevents truly progressive, balance reform in favor
of strong armed, violent, one sided policies which redirect or move problems

rather than fix them. But As Mitter explains in his thesis China at the start of
the 21st century gives the appearance of being in the same situation as at
the start of the 20th, simultaneously trying to ward off internal social collapse
and external pressure. Nonetheless, a sense of crisis is at least in part selfcreated. Perception does not necessarily match reality.(Mitter, 313) During
the Cultural Revolution the Cold war impressed the romanticism of
technology with the space race. But industry is valued not for its scientific
quantities but for the power it offers the nation.(Mitter, 233) These were
carried over ideas going back to the 19th century and used by all the
autocratic regimes of the 20th century who, for all their redefining of terms
like progress and democracy were regressive and reactionary. The Cultural
Revolution I would argue was a reaction to the pressures of the cold war and
the failures of recent efforts to modernize the nation. To Mao, modern, or
industrial production, meant more iron but less food.
Tying into that sense of what must be, we must look at the bias and
assumptions people can make about ideas though their misunderstanding of
them. Ideas change the most not when challenged but when people are self
selective of the ideas that they consume. A massive example is social
Darwinism, the application of the theory of natural selection to within a
single species like our own, to say one nation is weaker and thus not only
would perish, but must. The same idea was adopted by many Chinese
thinkers as it was by people everywhere. There are purely Chinese examples
too; biased on the meaning assigned or interpreted of words, the Confucian
virtue of moderation could be acquainted as mercy or generosity, of not
being extreme in action. But many in the May 4th movement believed it
meant for them, to compromise with injustice.
The duality of meanings is
found everywhere in any political struggle. Forces whether they be Stalinist,
Nazi, Tea party or Occupy are shaped by modernity, but are also reacting to
it and the world around them in a fashion which are in certain degrees
espoused in the terms of the enlightenment, but circumvented by the
romantic ideas that exist to counter them.
The following decades after the Cultural Revolution and the late 20th
century, was a continuation of the concepts already discussed. The nest
generation in the New era following Maos death culminated in a similar
fashion as a May 4th. The Tiananmen incident had many similar markers. It
was a movement of students and those who came of age during the Cultural
Revolution. They talked using vague definitions of Science and Democracy,
but now as the actual western versions of them which met with state
suppression. Mitter again lays out the point made here; much of the story
we have seen has been the handover of the talismans of May 4th from one
generation to the next, with different people and different eras taking certain
elements and ignoring others.(Mitter, 274) People in turn can chose based
on their background what they will learn from and what they will ignore.

To reinforce the impact of external circumstances, once the cold war

ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union the state reflected this change in
their handling of their messages. Some of them are a return to old
nationalism with documentaries on the War of resistance with Japan and the
Republican era along with the use of Confucius as a promoter of capital
markets, and May 4th with emphasize on the anti foreign message. The same
debates and popular ideas which circulate now are like the May 4th eras as
Chinas economic situation is also similar, but the differences in their military
and political weight have changed. Again at times it can be the bias of that
we what to see China as being in trouble when they could not have a better
position in the coming century. Everything may hang in the balance with the
particular quantities of modern thoughts which are adopted.
Chinas path in the 20th century had many turns, dependent on the
circumstances people were placed in, and the people themselves. These
turns were more so dependent on the ideas that make them happen,
changing ideas which drive people to change themselves and the world
around them. It usually takes many years for the full impact of an idea to
have wider consequences. Whether its the great leader dragging a nation
out of superstition, or that the children are our future and hope. Some ideas
have staying power despite everything the material world can throw at it.
Chinese society changed but Confucius stayed, just as Mao and the tradition
of saving face from his own mistakes continued. It is a conclusion that
modern never means what one single conception of it can mean. It is not the
ideas that make something modern, it is how we make modern ideas. A
feedback loop of thought and experience from one May 4th to the next.

Sources:
Mitter, Rana, A Bitter Revolution, Chinas struggle with the Modern World
Oxford University Press, NY 2004
Li, Lillian ,Beijing; from Imperial Capital to Olympic City , Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Ave, New York NY 10010
Chines posters.net 5/24/12
http://chineseposters.net/themes/cultural-revolution-campaigns.phpe

http://chineseposters.net/themes/may-fourth-movement.php