| “… hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It
is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no
roads to begin with, but when many people pass one way, a road is made.” (Lu Xun, “My Old Home”; SMC, 294) |
The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, whose Origin of Species
was first published in England in 1859, explained how the adaptive
processes of natural selection determined which species managed to
thrive and which were doomed to extinction. ... The British sociologist
Herbert Spencer made his own creative adaptation of these theories. In The Study of Sociology,
published in 1873, Spencer applied Darwinian theories to the
development of human societies, arguing that the “survival of the
fittest,” governed social as well as
biological evolution. ...
Spencer’s theories were then reanalyzed and
contested by the scientist Thomas Huxley, and encapsulated in 1893 in
his book Evolution and Ethics;
Yan Fu, a product of China’s naval-school system during the
self-strengthening period and later a student in England, read Huxley’s
book at the time of the Sino-Japanese War and translated it into
Chinese in 1896 — with his own added commentary and
interpretations — under the title On Evolution. ... The
message that came across from Yan Fu was that Spencer’s sociological
writings were not merely analytical and descriptive, but prescriptive
as well, offering means to transform and strengthen society. Yan Fu
summarized Darwin as follows:
| Peoples
and living things struggle for survival. At first, species struggle
with species; then as [people] gradually progress, there is a struggle
between one social group and another. The weak invariably become the
prey of the strong, the stupid invariably become subservient to the
clever. (SMC, 279-280) |
The
1911 revolution briefly raised hopes that Social Darwinist ideas of
harsh social competition were now discredited. Just before the 1912
elections were won by his reorganized Guomindang, Sun Yat-sen wrote:
| Before
the twentieth century, the nations of Europe invented a newfangled
struggle-for-existence theory, which for a time influenced everything.
Every nation assumed that “the survival of the fittest” and “the weak
are the meat of the strong” were the vital laws on which to establish a
state. They even went so far as to say that “might is the only right,
there is no reason.” This kind of theory in the early days of the
evolution of European civilization had its uses. But, from the vantage
point of today, it appears a barbaric form of learning. |
But
by 1913, Sun was writing sadly of a world dominated by struggles for
survival from which no government or industrial enterprise could be
exempt. Yan Fu, too, lost his enthusiasm for the theories he had so
much helped to popularize in China, writing that the failures of the
Chinese republic and the bloodshed of World War I in Europe showed that
“three hundred years of evolutionary progress have all come down
to
nothing but four words: selfishness, slaughter, shamelessness, and
corruption.” (SMC, 280-281)
|
 |
Both the growing discussion of Social Darwinist
ideas and the rise of interest in Communist ideology were symptomatic
of a cultural upheaval that was spreading throughout China. This
upheaval is often called the May Fourth Movement, since in important
ways it was intricately connected to the events that occurred in Peking
on May 4, 1919, and to the effect that those events had on the country
as a whole. The term “May Fourth movement” is therefore both limited and broad, depending on whether it is applied
to the demonstrations that took place on that particular day or to the
complex emotional, cultural, and political developments that followed.
Student representatives from thirteen area
colleges and universities who met together in Peking on the morning of
May 4, 1919, drew up five resolutions: one protested the Shandong
settlement reached at the Versailles conference; a second sought to
awaken “the masses all over the country”
to an awareness of China’s plight; a third proposed holding a
mass meeting of the people of Peking; a fourth urged the formation of a
Peking student union; and a fifth called for a demonstration that afternoon in protest of the Versailles treaty terms. ...
The student protesters were ... successful
in spreading their message to a wide circle of Chinese, once more
reasserting the prestige of the scholarly elite that had been such a
central part of Confucian-oriented education under the Qing dynasty,
though now it was clothed in modern garb. The rash of student strikes
and mass arrests led to a wave of national sympathy for the
students’ cause. Support came from the merchants and businessmen
grouped in chambers of commerce in the major cities, from individual
industrialists, from shopowners, and from the industrial
workers. ... Work actions took place in textile plants, print shops,
metal works, public utilities, shipping concerns, paper mills,
petroleum works, and tobacco factories. (SMC, 286-288)
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|  | |
  It was as if the far-off events at Versailles and
the mounting evidence of the spinelessness of corrupt local politicians
coalesced in people’s minds and impelled them to search for a way
to return meaning to Chinese culture. What did it mean to be Chinese?
Where was the country heading? What values should one adopt to help one
in the search? In this broad sense, the May Fourth movement was an
attempt to redefine China’s culture as a valid part of the modern
world. In the attempt, not surprisingly, reformers followed different
avenues of thought and conduct. Some May Fourth thinkers concentrated
on launching attacks against reactionary or irrelevant “old
ways” such as Confucianism, the patriarchal family, arranged
marriages, or traditional education. Some focused on reform of the
Chinese writing style by using contemporary vernacular speech patterns
in works of literature, thus putting an end to the inevitable elitism
that accompanied the mastery of the intensely difficult classical
Chinese. Some had a deep interest in traditional Western art and
culture, while others looked to the avant-garde elements of that
culture, such as surrealist and cubist painting, symbolist poetry,
graphic design, realist drama, and new fashions in dress and interior
decoration. Some sought to reinfuse Chinese traditional arts with a new
spirit of nationalism by borrowing a selective range of Western
painterly techniques. (SMC, 288-289)
Chen Duxiu ... founded the journal New Youth in 1915 and joined the Peking University faculty as dean in 1917 at Cai Yaunpei’s invitation. As editor of New Youth,
which rapidly became the most influential intellectual journal in
China, he espoused bold theoretical investigation, a spirited attack on
the past, and a highly moralistic approach to politics through the
cleansing of the individual character.
 In leading an all-out attack on Confucian vestiges through the pages of New Youth,
Chen argued that the key flaw in Confucianism was that it ran counter
to the independence of the individuals that lay at the center of
“modern” life. To build a new state in China, said Chen in
late 1916, “the basic task is to import the foundation of Western
society, that is, the new belief in equality and human rights. We must
be thoroughly aware of the incompatibility between Confucianism and the
new belief, the new society, and the new state.” |
In
other writings, Chen urged the abandonment of the classical Chinese
language in favor of the vernacular form, and espoused two concepts
that he termed “Mr. Democracy” and “Mr. Science”
as the key opponents to Confucian traditionalism. ... In 1920 he was to
become one of the first members of the new Chinese Communist
party. (SMC, 290-291)
Hu Shi ... had originally been a close friend and
collaborator of Chen Duxiu. But though Hu also urged China to embrace both democracy and science, he later came
to see Chen as an extremist who rejoiced in “isms” of all
kinds without giving them adequate thought. ... In the summer of 1919, he
wrote a celebrated attack on Chen Duxiu and other radical
intellectuals, which he entitled “Study More Problems, Talk Less
of ‘Isms.’” As Hu put it:
We don’t study the standard of
living of the ricksha coolie but rant instead about socialism; we
don’t study the ways in which women can be emancipated, or the
family system set right, but instead we rave about wife-sharing and
free love; we don’t examine the ways in which the Anfu Clique
might be broken up, or how the question of north and south might be
resolved, but instead we rave about anarchism. And, moreover, we are
delighted with ourselves, we congratulate ourselves, because we are
talking about fundamental “solutions.” Putting it bluntly,
this is dream talk. (SMC, 291-292)
|
Hu Shi with American Pragmatist John Dewey
Dewey was, for those Chinese educators who had studied under him, the
great apostle of philosophic liberalism and experimental methodology,
the advocate of complete freedom of thought, and the man who, above all
other teachers, equated education to the practical problems of civic
cooperation and useful living. (Su Zhixin)
|
Lu Xun ... unquestionably emerged as the most
brilliant writer of the May Fourth movement, and his words were
guaranteed an attentive audience. ... Lu Xun saw it as his task to direct
the searching beam of his critical gaze onto the cultural backwardness
and moral cowardice of the Chinese. He was harsh in his criticisms and
often pessimistic in tone, even though his stories are full of
compassion. He had come to understand his mission as a writer, he told
a friend, through this image: he was a man standing outside a great
iron box in which the people of China had fallen asleep. If he did
nothing, they would all suffocate; if he banged and banged on the
outside of the box, he would awaken the sleepers within, who might then
be able to free themselves. (SMC, 293-294)
Chastity & Suicide
Qing Biography of a Chaste Woman
Chaste Woman Wu was from the village of
Luxiawan. ... Her husband’s name was Li Shixin. He helped his
father Li Jiugao manage a family store in Hubei. And so Woman Wu lived
alone in the house with her mother-in-law.
The mother-in-law was having an adulterous
relationship with a distant clan relative named Big Gun Li. ... Big Gun
Li and the mother-in-law conspired to rape her to prevent her from
speaking out later about their relationship. ... At dusk, when the woman
was bathing in the house, Big
Gun leapt forward out of the dark. She wanted to run away but the door
was
already closed. She climbed out of a rear window and flung herself into
the
water. An old woman neighbor rescued her. Woman Wu was barely breathing
but
by midnight she had come to her senses. Thereupon, she again jumped
into
the water and died.
The members of the clan reported this
to the county yamen and accused Big Gun of “forcible rape resulting in death.”
The county magistrate, Zhuang Youyi, was unable to unravel any matter and
was nicknamed “Mixed-up Zhuang” by the local people. When the investigation
took place, the mother-in-law insisted that Big Gun was not guilty of “rape
resulting in death.” Eventually, the case closed with the verdict that the
deceased had slipped into the water and died. This happened in the thirty-sixth
year of Qianlong’s reign [1771]. (DC (1st Edition), 234-235)
“My Views on Chastity”
Lu Xun, 1918
Chastity used to be a virtue for men as well as women,
hence the references to ‘chaste gentlemen’ in our literature. However, the
chastity which is extolled today is for women only — men have no part in it.
According to contemporary moralists, a chaste woman is one who does not remarry
or run off with a lover after her husband’s death, while the earlier her
husband dies and the poorer her family the more chaste it is possible for
her to be. In addition, there are two other types of chaste women: one kills
herself when her husband or fiancé dies, the other manages to commit
suicide when confronted by a ravisher, or meets her death while resisting.
The more cruel her death, the greater glory she wins. ... Everyone knew that a woman could lose her
chastity only through a man. Still they went on blaming the woman alone,
while the man who destroyed a widow’s reputation by marrying her or the ruffian
who forced her to die unchaste was passed over in silence. Men, after all,
are more formidable than women, and to bring someone to justice is harder
than to utter praise. A few men with some sense of fair play, it is true,
suggested mildly that it was unnecessary for girls to follow their betrothed
into the grave; but the world did not listen to them. Had they persisted,
they would have been thought intolerable and treated like unchaste women;
so they turned ‘tractable’ and held their peace. This is why there has been
no change right up till now. (DC (1st Edition), 236-237)
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|
The Birth of the CCP
  If
China’s youth were going to fight the forces of darkness with
their bare fists, they would need a carefully thought out plan of
attack. The outlines for one such plan were slowly becoming visible
through the labors of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, even
though the Russian revolution had encountered difficulties enough to deter all but the most determined. ... In an attempt to encourage socialist revolutions in other countries, Lenin
established the Third International of the Communist party (the
Comintern)
in 1919. ... During this period when postwar territorial settlements
were fueling nationalist movements in Europe and Asia, the strategic
choice facing Lenin and the Comintern leaders was between supporting
all efforts at socialist revolution overseas, even if that meant
weakening a particular anti-imperialist movement, or supporting strong
nationalist leaders, even if they were bourgeois reformers. At the
second Comintern congress, held in July
1920, Lenin took the position that the capitalist stage of development
need not be inevitable for backward nations if they were aided by the
Soviet Union. Peasant soviets would be encouraged in such cases, along
with “a temporary alliance” with bourgeois democratic
parties. (SMC, 295)
 After
playing his leading role in the May Fourth demonstrations and
subsequently serving a three-month jail sentence, Chen Duxiu had left
Peking for Shanghai. He had settled in the French Concession and
continued to edit New Youth,
which had become politically leftist and been abandoned by many of its
former liberal supporters like Hu Shi. ... The Comintern agents gave Chen
a clearer sense of direction and the techniques to bind together a
political organization from the uncoordinated mixture of socialist
groups that already existed in China. ... Because [Mao Zedong] was now
well known to party leaders, he was invited to be the delegate from
Hunan at the first plenary meeting of the Chinese Communist party
(CCP), held in Shanghai in July 1921. ... In
January 1922,
the leaders of the Soviet Union thought it appropriate to invite about
forty Chinese delegates to participate in a meeting of the
“Toilers of the Far East” convened in Moscow. ... They were addressed
by Grigory Zinoviev as spokesman for the Comintern. He told them that
only a united world proletariat could overcome the forces of the
capitalist powers:
| Remember
that the process of history has placed the question thus: you either
win your independence side by side with the proletariat, or you do not
win it at all. Either you receive your emancipation at the hands of the
proletariat, in cooperation with it, under its guidance, or you are
doomed to remain the slaves of an English, American and Japanese
camarilla [a secretive clique]. |
|
 ... Nevertheless, the
question of allying in some way with Sun’s Guomindang surfaced
more and more frequently. Back in China, [Comintern agent] Maring
pushed for the alliance, and it was adopted as part of the manifesto of
the CCP at their summer 1922 congress in Hangzhou. Here the CCP
announced they would seek a temporary alliance with the Guomindang in
order to fight “against warlords of the feudal type.” Once
the democratic revolution had been successful, however, the stage of
alliance would be over and the proletariat would “launch the
struggle of the second phase,” which would seek to achieve
“the dictatorship of the proletariat allied to the poor peasants
against the bourgeoisie.” In the eyes of those making these
dogmatic and provocative statements, the amorphous preoccupations and
slogans of the May Fourth movement were taking on a specific shape and
focus. (SMC, 296-300) |
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