Movement for a New Culture

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The New Culture Movement ( Chinese  新文化 運動  /  新文化 运动 , Pinyin Xīn Wénhuà Yùndòng ) was a social movement in the Republic of China in the 1910s and 1920s with the aim of creating a new one on global and western standards such as democracy and science based culture .

The movement for a new culture developed in connection with the disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture and as a result of the disappointment with the undesirable developments in the Chinese republic founded in 1912 . Main representatives of the movement such as Chen Duxiu , Cai Yuanpei , Li Dazhao , Lu Xun and Hu Shi had received a classical Confucian education, but saw this as a major obstacle to the modernization of China, which was considered necessary .

You are committed to:

  • the revision of ancient classics with the help of modern textual and critical methods
  • the creation of vernacular literature
  • the abolition of Confucian patriarchal family structures, individual liberation and the emancipation of women
  • the recognition of the fact that China is just one nation among many and not the center of all civilization radiating in all directions
  • democratic and egalitarian values
  • In thinking, a general orientation towards the future instead of the past

The political aspects of the movement crystallized from 1919 onwards in the May Fourth Movement .

literature

  • Guy S. Alitto: The Last Confucian. Liang Shu-Ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity. University of California Press, Berkeley CA 1979, ISBN 0-520-03123-7 .
  • Jerome B. Grieder: Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance. Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917-1937 (= Harvard East Asian Series. Vol. 46). Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1970, ISBN 0-674-41250-8 .
  • Leo Ou-fan Lee: Voices from the Iron House. A Study of Lu Xun. Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN et al. 1987, ISBN 0-253-36263-6 .
  • Rana Mitter: A Bitter Revolution. China's Struggle with the Modern World. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2004, ISBN 0-19-280605-X .
  • Vera Schwarcz: The Chinese Enlightenment. Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. University of California Press, Berkeley CA 1986, ISBN 0-520-05027-4 .
  • Edmund SK Fung: The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-19511-9 .