On October 10, 1911, the Wuchang Uprising broke out, the rebel army quickly occupied the three towns of Wuhan, the Hubei military government was established, and Li Yuanhong was elected as the governor. Within two months of the victory of the Wuchang Uprising, fifteen provinces, including Hunan and Guangdong, declared independence from the Qing government. On January 1, 1912, Sun Yat-sen was inaugurated as the provisional president of the Republic of China in Nanjing, and the Republic of China was officially established.
Wuchang Uprising
However, China has not settled down. Soon, the Qing Emperor issued an abdication edict, followed by the northward migration of the Provisional Government of Nanjing, Yuan Shikai stole the fruits of the revolution, and the Republic of China entered the period of "Beiyang Government".
China during the "Beiyang Government" period was essentially a period of warlord chaos, called the Republic, which was actually a warrior state. The late Qing Beiyang warlords, led by Yuan Shikai, "You sing, I will appear." In the short 13 years from 1916 to 1928, there were 38 cabinets, the shortest of which lasted only six days.
After Yuan Shikai came to power, he announced the immediate dissolution of the National Assembly, the change of the cabinet system to a presidential system, and stipulated that the president would monopolize all powers and be re-elected indefinitely, thus destroying the nascent democratic system. After Yuan Shikai's death, the ensuing warlord melee turned democracy into a dead letter, various factions competed for power, and the central government became a stage for local warlords to compete.
Statue of Yuan Shikai
During the Xinhai Revolution, bourgeois culture waged a certain struggle against feudal culture, but it failed to shake the foundation of feudal culture. After the defeat of the revolution, the opposition political forces fought back wildly, and a retro countercurrent of honor and retro appeared in the ideological and cultural fields.
Yuan Shikai's government openly ordered Zun Kong to read the Bible in an attempt to strengthen the people's ideological control under the guise of "preserving the essence of the country." Since 1912, zunkong retro organizations have been established in various places, especially Kang Youwei's Kong Church, which has the greatest influence. Kang Youwei presented himself as a contemporary Confucius sage and was deeply dissatisfied with the abolition of the Zunkong Reading After the Xinhai Revolution. At this time, he was no longer the spirited appearance he had when he wrote on the bus, he was undoubtedly behind the times, and after the Xinhai Revolution, he still wanted to restore the imperial system, and in the magazine "Intolerable" sponsored by him, he repeatedly attacked the republican system, advocating that non-Confucianism and non-restoration could not save China.
At this time, Kang Youwei had become a thorough royalist
But the democratic trend of thought that emerged after a nationwide revolutionary movement was, after all, unstoppable. At the same time, due to the influence of the Xinhai Revolution, the national capitalist economy has developed somewhat, resulting in a certain increase in the strength of the national bourgeoisie and the expansion of the ranks of intellectuals and the working class. The bourgeois revolutionaries headed by Sun Yat-sen, despite repeated setbacks, are still struggling. Therefore, under the dark rule of the Beiyang warlord clique, radical bourgeois petty-bourgeois intellectuals launched a new struggle in the ideological and cultural field - the new cultural movement began to rise.
"New Youth" founded by Chen Duxiu
From 1914 to 1915, the Republic of China Magazine in Tokyo and the Republic of China Daily in Shanghai, run by the Chinese Revolutionary Party, "specifically attacked Yuan", resisted the reactionary rule of The Yuan Shikai clique, opposed autocracy, and advocated the establishment of a real Republic of China. Founded in May 1914 in Tokyo, Ko yin magazine, Zhang Shizhao served as the chief writer and became the mouthpiece of the European Affairs Research Society. Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu published articles in Jiayin magazine exposing imperialist aggression, the dark rule of warlords and bureaucrats, and criticizing pessimistic ideas among intellectuals, which had a positive impact. At the same time, the influential Youth Magazine appeared in Shanghai.
Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in "The Age of Awakening"
The Youth Magazine founded by Chen Duxiu on September 5, 1915, was a sign of the rise of the New Culture Movement. From the second volume onwards, the Youth Magazine was renamed New Youth. Chen Duxiu studied in Japan in his early years, and in January 1917, he was invited by Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University, to become the dean of liberal arts at Peking University. The editorial board of New Youth was also moved from Shanghai to Beijing.
In Beijing, "New Youth" was deeply integrated with Peking University, and Li Dazhao, Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong, and other people from the new cultural circles who taught at Peking University participated in the editing and writing of "New Youth", and Lu Xun also began to write in Volume 4 in 1918. In this way, a new cultural camp with "New Youth" as the core was formed, and under the influence of "New Youth", large and small democratic publications sprung up like mushrooms.
The main representative of the new cultural movement
The basic content of the new cultural movement is to promote "democracy" and "science". Chen Duxiu published an article entitled "Greetings to Youth" in the inaugural issue of "Youth Magazine", which described the darkness of Chinese society at that time, called on young people to wage a struggle against the antiquated feudal ideology, held high the two banners of "democracy" and "science", and openly challenged feudal ideology and culture.
In the struggle to advocate democracy and science and oppose autocracy and superstition, the advocates of the New Culture Movement launched a fierce attack on the old rituals and old morality represented by Confucius and Confucianism to safeguard the feudal autocratic system, and unveiled the banner of "overthrowing Confucius", which is a struggle based on reality. The social reality at that time was that Yuan Shikai and the Beiyang warlord Zunkong were restored, and Kang Youwei and others advocated the incorporation of Confucianism into the Constitution, which can be described as a counter-current in the ideological circles.
Lu Xun and the Diary of a Madman
Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, and others launched sharp criticisms of this, and Chen Duxiu stressed that the democratic republic focuses on the spirit of equality, while Confucianism emphasizes respecting and inferior classes, and "if we recognize the republican system on the one hand, and on the other hand, we must preserve Confucianism, which is theoretically impossible, but in fact it is really impossible." Li Dazhao also pointed out: "The way of Confucius is not suitable for survival in today's society." Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman", "My View of Festivals and Spirits", Wu Yu's "TheOry of the Family System as the Basis of Absolutism", "Cannibalism and Etiquette", etc. also exposed the evils of feudal etiquette and sharply criticized the harm of loyalty, filial piety, and festival ethics and morality. "New Youth" also had a lively discussion on women's liberation issues, family issues, marriage and love issues, and promoted the ideas of equality between men and women and the emancipation of individuality.
Another important content of the New Culture Movement is the "literary revolution", that is, advocating vernacular literature, opposing literary language, advocating new literature and opposing old literature.
In January 1917, Hu Shi published an article entitled "Discussion on Literary Reform" in the New Youth, which opened the curtain of the "Literary Revolution". In his articles, he put forward the slogan of "literary reform", advocating the vernacular as "the authenticity of Chinese literature", as well as some literary formal reforms, such as "no canon" and "no groaning without illness". In February, Chen Duxiu also published "On literary revolution" in "New Youth", clearly putting forward the slogan of "literary revolution", linking literary innovation with political innovation, believing that "if you want to innovate politics, you are bound to renovate the literature of our country based on the spiritual circle of this politician."
Hu Shi and the Discussion on the Improvement of Literature
Lu Xun can be described as a great achievement in this literary revolutionary movement, and through his own creative practice, he brilliantly combined the anti-feudal revolutionary content with the vernacular literary form in his own works. From April 1918 onwards, he successively published vernacular novels such as "Diary of a Madman", "Kong Yiji", and "Medicine" in the "New Youth", "The Diary of a Madman" is the first vernacular short story created in modern asana in the history of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun made extremely important contributions to the literary revolution and effectively promoted the spread of the vernacular movement.
The New Culture Movement is a continuation of the Xinhai Revolution in the field of ideology and culture, and a fierce struggle between the new bourgeois culture and the old culture of the feudal class. It dealt an unprecedented blow to feudalism politically and ideologically, broke the shackles of feudal dogma on people's thinking, and played a tremendous role in the awakening of the Chinese people, especially the Chinese intellectual youth.
The sound of the cannon of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism
When the New Culture Movement arose, the October Revolution broke out in Russia in 1917. This revolution, and the upsurge of the world revolution it caused, had an unprecedented impact on China. The October Revolution promoted the awakening of the Chinese people, and China's advanced intellectuals, inspired by the victory of the October Revolution, saw a new way out for China from the victory of the October Revolution, so they shifted from studying in the West to studying and propagating the October Revolution and Marxism-Leninism in Russia, and began to observe China's problems with the cosmology of the proletariat.
In this way, the new cultural movement that began to develop in 1915 underwent fundamental changes, from a bourgeois cultural revolution to a movement that widely propagated Marxism-Leninism, and the New Youth gradually became a publication for propagating Marxism, and Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu began to spread Marxism-Leninism. A new political group is about to take shape in China, and it will surely lead the Chinese people to the final victory.