The May 4th Movement, and China’s Modernisation

The simple explanation of the Cultural Revolution was that Mao did not trust technocrats, high-ranking party bureaucrats or university students and their professors (Wong, 2000, p.97). Former students formed into the Red Guard carried the Cultural Revolution forward and the Chinese Army went around the country removing any visible signs of foreign, capitalist or intellectual influence. They regarded the Cultural Revolution as a great cleansing of China. They were guided in their cleansing obey the ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao’ or the Little Red Book (Wakin, 1997, pp.33-34).

The Cultural Revolution was highly destructive as it disrupted the effective management of the economy and produced political instability. The hysteria and xenophobia that resulted from the Cultural Revolution may have resembled the attitudes or beliefs of the May 4^th Movement and the NCM yet in the end they would undermine Mao’s position within the CCP and China itself. The Cultural Revolution produced the logical outcome that could have been easily predicted and thus prevented, huge drop in factory and farm production. Even before Mao died the situation had to be reversed. Those technocrats, party bureaucrats and intellectuals that had survived the Cultural Revolution were restored to their former positions or given new ones. Mao successors attempted to further modernise China by producing economic reforms that amounted to capitalism in all but name whilst maintaining a tight grip on China’s cultural and political development (Eatwell & Wright, 2003, p.119).

Therefore it can be concluded that were relationships between the May 4^th Movement, the New Culture Movement and the CCP that contributed to the modernisation of China. These relationships varied in their strength, influence and intensity according to the situations the CCP found itself in and which views dominated the party at any given time. The main influence that the May 4^th Movement had in its relationship with the CCP was that it stressed that China had to modernise to free herself of foreign interference and invaders. The May 4^th Movement influenced not only the CCP but also it’s former allies and bitterest rivals, the Kuomintang endowing both with a strong sense of nationalism. In many ways once the CCP gained power it fulfilled the May 4^th Movement’s aims of making China a strong modernised country that did not easily give in to foreign demands or pressure.

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