Editing May Fourth Movement (section)

=== Birth of Chinese communism ===
{{Chinese Communist Revolution sidebar}}
For many years, the orthodox view in the People's Republic of China was that after the demonstrations of 1919 and their subsequent suppression, the discussion of possible policy changes became more and more politically realistic. Influential leaders such as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao shifted to the left and became founders of the CCP in 1921, while other intellectuals became more sympathetic.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shan |first=Patrick Fuliang |title=Chinese Ideology |publisher=Routledge |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-000-42224-5 |editor-last=Shiping |editor-first=Hua |pages=94–110 |chapter=Li Dazhao and the Chinese Embracement of Communism}}</ref> Originally [[Voluntarism (philosophy)|voluntarist]] or [[nihilist]] figures like [[Li Shicen]] and [[Zhu Qianzhi]] made similar turns to the left as the 1920s saw China become increasingly turbulent.{{sfnp|Chiang|2020|p=114}} In 1939, [[Mao Zedong]] claimed that the May Fourth Movement was a stage leading toward the fulfillment of the Chinese Communist Revolution:
{{Blockquote|The May Fourth Movement twenty years ago marked a new stage in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism. The cultural reform movement which grew out of the May Fourth Movement was only one of the manifestations of this revolution. With the growth and development of new social forces in that period, a powerful camp made its appearance in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a camp consisting of the working class, the student masses and the new national bourgeoisie. Around the time of the May Fourth Movement, hundreds of thousands of students courageously took their place in the van. In these respects the May Fourth Movement went a step beyond the Revolution of 1911.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mao |first=Zedong |url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_13.htm |title=Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung |publisher=Foreign Languages Press |year=1952 |volume=II |location=Beijing |chapter=The May Fourth Movement |orig-date=1939 |via=marxists.org}}</ref>}}

Paul French argues that the only victor of the Treaty of Versailles in China was communism, as rising public anger led directly to the formation of the CCP. The Treaty also led to Japan pursuing its conquests with greater boldness, which [[Wellington Koo]] had predicted in 1919 would lead to the outbreak of war between China and Japan.<ref>{{Cite book |last=French |first=Paul |title=Betrayal in Paris: How the Treaty of Versailles led to China's Long Revolution |publisher=Penguin |year=2016 |pages=74–78}}</ref>

[[File:Ussr Day of the October Revolution 1938.jpg|thumb|A rally on the 21st anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia]]
Western-style liberal democracy had previously had a degree of traction among Chinese intellectuals. Still, after Versailles, which was viewed as a betrayal of China's interests, it lost much of its attractiveness. [[Woodrow Wilson]]'s [[Fourteen Points]], despite being rooted in [[moralism]], were seen as Western-centric and hypocritical.{{sfnp|Chiu-Duke|2020|p=58}} Many Chinese intellectuals believed that the United States had done little to convince the other nations to adhere to the Fourteen Points and observed that the United States had declined to join the [[League of Nations]]. As a result, they turned away from the Western liberal democratic model. With the [[October Revolution]] in Russia in 1917, Marxism began to take hold in Chinese intellectual thought, particularly among those already on the Left. Chinese intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao began serious study of Marxist doctrine.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Shan |first=Patrick Fuliang |title=A Century of Student Movements in China: The Mountain Movers, 1919–2019 |publisher=Lexington |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-793-60916-8 |editor-last=Li |editor-first=Xiaobing |location=Lanham, MD |pages=3–22 |chapter=Assessing Li Dazhao’s Role in the New Cultural Movement |editor-last2=Fang |editor-first2=Qiang}}</ref>