ABSTRACT
In December 1919 Chen Duxiu, the future general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), proclaimed that the task facing China was to create a society that was ‘sincere, progressive, activist, free, egalitarian, creative, beautiful, kind, peaceful, full of universal love, mutual assistance, pleasant labour and prosperous for all’, in contrast to current society, which was ‘hypocritical, conservative, passive, constrained, classdivided, conventional, ugly, vicious, belligerent, disorderly, lazy and prosperous for only a few.’1 Chen’s clarion call was made in the journal, New Youth, which he had established in 1915, and it signalled a revival of interest in politics on the part of that journal. When first launched, this journal had reflected the mood of disillusionment then current among China’s radical intellectuals, as president Yuan Shikai proceeded to dismantle the vestiges of the republican regime which had been founded after the 1911 Revolution. Repudiating politicians and political pro grammes, it embraced a project of radical cultural transformation of China, in the belief that profound change could come about only through the uncompromising rejection of Confucian tradition and the whole-hearted embrace of western democracy and science. New Youth thus gave rise to the New Culture Movement, which was to have immense influence on radical youth once they were energized by the May Fourth Movement of 1919.
