ABSTRACT
The education system that successive governments developed in the first half of the twentieth century was explicitly nationalist in its aims. And nationalism was the dominant force behind the successive student movements of the period, beginning with the May Fourth Movement (see Chapter 5). Yet the fact remains that the nationalisms displayed in these two forces were at odds with each other. The nationalism the students saw in the education system seemed to them very self-serving and occasionally even traitorous. The main reason for this was that governments appeared to the students to be far too compromising with imperialism, especially Japanese imperialism, and with unhealthy, oppressive and unmodern traditions [Docs 38 and 39, pp. 146 and 147].
