Beijing, 4 May 1919. Three thousand students march because the peace conference in Paris gave Germany's rights in Shandong to Japan. They burn a minister's house. Behind the march is a bigger revolt: against Confucius, against classical Chinese, for science and democracy, and soon for two parties that will not share a future.
The pressure
The emperors are gone; the republic is a façade over warlords. Unequal treaties and a peace conference that treats China as a prize make the old classics look like a luxury. Shandong lights it, and a decade of new magazines keeps it burning.
Which future
New Culture writers like Lu Xun want a written language people actually speak. Nationalists want a state strong enough to say no. Communists, who found their party in Shanghai in 1921, are after a different state entirely. Japan is after a continent.
What survived
The argument leaves the campus and enters the armies. The two parties fight together against the warlords, then each other, then Japan from 1937. The civil war that picks a winner ends in 1949.
Whose story
Patriotic dawn, birth of the Communist Party, or a liberal moment the revolution ate? Rana Mitter reads 1919 toward the many futures it opened instead of backward from Mao.