2 - Origin of the Chinese Political Right in the May Fourth

Summary

The CYP founders were at one time inclined to the anarchist social revolution, widely debated during the May Fourth era in the late 1910s. Contrary to the Communist members in the Young China Association, however, they turned to national socialism in the wake of the May Fourth.This chapter traces the early journeys of Zeng Qi and Li Huang from Sichuan, Chen Qitian and Yu Jiaju from Hubei, and Zuo Shunsheng from Hunan as May Fourth youths, and highlights on what ideological grounds they reached out again to Zhang Taiyan and Liang Qichao for spiritual guidance in the early 1920s. In opposition to current historiography, this chapter does not discuss the May Fourth as a significant rupture, but rather takes it as bridge to the rise of the Chinese radical right, establishing a nationalist “Confucian China” out of the civilizational “Confucian China.”