East Asia Library had taken over, New Tide started being advertised on Shang-hai News front pages. East Asia Library drove an aggressive marketing campaign, and paid for four front page advertisements from October 23, the date of the first advertisement in the newspaper, to the end of that month, and nine in November 1919 alone.29 New Youth’s publisher Qunyi Book Company started a similar strat-egy in August 1919, with twelve front page advertisements in the Shanghai News in that month alone.30 Every two or three days, a Shanghai News reader would have thus seen New Youth advertised. In all the preceding years, it had only been advertised once in the Shanghai News, on April 20, 1919.31 National Heritage was not advertised a single time.
This new strategy of East Asia Library and Qunyi Book Company had the effect that a broader reach of Shanghai News readers was aware of these journals.
But, vice versa, the publishers must also have felt that there was a sufficiently large potential audience for New Tide and New Youth, otherwise they would not have afforded the advertisement, which would have cost them good money.32 A few months after May Fourth, in other words, things looked up for the people who had previously been called the “New Faction.” This development was a signifi-cant change from the situation in April and May 1919, when the demise of these intellectuals’ careers had seemed imminent or, as in the case of Chen Duxiu, had already happened.
The May Fourth protests
The game-changing event that happened at that time was, of course, the May Fourth demonstrations.
The May Fourth demonstrations were student-led protests against a clause in the Treaty of Versailles that conferred formerly German concessions in Shandong to Japan, rather than returning them to China. The German presence in Shandong primarily went back to the “Jiao’ao Concession Treaty” of 1897, which permitted
29 This is shown through a search of the database Shenbao 1872–1949 (Shanghai News 1872–1949 [Database]), accessed January 12, 2016, http://shunpao.egreenapple.com. For the first advertisement, see “Advertisement for New Tide,” Shenbao (Shanghai News), October 23, 1919, 1, Shanghai.
30 “Advertisement for New Youth,” Shenbao (Shanghai News), August 3, 1919, 1, Shanghai. This again appears from a search of the database Shenbao 1872–1949.
31 “Advertisement for New Youth,” Shenbao (Shanghai News), April 20, 1919, 1, Shanghai.
32 Pang, Kua-wenhua guanggao yu shimin wenhua de bianqian, 52–53; “Ben bao de guanggao, faxing ji qita,” 22–23.
Germany to station military personnel in the Jiao’ao (present-day Qingdao) region, and which gave Germany railway rights in all of Shandong. Under the leader-ship of the warlord Duan Qirui, China had entered World War I on the side of the Allies in 1917. The international background to this was that the United States had started rising to prominence and opposed British Empire-style imperialism. Its president Woodrow Wilson promulgated notions of national self-determination, and the European empires’ colonies started seeing new hope for independence.
In 1917, China therefore entered World War I on the side of the Allies, by sending laborers to help their armies. The goal was for China to gain a better standing on the international stage and regain the German concessions on its territory.
When the Central Powers were defeated in 1918, it was therefore expected that the German concessions would be returned to China. However, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan asserted its claims to the concessions, and did so with success.
After the outbreak of the May Fourth protests, it was a matter of some debate whose fault this was. It was undeniable that on May 9, 1915, Japan had forced Yuan Shikai to sign a document called the Twenty-One Demands. After entering World War I on the side of the Allies in 1914, Japan occupied the German conces-sions in Shandong, specifically Jiao’ao/Qingdao and the Qingdao-Jinan Railway.
The Twenty-One Demands were designed to make Japan’s claims to Germany’s former rights in Shandong, which it had thus obtained, legal.33 There was also a notion that Japan had concluded secret treaties with Britain, France and Italy. As a result, these powers backed Japan’s claim in Versailles.34
There was, however, a debate about the extent to which the Northern Chinese government had concluded additional secret treaties with Japan, which had cor-roborated Japan’s claim to Shandong. On May 9, an alarmed State Council sent a (confidential) telegram to all provincial leaders, explaining that the Yunnan warlord had told the Shanghai News that the Northern Chinese government had concluded such agreements. Yunnan was part of Southern China, which was then independent of the North. The State Council (of the North) unsurprisingly claimed that all its agreements with Japan had been completely aboveboard, and that the provincial leaders, if not the public, had been informed about all treaties that existed.35
33 Chen, “The May Fourth Movement and Provincial Warlords,” 139.
34 “Qingdao ying jiaohuan Zhongguo zhi wailun” (External Opinions on [Why] Qingdao Should Be Returned to China), Shenbao (Shanghai News), May 8, 1919, 7, Shanghai; G. Zay Wood, The Shantung Question: A Study in Diplomacy and World Politics (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1922), 101.
35 Guowuyuan, “Beijing guowuyuan qing dian” (Telegram of the 9th [of May 1919] from the State Council in Beijing), in Yan Xishan dang’an (Yan Xishan Papers), ed. Lin Qingfen, vol. 5 (Taibei:
Guoshiguan, 2003), 16–17.
The May Fourth protests 67
However, the idea that there had been secret agreements with Japan could not be undone. Only in March 1919, the Foreign Ministry had published the content of a series of treaties which the Chinese government had struck with Japan after the Twenty-One Demands. They were reprinted by the press under the poignant headline “The Foreign Ministry Publishes All Secret Agreements” or announced as “Publication of Sino-Japanese Secret Agreements on [March] 14.”36 In 1922, one of China’s own diplomats, Ge-zai Wood (no dates), still wrote about them under the headline “The Secret Agreements of 1918” and stated that in some ways
“China was her own architect” of the debacle at Versailles.37 The label “secret”
was applied to all these treaties in spite of the fact that at least parts of them had been known to the press before.38
Among the treaties published in the press in the spring of 1919 were the details of a series of loans, which China had received from Japan between 1917 and 1918.
Many of them were signed by Cao Rulin and have become known as the Nishihara loans.39 The negotiations for these loans were particularly incriminating for Duan Qirui’s government. The Shanghai News reported in April 1919 about diplomatic notes that had been exchanged between the Chinese envoy Zhang Zongxiang (1879–1962) and Japanese representatives during the negotiations. In them, Japan demanded far-reaching rights in Shandong. Zhang Zongxiang replied to this, the Shanghai News claimed, that “the Chinese government gladly agrees” to Japan’s demands.40 The Chinese warlord government, all these newspaper articles sug-gested to the public, could not be trusted to pursue China’s best interests.
It had thus been clear for a while that Japan was laying claim to Shandong.
But on May 3, the Chinese public realized that the diplomat to Paris Lu Zhengxiang (1871–1949) would not be able to negotiate this out of the Treaty of Versailles.
Various associations gathered on Saturday, May 3, to plan protests. The Citizens’
Diplomatic Association, for example, intended to demonstrate on the symbolic May 7, the National Disgrace Memorial Day. This day commemorated Japan’s
36 “Waijiaobu gongbiao ge xiang miyue” (The Foreign Ministry Publishes All Secret Agree-ments), Dongfang zazhi (Eastern Miscellany) 16, no. 5 (May 1919): 178–90; “Waijiaobu gongbiao ge xiang miyue (xu)” (The Foreign Ministry Publishes All Secret Agreements [Continued]), Dongfang zazhi (Eastern Miscellany) 16, no. 6 (June 1919): 166–79; “Zhong-Ri miyue hanri fabiao shuo” (Publication of Sino-Japanese Secret Agreements on the 14th), Shenbao (Shanghai News), March 13, 1920, 3.
37 Wood, The Shantung Question, 96.
38 “Zhong-Ri gongtong tiaoyue zhi jinxun” (Latest News on the Sino-Japanese Mutual Treaty), Shenbao (Shanghai News), June 3, 1918, 3.
39 “Waijiaobu gongbiao ge xiang miyue”; “Waijiaobu gongbiao ge xiang miyue (xu).”
40 Sheng Gui, “Beijing tongxin” (Newsletter from Beijing), Shenbao (Shanghai News), April 12, 1919, 6, Shanghai.
ultimatum for accepting the Twenty-One Demands.41 The students, however, were too impatient to wait.42 The next day, on May 4, 1919, reportedly 3,000 of them therefore gathered on the symbolic Tiananmen Square, where in 1895 another cohort of students had demonstrated and where students would demonstrate again in 1989.43 From there, they marched through the streets of Beijing, until some of them burnt down the house of Cao Rulin, beat up Zhang Zongixang and were arrested by the local police.
But this did not end the demonstrations. With the help of Cai Yuanpei, the chancellor of Beijing University, and Fu Zengxiang, who was the minister of edu-cation, the students were quickly released.44 Soon afterwards, both Cai and Fu resigned. A student union formed on May 6, which organized further strikes. It called for a refusal to sign the Treaty of Versailles and for the dismissal of the
“country-selling traitors” (maiguozei), who were quite early on identified as Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang and Lu Zongyu (1876–1941).45 As finance minister, Cao had negotiated the Twenty-One Demands and as finance minister he had signed many of the Nishihara Loans. Zhang Zongxiang was the envoy to Japan and was now known as the person who had “gladly agreed” to the demands Japan had made in the wake of the Nishihara Loans.46 Lu Zongyu had been an earlier envoy to Japan, and in this function he had negotiated the Twenty-One Demands.
In spite of government prohibition and censorship, the students gave lectures on the streets and boycotted Japanese goods over the next few weeks. Soon the protests spilled over into other cities, among which Shanghai became particularly important in June. Students received support from the media, from a number of pro-vincial military governors and from other strata of society.47 From June 5 onwards, merchants, workers and students in Shanghai joined ranks and entered a general strike. As a result, the “country-selling traitors” Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang and
41 Chen, “The May Fourth Movement and Provincial Warlords,” 143.
42 Yi Wan, “Yi zhou Beijing de gongmin da huodong” (One Week of Great Activities by the Citi-zens of Beijing), Meizhou pinglun (Weekly Critic), May 11, 1919, 1–3, 1, Beijing.
43 Chen, “The May Fourth Movement and Provincial Warlords,” 144.
44 Ibid.
45 “Wu yue qi ri zhi guomin dahui” (The National Assembly of 7 May), Shenbao (Shanghai News), May 8, 1919, 10, Shanghai; “Waijiao jinji yu heju polie (si)” (The Urgency of Diplomacy and the Destruction of Peace [Four]), Yishibao (Social Welfare Tiensin), May 19, 1919, 2, Tianjin. An exam-ple of an early identification of these three as the “country-selling traitors”: “Zhuandian” (Special Telegram), Shenbao (Shanghai News), May 6, 1919, 3, Shanghai.
46 Gui, “Beijing Tongxin,” 6.
47 On support from the warlords, see Chen, “The May Fourth Movement and Provincial Warlords,”
158. On the support from the media, see Mittler, A Newspaper for China?, 384–89.