May Fourth in three keys: revolutionary, pluralistic, and scientific

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Acknowledgments

This essay is an adaptation of remarks entitled “May Fourth and China’s Spooky Year of Decadal Anniversaries,” which were part of a roundtable discussion entitled “May Fourth a Century Later: Legacies, Politics, and Historiography” that was convened in Denver, Colorado on March 23, 2019, at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference. I hereby thank all the participants in the roundtable discussion for their comments on the original presentation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Glossary

Deng Xiaoping	=	邓小平
Qingnian jie	=	青年节
qingyi	=	清议
sanjiaodi	=	三角地
Sima Qian	=	司马迁
shishiqiushi	=	实事求是
Tiananmen	=	天安门
Yan’an	=	延安
zhengming	=	正名

Notes

¹ Viewed Mar. 20, 2019, at: http://newsen.pku.edu.cn/news_events/spotlight/3507.htm.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy B. WESTON

Timothy B. WESTON is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on modern Chinese history. He is the author of The Power of Position: Beijing University, Intellectuals, and Chinese Political Culture, 1898–1929 (University of California Press, 2004) and three co-edited collections of essays on contemporary China, the most recent being China in and beyond the Headlines (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012). Weston’s current research and writing focuses on the rise of the newspaper press and a modern-style communications system in China in the context of British imperialism and the spread of global capitalism in the nineteenth century.