China’s Cultural Modernization
The May Fourth Movement (1919), first appearing as a request for reform at political level and later spreading out to cover different socio-cultural dimensions, together with the New Cultural Movement (1915-1922) were regarded as the reactions to this great imbalance of east-west acculturation.[2] In July 1933, the Sheng Bao Monthly (申報月) in Shanghai published a special issue on “The Modernization of China”.[3] This publication showed that Chinese people used the term “modernization” to describe the cultural confrontation. As Chinese intellectuals and even the masses were forced to recognize the military power and political strength of western imperialism, there was a concomitant awakening of national consciousness. The western educated backgrounds of social elite also compelled them to acknowledge the serious backwardness of the country in areas such as democracy, science, and the military. With the aim of reconstituting a new Chinese culture through, paradoxically, wholesale westernization in order to save the country, Chinese intellectuals, thinkers, and educators, brought about a series of cultural reforms. Xiao Youmei’s notable contributions to institute a new music education system and promote the New Music Movement for modern China were some of the fruits of these cultural reforms.
[1] He Xiaoping, “The Background Behind the Formation of Chinese Music Backwardness Theory (中國音樂落後論的形成背景),” Journal of Music Research, 2 (1993): 8.
[2] On May 4, 1919, nearly three thousand university students protested in the street of Beijing against the decision that despite China being a victor in World War I , Japan – rather than Germany – could take control of the province of Shandong . For a comprehensive study of the May Fourth Movement, see Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964), “Introduction.”
[3] The headline of the Sheng Bao Monthly is cited from a secondary source. See Jiang Binghai, “The Cultural Tradition of China and Modernization,” in Chinese Cultural Traditions and Modernization: Chinese Philosphical Studies, X, Wang Miaoyang, George F. Mclean et al ed. (Washington D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1997), 43.
To be continued............ 待續........
David Leung (theorydavid)
2011-02-08 (published)