Main contents of the New Culture Movement

The New Culture Movement was an ideological and cultural revolution against tradition, Confucianism, and literature, initiated by Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu, Lu Xun, Qian Xuantong, Li Dazhao, Cai Yuanpei, and other Western-educated people.

As a vigorous ideological revolution, the main content of the New Culture Movement was centered on the "Four Advocates and Four Oppositions". The so-called "Four Advocates, Four Oppositions" are: advocating democracy and opposing dictatorship; advocating science and opposing superstition; advocating new morality and opposing old morality; and advocating new literature and opposing old literature.

In fact, the New Culture Movement was divided into the first and the second stages, with the first stage being essentially a struggle of the bourgeoisie's new culture against the old feudal culture, and the second stage being the theme of the advanced intellectuals' efforts to publicize Marxism.

The New Culture Movement was also a literary revolution, which began with the publication of Hu Shi's Ruminations on the Improvement of Literature and Chen Duxiu's Theory of Cultural Revolution in the New Youth.

The New Culture Movement represented the direction of advanced culture and prepared the ideological conditions for the establishment of the Chinese middle class. The New Culture Movement was also one of the important symbols of the transformation of the old democratic revolution into the new democratic revolution.