Consequently, in these years, part of the gentry turned to Buddhism and
part to Christianity. Some of the middle class who had come under
European influence also turned to Christianity, regarding it as a part
of the European civilization they had to adopt. Others adhered to modern
philosophic systems such as pragmatism and positivism. Marxist doctrines
spread rapidly.

Education was secularized. Great efforts were made to develop modern
schools, though the work of development was continually hindered by the
incessant political unrest. Only at the universities, which became foci
of republican and progressive opinion, was any positive achievement
possible. Many students and professors were active in politics,
organizing demonstrations and strikes. They pursued a strong national
policy, often also socialistic. At the same time real scientific work
was done; many young scholars of outstanding ability were trained at the
Chinese universities, often better than the students who went abroad.
There is a permanent disagreement between these two groups of young men
with a modern education: the students who return from abroad claim to be
better educated, but in reality they often have only a very superficial
knowledge of things modern and none at all of China, her history, and
her special circumstances. The students of the Chinese universities have
been much better instructed in all the things that concern China, and
most of them are in no way behind the returned students in the modern
sciences. They are therefore a much more serviceable element.

The intellectual modernization of China goes under the name of the
"Movement of May Fourth", because on May 4th, 1919, students of the
National University in Peking demonstrated against the government and
their pro-Japanese adherents. When the police attacked the students and
jailed some, more demonstrations and student strikes and finally a
general boycott of Japanese imports were the consequence. In these
protest actions, professors such as Ts'ai Yuean-p'ei, later president of
the Academia Sinica (died 1940), took an active part. The forces which
had now been mobilized, rallied around the journal "New Youth" (_Hsin
Ch'ing-nien_), created in 1915 by Ch'en Tu-hsiu. The journal was
progressive, against the monarchy, Confucius, and the old traditions.
Ch'en Tu-hsiu who put himself strongly behind the students, was more
radical than other contributors but at first favoured Western democrac