In Our Time: The May Fourth Movement

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the violent protests in China on 4 May 1919 over the nation's humiliation in the Versailles Treaty after the First World War. China had supported the Allies, expecting to regain the German colonies on its territory, but the Allies and China's leaders chose to give that land to Japan instead. To protestors, this was a travesty and reflected much that was wrong with China, with its corrupt leaders, division by warlords, weakness before Imperial Europe and outdated ideas and values. The protest has since been seen as a watershed in China's development in the 20th century, not least as some of those connected with the movement went on to found the Communist Party of China a few years later