Decline, Fall, and Aftermath of the Qing Empire 117
iron hand; Yan Xishan controlled the northwest province of Shanxi,
where he promoted public morality and industrialization.
With nearly complete fragmentation of power, the central govern-
ment had little control of the areas outside the capital, Beijing, and no
way to collect taxes from the nation as a whole. During World War I,
Chinese businessmen were able to begin some successful modern indus-
tries because Westerners were so preoccupied with the war in Europe.
Japan took advantage of World War I by issuing to Yuan Shikai’s govern-
ment a list of “21 Demands” in 1915, demands that would have given
Japan de facto control of the Chinese government. When public protests
broke out against Japan, the Japanese dropped their most outrageous
demands and settled for increased economic rights and privileges.
After the United States, Britain, and France defeated Germany, end-
ing World War I, the victors at the Versailles peace negotiations decided
that the former German-held concessions in north China would be
turned over directly to Japan. News of this decision hit Chinese stu-
dents, professors, and businessmen like a bolt of lightning. The Chinese
had allied with the United States, Britain, and France in World War I
and had sent 100,000 workers to Europe to support the allied pow-
ers. Woodrow Wilson had taken the United States into World War I
declaring his idealistic desire to make the world safe for democracy and
to promote self-determination for all countries of the world. For the
Western democracies to reward Japan with formerly German property
in China struck all informed Chinese as the height of hypocrisy, remi-
niscent of the Opium War being justifi ed as a defense of “free trade.”
Word of this decision reached Beijing on the evening of May 3,
1919, and the next day, 3,000 Chinese students marched to the Gate of
Heavenly Peace in front of the Forbidden City to protest the Versailles
peace treaty. They marched to the home of a pro-Japanese government
offi cial and looted and burned it to the ground. Two dozen protesters
were arrested, and in the following months students, professors, busi-
nessmen, and workers all organized protests and anti-Japanese strikes
and boycotts. The May Fourth Movement came to be the name for
these protests as well as a whole movement promoting cultural change
that had begun already several years before.
Four years earlier, in 1915, two Beijing University professors, Chen
Duxiu and Hu Shi, had begun a new journal called New Youth. In
the fi rst issue, Chen wrote an essay calling on Chinese young people
to reject Chinese traditions, suggesting that they follow six principles:
(1) be independent, not servile; (2) be progressive, not conservative;
(3) be aggressive, not retiring; (4) be cosmopolitan, not isolationist;