The May Forth Movement and the Boxers Rebellion

HST 2203-1

Tsui Ka Man, 徐嘉雯, 4129878

The fifth essay

Section One: Discuss the following statement:” The student participants of the May Forth Movement were loyal successors to the Boxers.”

The Boxers Rebellion and the May Forth movement were both called as the patriotic movement in China. However, they were differed from their motivations, patriotic actions and the consequences. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, I can not agree with the statement of “the student participants of the May Forth Movement were loyal successors to the Boxers”.

The vocabulary of “successor” means that a thing which followed next in order. Whereas the student participants of the May Forth Movement did not follow the Boxers in order, as they had different motivations at first. The Boxers Rebellion took place in the north of China in 1900. Taking the farmers as the main body of the mass anti-imperialist patriotic movement. In the beginning, they declared that “against the Qing Dynasty and supporting the Ming Dynasty” was their main purpose. After in the face of severe national crisis, the boxers started to against the imperialism and became anti-foreign. As far as I am concerned, the Boxers more focused on anti-foreigners rather than patriotic, which is because in the late Qing Dynasty, the introduction of foreign Catholicism and Protestantism endangered the Boxers’ influence on folk. Therefore, they had to rule out the foreign power and consolidate their influence in China. On the other hand, the May Forth Movement more focused on patriotic rather than anti-foreigners. The May Forth Movement broke out in China in 1919, which took the students as the main body of the patriotic demonstrations. The Versailles decision on Shantung and the Chinese government’s weak response to the treaty aroused the Chinese people’s anger, especially the intelligentsias. They gathered in front of Tiananmen Square and announced “to fight back the ruling power, and remove the traitors in the country (外爭國權，內除國賊)”. The student participants were not as similar with the Boxers, whose struggle would not involve their own interests (the Boxers’ struggle was partly in order to consolidate their power). In general, at first, the Boxers Rebellion and the May Forth Movement owned different motivations. The former one was given priority to with exclusive, the latter one was patriotism. Therefore, the student participants of the May Forth Movement were not the loyal successors to the Boxers.

Secondly, the student participants had different patriotic actions with the Boxers. The major participants of the Boxers Rebellion were farmers. They were low-educational and knew nothing about the outside world so they only knew how to use the violence to anti-foreigners. They fired to foreign embassies, destroyed the railway, killed and attacked hundreds of foreigners even the Chinese Christians and other innocent people. Their ignorance and violent behavior made the poor people’s life became more difficult, meanwhile also made the Western power had an excuse to against China and looked down on Chinese. On the other hand, the major participants of the May Forth Movement were students and intelligentsias. They were high educational and had deep understanding of the outside world. They tended to use peaceful means rather than violence. They did not destroy any foreign churches and interests, except fired the Cao Rulin’s houses. The May Forth Movement only against the corrupt China and Japan not all of the foreign countries. They were rational and peaceful. In conclusion, the May Forth Movement in a rational patriotic, but the Boxer Rebellion was violence patriotism. Therefore, the student participants of May Forth Movement did not follow the Boxers in order. They were not the loyal successors to the Boxers.