The 1898 reform movement was an effort at institutional change on the part of ranking literati close to the throne. Where it had been directed at the inherited political order, the intellectual campaign for a totally 'new culture', which was symbolized by the May Fourth demonstrations of 1919, was seen as an attack upon the traditional moral and social orders. Filtered through the interpretive matrix of reform cosmology, science and democracy appeared to be the material and social manifestations of a total cosmic order linked to the ultimate ends of ta-t'ung. The history of neo-traditionalism through the May Fourth period saw the gradual supplanting of the first connotation by the second. Between the reform and the movement, three neo-traditional currents may be discerned, each with its own strategy for adapting Confucianism and the classical heritage to modern conditions. They were the National Essence movement, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's call for 'new people' and modern relevance of the central spiritual symbols of Confucianism.

Many factors combined to create the great intellectual upsurge of 1919 and the early 1920s that in the Chinese fashion has been given a neutral numerical designation as the 'Five-four' movement. The main focus of this chapter is on themes and issues which were to dominate the discourse of the intellectual stratum during the May Fourth period and after. The grandest and most enduring theme of all is the theme of historical or evolutionary progress as first interpreted in the writings of the great pioneers like K'ang Yu-wei, Yen Fu, and T'an Ssu-t'ung. The Chinese Revolution of 1911 produced no social revolution. One of the more significant conflicts which emerged out of the winds of doctrine of the May Fourth period was the debate between Hu Shih, Li Ta-chao and others concerning the question of 'problems versus -isms'. Another outcome of the May Fourth movement was the whole 'neo-traditionalist' reaction against the 'totalistic iconoclasm' of the movement.