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A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World (Making of the Modern World) 60322nd Edition

by Rana Mitter (Author)

4.2 40 ratings

Part of: Making of the Modern World (7 books)

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In this powerful new look at modern China, Rana Mitter goes back to a pivotal moment in Chinese history to uncover the origins of the painful transition from pre-modern to modern. Mitter identifies May 4, 1919, as the defining moment of China's twentieth-century history. On that day, outrage over the Paris peace conference triggered a vast student protest that led in turn to "the May Fourth Movement." Just seven years before, the 2,000-year-old imperial system had collapsed. Now a new group of urban, modernizing thinkers began to reject Confucianism and traditional culture in general as hindrances in the fight against imperialism, warlordism, and the oppression of women and the poor. Forward-looking, individualistic, and embracing youth, this "New Culture movement" made a lasting impact on the critical decades that followed. Throughout each of the dramatically different eras that followed, the May 4 themes persisted, from the insanity of the Cultural Revolution to China's recent romance with space-age technology.

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ISBN-10

019280605X
ISBN-13

978-0192806055
Edition

60322nd
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

August 25, 2005
Part of series

Making of the Modern World
Language

English
Dimensions

10 x 7.01 x 0.43 inches
Print length

384 pages
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A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World (Making of the Modern World)

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Introducing 20th century Chinese history

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2022

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A good book for newcomers to Chinese history, who are interested in understanding today's People's Republic of China.

Understanding the Chinese cultural revolution

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2017

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In A Bitter Revolution, Rana Mitter looks into China’s past to explain how modern China developed. He chooses as his focus the May Fourth Movement of 1919, which he feels was a pinnacle moment during which Chinese students and intellectuals eager to modernize China looked outward to the West and beyond to applaud democracy and science while rejecting their own cultural past. Mitter’s argument is that the “ghost” of the May Fourth Movement lingered as an undertone to China’s bumpy road to modernization, and that ideas of the May Fourth Movement remained a constant, though their meanings transformed and differed in importance as various parties and people interpreted and used them (xi). Mitter looks away from the development of the Chinese Communist Party as the turning point toward modernity. Instead, he places the formation of the CCP as part of the May Fourth Movement’s legacy, though not its inevitable conclusion. Mitter focuses on what he considers the more formative years of the development of modernity in China: the 20s, 40s, 60s, and 80s. However, Mitter does not ignore the events that fall outside of those decades, briefly looking at events such as the war with Japan in the 30s and the Hundred Flowers Campaign of the late 50s. Mitter provides a narrative background of the events of May 4, 1919 in order to describe larger issues of the May Fourth Movement. Students and intellectuals were struggling to make sense of a modern world that subjected them to imperialism and unfair treaties. When the Versailles Treaty of World War I gave German land in China to the Japanese, many Chinese were enraged. They pinpointed that the source of their problems was a traditional Confucian culture that kept them from modernizing.

Mitter approaches the exact date in which the ideas surrounding the May Fourth Movement took shape with caution, and rather than try to fix a date he chooses instead to insist that it was the “atmosphere and mood” that defined the era, not clearly defined dates (19). This complicates his argument because spirit and mood are hard to quantify and define with certainty. Mitter admits, “the May Fourth period did not spring up from nowhere” and enumerates previous reform and change (22). Yet this would suggest that the May Fourth Movement happened along a trajectory, albeit not a straight or stable one, and was therefore not as watershed as Mitter makes it out to be. Though it would ultimately be no less important, it would be less isolated as the starting point of modernity. Yet Mitter sufficiently illustrates how the May Fourth Movement developed out of its social and political context, and why it was such a powerful movement. Mitter addresses his geographical limitations in chapter two. The story he tells is largely one of urban youth and university intellectuals. The two primary cities of the May Fourth Movement were Beijing and Shanghai because they were where universities thrived, intellectuals flocked, and young people came in contact not only with the West, but also with the effects of imperialism and modernism.

The atmosphere and mood that Mitter explores was therefore one of a very limited scope, encompassed by small groups of people who did not reflect wider ideas and standards within the whole of China. It must be noted that the largest portion of the Chinese population is unaccounted for. Mitter chooses four individuals to exemplify the "different facets of the era," and how the May Fourth Movement included "a wide variety of attitudes and ideas" that questioned Chinese culture, used mass media, and tried to reconcile nationalism with class and gender (54). His choice in selecting female writer Ding Ling is a contribution to the study of Chinese women and gender. There is one error in continuity found in Mitter's numbers. When discussing readership of Zou Taofen's newspaper, Life, he states the readership was at a record of 200,000 when Nationalists shut it down. Later, Mitter states the readership numbering 1.5 to 2 million (56-57, 63). Though he may be accounting for people who did not subscribe but read the magazine, he does not provide rationale for such a large difference in numbers.

Chapter three attempts to describe what life was like for the youth of the New Culture and the May Fourth Movement. For the Chinese of this era, foreign imports abounded, youth no longer deferred to the wisdom of the elderly, women were more independent and involved in the workforce, free love reigned, print disseminated ideas, people sought business ventures through which to "save China," science and technology were considered a way forward, and individualism was prized (70). It was a time of new culture and opportunity without the restrictions of Confucian values. It would be an overly optimistic picture had Mitter left it at that, but he shows that many Chinese struggled to define their new boundaries. Zou Taofen had a popular advice column in Life, which betrayed the level of anxiety youth felt in their search for new identities. In trying to explain what the spirit of the times entailed, Mitter makes more than one comparison to the American 60s (99, 105). While it is a good comparison to make to understand the essential spirit of new freedoms and ideas, the cultural values implied are not so easily transferred. The era died, according to Mitter, for two reasons: the Japanese invasion and world depression (99-100). The spirit of the May Fourth Movement would not return fully until the 80s, detouring during Communist era. Chapter four delves into the more political aspects of the May Fourth Movement, what people thought about new political realities, and how people saw themselves globally. Mitter attempts to address the unique and complex arrangement of Chinese politics to make a few important points. First, the Nationalists should not be secondary to the Communists, and both used rhetoric of the May Fourth Movement in their ideologies. Second, party and political identification was weak among the mass population, even among the May Fourth Movement. Third, while Communists saw themselves as the inevitable end of the May Fourth Movement, China could have taken numerous paths toward modernity. Fourth, that the Chinese modified outside models from the West, Eastern Europe, and other countries like India and Turkey. Fifth, that Confucianism did not end because of the May Fourth Movement, and continued afterward (103-108, 114, 129).

Mitter also answers the question of why China and Japan developed so differently. Mitter cites many differences: the Japanese wanted to overcome the West while China did not, Japan retained a hint of mysticism and a respect for their past while China focused on nationalism and modernity, and Japan was less influenced by the West while China had many years of direct influence through imperialism (120-122). However, what Mitter does not explain is why things that should have seemingly stunted Japan actually assisted it, while China, which by all rights should have modernized first under their strict tenants to do so, did not. Mitter takes a dark turn in chapter five, giving quick histories of China throughout the 30s during the invasion of Japan. Due to the immediacy of crisis, people could not afford to think of issues of free thought and love, and sidelined May Fourth ideology. Out of necessity, China began to turn inward and lose the cosmopolitanism that punctuated the May Fourth Movement. Pluralism and the open forum for debate vanished. It was also during this time that the Nationalists and Communists battled with the Communists the final victors (155-157, 184). Mitter rewrites the traditional interpretation of the Nationalists by insisting that they were more than a mere dark blotch in Chinese history, but rather they were thrust into a time of chaos with little resources and organization. Their undoing was not an inevitable failure on their part, but rather it was logical given the circumstances. With Mao in power, Mitter moves on to issues surrounding Mao and the Chinese Communist Party both in internal and external policy. Not only did Mao institute his disastrous Hundred Flowers and Great Leap Forward, but Communist China came to power just as the Cold War sparked international tension and forced Mao to insulate China from the outside. Self-sufficiency was vital and Mao saw weakness in lingering elements of the past, which he attempted to stamp out with his Cultural Revolution (190-198). Mitter gives an accurate sense of the chaos and fervor of the time, and of Mao's unique personality. Mitter also fuses together Mao's seemingly opposed vision of China to May Fourth beliefs, though they are hard to reconcile in his argument when Mitter himself says that the Communist era was absent May Fourth ideals (198).

Chapter six continues with Mao, the Cultural Revolution, and the Cold War. Both the May Fourth Movement and the Cultural Revolution wanted to stamp out the influence of China's cultural past and exalt youth, but the Cultural Revolution saw this to fruition through violence. Mitter feels it was a "disorientation" of May Fourth. Mao’s policies were also, in part, influenced by the Cold War and the "either/or" dynamic of it. Mao thought in black and white because the world was thrust into two opposing camps (200-201, 217, 229-230, 237, 240). Mitter contributes to the overall historiography of China with his analysis of the language of violence, and how the Communist era was a time in which language held great power over a person's fate and livelihood (208-209). The analysis of the youth who made up the Red Guard is also an interesting piece of psychoanalytical history. It illustrates the extents that people went in order to avoid the negative effects of being labeled a term that had a negative connotation. Mitter also presents Mao as the Chinese counterpart to the Soviet "machine man" who identified technological power with virility. This is also a good illustration of the complexity of the Chinese psychology of power because Mao rejected the help of Soviets, though technological advance could not have happened without Soviet support (237). Mitter then takes the reader forward in time to the 80s and the so-called New Era, when the true spirit of the May Fourth Movement was revitalized. After the death of Mao, China began to look outward again, and the West had a notable influence on culture, which made the New Era mirror that of the New Culture generation, anxieties included. Those involved in the movement made an explicit link between their movement and the past by stating that it was their mission to continue the spirit of May Fourth. Mitter notes that one of the major differences between the two was that the New Era did not feel it had to "save China" because warlords and imperialism no longer existed (245, 248-254, 259, 275). However, there is a lot to be said about post-Communist and post-xenophobic recovery, and the extent people felt the past was going to hurt progress and necessitate a "saving." Mitter chooses media to express the Chinese mindset of the time, using the book The Ugly Chinaman and a documentary Heshang. The Ugly Chinaman placed blame for Chinese troubles on something negative passed down through culture that stunted development, which mirrored the May Fourth rejection of the past. Heshang, highly controversial, expressed through nature scenes a conclusion that China needed to abandon its "yellow" past for the "blue" West (263-265).

Mitter's final chapter focuses on events post-Tian'anmen Square. It was not long after the bloody end of the 1989 showdown that Communism throughout Europe began to collapse. China decided to "reinvent itself as a developing state," and rapidly modernize in response to a bid for the Olympic games (287, 290-291). China began to embrace its past again, which the May Fourth and New Era had rejected as destructive, making them more like Japan during its years of development. People increasingly began to support the government, and the government, while still careful to monitor certain behavior, allowed people more freedom to create and be their own definition of patriotic. Many began to see the government as too complacent rather than too repressive. Mitter states that China's uniqueness may be in that it avoided options that seemed too risky in a time of crisis, such as democracy, yet undertook large-scale technological projects such as the Three Gorges Dam despite the protest of outside powers (299, 303, 308-310). In this way, the spirit of science from the May Fourth Movement, also part of Mao's projects, survived on as official practice. According to Mitter, the most important legacy of May Fourth was that it showed China that it could survive with a variety of opinions and possibilities (313).

Mitter aptly surmises that China is still at a point of transition and still struggling with many of the issues of modernity and globalization. China is not exceptional in that it is a product of its own past, but China's struggle with modernity is more contemporary than in other parts of the world. Bitter Revolution is by no means a comprehensive history of modern China. However, the events and people Mitter chooses to expound upon are so thoroughly explained that no reader will be left with gaps. One need not be a scholar of Chinese history to understand Mitter's arguments because he formulates them with great detail. He further assists his readers through a short chronology and pronunciation guide, though the chronology misses many key events that Mitter himself discusses. A glossary of concepts, people, and groups would have been useful to the novice of Chinese history. Mitter's lack of a proper bibliography, as well as his narrative style, point to Bitter Revolution being more of a popular history, though it is not without scholarly merit. He is careful to cite his sources through endnotes, though it is notable that the majority of his sources are secondary. Nevertheless, Mitter does use primary sources such as newspapers, pamphlets, novels, and firsthand accounts. Mitter unfortunately succumbs to Western-centric interpretations, though he balances them out with internal Chinese matters so that he does not excessively overstate the impact of the West. Nevertheless, he does not use enough caution when he makes statements like, "the most violent challenge to Confucian values... was the introduction of two western systems of thought... capitalist modernity and Christianity (17)." Fortunately, Mitter does not rely solely on the Western impact interpretation, noting the variety of influences on China from within and outside, giving a balanced and global assessment. Overall, Mitter successfully traces May Fourth thought throughout Chinese history, pinpointing its changes and deviations, in a book useful to scholars and students.

3 people found this helpful

China from 1919 to the 21st Century.

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2005

This is a well written and well researched book by the young university lecturer Rana Mitter at Oxford. He is also the author of at least two other books on China. The author attempts to tell us the 20th century story of China's political awakening by tracing many of the historical figures and writers to the small number of universities primarily in Beijing and Shanghai and the demonstrations of May 1919 in Beijing.

The book starts around the time of the May 4, 1919 demonstrations or what the author calls the first Tian'anmen Square (gate) demonstrations. The small number of protestors served as a touch stone or reference to future generations of Chinese as the century unfolded. In summary that group wanted to free China of its past ties to Confucianism and replace it with science and democracy. The author tells us the story of the development of China from that date and we read about a general "awakening" and the recent history of modern China. At the time of the 1919 demonstrations China was fragmented politically and had only 28,000 university students. Although the Nationalists had seized power, it lacked its own central authority and unifying government and was dominated by war lords and by colonial powers, the latter at its major seaports. The author believes that the students from the 1919 era and their contemporaries or those that followed in the decade after - the 1920s - set in motion the ideas, the political philosophies, and provided the leaders that changed China into a more modern state.

The modernization of China sharply lagged behind its Asian neighbor Japan, who started to modernize in the early 1850's building steel plants, railways, shipyards, and universities, in a unified effort among banks, the government including the military, and industry. China on the other hand remained fragmented, divided, a vast agrarian society with its costal cities dominated by colonial powers. The universities and intellectual base were very small by any standards, and for a country of the size of China were very small. In some ways China was similar to Russia in that it had a revolutionary spirit and rural unrest but a political vacuum. There was a general yearning for a new government or economic system and the communists filled that void almost by default after the Nationalists were weakened by WWII.

In any case the author tells a very detailed story about the people and ideas of the early café societies in Shanghai and the Beijing University that produced many popular writers and famous politicians including Mao and others. The author tells us about other writers such as Zou Raofen, Lu Xun, and the woman Ding Ling who wrote her "Miss Sophie" about her inner thoughts including sexuality in her writings, and about popular magazines such as "Life". The author goes on to lead us through the Nationalist movement, the communists, the invasion by Japan, the rise of the communists, the great leap forward, the cultural revolution, the failures of communism, the 1989 Tian'anmen massacre, etc. Instead of science and democracy China suffered through a series of crisis with as many as 60 million or more dead by famine and wars, with the people sometimes turning to cannibalism. Through all of the politicians and writers including Mao and others would reference the spirit of May 1919 although their own actions were no longer a reflection of the early ideals.

The book is just over 300 pages in medium font and gives a good introduction and overview to the development of modern China with many details on writers and political figures. As an added feature he includes nine pages of comments on follow up readings - mostly academic books or histories or other popular books - and mostly in English divided by category.

I enjoyed the book but thought it a bit short. Still it is worth 5 stars.

6 people found this helpful

Dustin D. Ooley

Modern Chinese Culture

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2009

The premise of this book is that everything happening in China after May 4, 1919 and the signing of the discriminatory Versailles Treaty was essentially influenced by that event. This is fairly readable and offers a lot of modern Chinese history, though I don't believe Mitter carefully relates events back to the movement, nor do I think he is able to clearly explain what the movement meant for the Chinese. Part of the reason for this is the difficulty of understanding Chinese culture. I would only recommend the book to those who have spent some time in China and understand the culture.

That being said, I am a little upset that this review may drag the total stars to "4," when it really deserves 4.5 stars. It goes into details about authors who emerged around or after the May 4th movement and discusses how they were a part of the movement. This kind of analysis can't be found elsewhere unless you read specific books about those authors.

If you want to focus on modern Chinese history, I would recommend Spence's "Modern China," which covers everything from the fall of the Ming Dynasty to present day.

3 people found this helpful

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Denis Urval

Qu'est-ce que l'esprit du 4 mai?

Reviewed in France on November 21, 2014

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Pendant le premier conflit mondial, la Chine s’engage aux côtés des Alliés (d’où le « Corps des travailleurs chinois », employés en Europe, en particulier en France, à remplacer dans les usines les ouvriers mobilisés) et déclare officiellement la guerre à l’Allemagne et à l’Autriche-Hongrie en 1917. Qui s’en souvient, d’ailleurs ? La jeune République de Chine découvre ensuite au congrès de Versailles qu’elle ne tirera de son choix, finalement, aucun bénéfice. Humiliation suprême, les possessions allemandes en Chine sont confiées au Japon. Le 4 mai 1919, l’indignation née de l’ingratitude et de la condescendance des Alliés provoque à Pékin une manifestation d’étudiants et d’intellectuels. La maison d’un ministre jugé-pro-japonais est envahie et saccagée. Cette réaction connaît un écho dans d’autres grandes villes. Progressistes, nationalistes, lettrés d’un nouveau genre n’ont désormais qu’une idée : que leur pays, et le statut de leur pays évoluent décisivement vers le mieux. C’est ce qu’on désigne comme « mouvement du 4 mai ».

L’historien oxonien Rana Mitter a publié en 2014 China’s war with JapanChina's War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival (autre titre: Forgotten AllyForgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945). Dix ans plus tôt, il avait déjà publié ce livre d’une portée plus générale encore, « Une révolution amère ». Quel en est exactement l’objet ? Ce n’est pas un livre sur « La Chine au 20ème siècle » sans plus de spécification, qui voudrait tout passer en revue en 300 pages. Mais ce n’est pas non plus un livre simplement dédié au 4 mai comme à un épisode particulier de cette histoire. Le véritable objet du livre, c’est l’idée de modernité, en tant qu’elle habite la vie politique en Chine depuis le début du 20ème siècle. Une Chine moderne doit-elle rompre entièrement avec ses traditions culturelles, et en particulière avec le confucianisme ? Si elle importe ses modèles de l’Occident, que doit-elle importer plus particulièrement : la science ? Des modes de vie moins contraints ? Une forme de démocratie pluraliste ? La Chine peut-elle se changer sans se perdre, s’inspirer des autres nations tout en redevenant elle-même ? Depuis, ces questions n’ont pas cessé d’occuper le devant de la scène et d’agiter les esprits.

Le 4 mai est une date qui a conservé une très forte charge symbolique dans la représentation qu’a la Chine de son histoire contemporaine. S’il est assez facile de s’entendre sur les faits, il l’est bien moins de se mettre d’accord sur la nature des aspirations qui étaient celles de ceux qui ont participé au mouvement. Rana Mitter a voulu dans ce livre contester la vision officielle de l’histoire chinoise, qui fait du communisme chinois l’héritier naturel du mouvement du 4 mai dans un cheminement « inéluctable » de l’histoire. Ce qu’il montre, c’est la diversité des réponses apportées dans les années 20 aux questions posées (qui ne passaient pas toute par l’idée de la rupture et de la table rase), c’est le bouillonnement des idées et l’invention de nouveaux modes de vie, c’est la variété des formes que pouvaient prendre la nouvelle exaltation du « moderne », du « nouveau » de la « jeunesse », une jeunesse devenue une valeur et un contre-modèle. Derrière les figures les plus connues, comme Lu Xun ou Chen Duxiu, il évoque d’autres personnages emblématiques de l’époque, comme Hu Shi, un disciple de John Dewey qui devait finalement suivre les nationalistes à Taiwan, l’écrivaine Ding Ling et ses héroïnes d’un nouveau genre, Zou Taofen, le créateur d’un journal à succès, Life, ou Du Zhongyuan, qui avait voulu se dédier en Mandchourie à la fabrication de porcelaines capables de rivaliser avec les produits d’importation. Un des intérêts du livre est de faire revivre une Chine qui se cherche, ses lieux de sociabilité et d’ébullition intellectuelle (l’ancien campus de l’Université Beida à Pékin), ses paysages urbains avec la polarité Pékin-Shanghai, le rôle de la presse, le rôle des voyages en Occident et au Japon dans la formation des nouveaux modes de pensée. Age de découverte des possibles, l’époque du 4 mai est décrite aussi comme un âge d’anxiété : que mettre à la place du vieux monde ? Comment inventer de nouvelles relations entre hommes et femmes dans la société en train de naître ?

Impossible de comprendre la Chine contemporaine sans repenser à l’héritage du 4 mai : que ce soit les manifestations étudiantes de 1989 et leur épilogue tragique à TiananmenMémoires : Un réformateur au sommet de l'Etat chinois, elles qui devaient en quelque sorte revendiquer contre le pouvoir en place l’héritage de 1919 et en payer le prix, le 4 juin 1989 répondant au 4 mai 1919The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited. Que ce soit aujourd’hui la réhabilitation officielle de Confucius en Chine populaire à l’ère où le parti au pouvoir est obsédé par la stabilité sociale : il est tout de même savoureux que dès les années 30, le mouvement « révolutionnaire » du Guomindang, l’ennemi juré du PC chinois, se soit essayé à donner vie à un confucianisme laïc avec son mouvement de la « nouvelle Vie », pour répondre à des questions socio-politiques en partie similaires.

Le livre de Rana Mitter, enrichi d’une bibliographie à la fois très substantielle et ciblée qui permet de faire le point sur les études antérieures, est l’histoire d’une sensibilité inquiète, d’idées ébauchées, d’aspirations toujours renaissantes. Il nous parle d’une histoire culturelle et politique complexe et nous aide à nous retrouver dans son labyrinthe.

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petal fluff

bought for A level history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2014

Verified Purchase

Got this to help my son with his A level history. He found it very helpful and his teacher said it was a good reference book for the subject matter.

MRS IONA C CROZIER

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2015

Verified Purchase

Great book .. Highly recommend it..

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