While China’s intellectuals throughout the twentieth century were defined in terms of their elite position and responsibility for the nation, this role was profoundly challenged after the crackdown on the democracy movement of 1989. In its aftermath, new groups of intellectuals emerged from grassroots society, devoted to constituting alternative forms of knowledge outside the academy: amateur historians researching the Mao era, amateur ethnographers using documentary films to investigate social issues, grassroots lawyers working with disenfranchised groups to build rights-awareness, and citizen bloggers and journalists challenging the state control of the public sphere. Although these groups have come under increasing pressure since 2012, their ideas continue to inspire new dynamics in China’s society today.

Sebastian Veg is a Professor (directeur d’études) of intellectual history and literature of 20th century China at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He has written on Chinese intellectuals from May Fourth to the present, the memory of the Mao era, and the democracy movement in Hong Kong. 

On April 12-13, 2019, David Wang (Harvard University) and Song Mingwei (Wellesley College) hosted “May Fourth @ 100: An International Symposium on China and the World, 1919-2019.” Bringing in scholars from across China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea, as well as North America and Europe, the two-day event featured presentations about topics ranging from the impact and legacy of the May Fourth movement on the Korean peninsula to the beginnings of the ex libris tradition and their later collection. The symposium features two keynote speakers. On the first day, Rudolph Wagner (Heidelberg University) spoke about “Reconstructing May Fourth: The Role of Communication, Propaganda, and International Actors,” while on the second day Chen Pingyuan (Peking University) delivered a lecture entitled “From ‘Touches of History’ to ‘Exercises in Thought’: My Views on May Fourth and May Fourth Studies.” Overall, the symposium featured 21 individual presentations by both junior and senior scholars representing the humanistic disciplines. Each day concluded with round table discussion; the first day represented the voices of established scholars in the field while the second day concluded with a panel of graduate students, the “new youth” of the field. The event was attended by approximately 100 people each day and all panels were followed by robust discussions between the audience and presenters.

Below are links to audio recordings of both keynote speeches, hosted by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard: https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/reconstructing-may-fourth-keynote-speech-by-rudolf-wagner; https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/may-fourth-keynote-speech-by-chen-pingyuan.