What happened
Beijing students took to the streets on May 4, 1919. Protests, strikes, and boycotts spread to other cities, and China ultimately refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
Background
The Paris Peace Conference had decided to transfer Germany’s concessions in Shandong to Japan instead of returning them to China. The movement is inseparable from the broader New Culture Movement: the promotion of vernacular written Chinese (baihua) and the slogans “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” associated with Chen Duxiu.
Consequences
A generation was politicized. The movement’s intellectual currents fed both the reorganized Kuomintang and the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.