“Single Sparks” and Legacies: An Eventful Account of the May Fourth Movement

Abstract

AbstractThe watershed in modern Chinese politics known as the May Fourth Movement (1919) offers insights into how a single protest event can quickly diffuse to other regions, draw in new participants and produce legacies in contentious politics. This article examines the May Fourth protests from the perspective of “eventful sociology” – an approach that examines how protests, repression and other contingent events link together to bring about landmark political episodes. It traces the sequence of protest and repression events in Beijing and draws on an original database of protest and repression events in Shanghai to emphasize the haphazard sequencing of actions and information flows that led the Chinese government to reverse its stance and concede to protestors’ demands. An eventful account illustrates how past protest sequences can produce a long-term impact on subsequent protest events. It also calls for greater awareness of “single sparks” that initiate protest sequences and unexpected political outcomes.