Transnational Educational and Cultural Interaction Before and During the May Fourth Era: The Chinese Francophile Lobby and the Sino-French Connection

Abstract

This article highlights the significance of an ambitious transnational project orchestrated by a group of Chinese Francophile intellectuals active in France from the turn of the twentieth century to the early 1920s (the Chinese Francophile lobby) who aimed to enhance Sino-French educational and cultural interaction, in the process effecting a fundamental moral transformation of both Chinese workers and students symbolized by the agenda of work-study that they promoted in Chinese-language journals published in France. These initiatives have tended to be overlooked by historians of the Fourth period, who primarily focus on key Fourth journals and newspapers published in China, a small coterie of intellectuals (both radical and conservative) based in elite Chinese educational institutions such as Peking University, student/worker demonstrations and strikes in Chinese urban centers and treaty ports, and intellectual and student networks and organizations within China itself. Illuminating the significance of the Chinese Francophile lobby widens the scope of the so-called May Fourth era both temporally and spatially.