May Fourth Movement: Student demonstrations take place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan.

The May Fourth Movement was a pivotal cultural and political movement in early 20th-century China that began on May 4, 1919, sparked by student protests in Beijing against the Chinese government’s weak response to the Treaty of Versailles—specifically, the decision to allow Japan to retain territories in Shandong that had been surrendered by Germany. Beyond the immediate political outrage, the movement quickly evolved into a broader intellectual awakening that rejected traditional Confucian values in favor of science, democracy, and modernity. It mobilized a wide spectrum of society—students, workers, intellectuals—and laid the ideological groundwork for future revolutionary movements, including the rise of Chinese communism. The May Fourth Movement also marked a shift in Chinese literature and education, as vernacular Chinese (???) replaced classical Chinese in efforts to make learning more accessible and reflective of contemporary life.