The May Fourth Movement, the KMT and the CCP

Abstract

In the last seventy years, in China as well as in the West, many theoretical treatises have been written as to why “Mr D” (Democracy) of the May Fourth Movement has failed to arrive and make his presence felt in the Central Kingdom.¹ Among the various theories on offer, the two most persuasive ones are the economic and the cultural deterministic arguments. Economists stress that, in Western experience, capitalism and democracy have developed hand in hand; without industrialization and high economic development there would have been no democratic political development and China simply has been too poor. With its per capita GDP in 1990 still less than US$300, measured against the scale of Walt Rostow’s (1962) economic-growth-based developmental theory, China just has not been, and is still not, in a position to become democratic.