People of the Revolution and the USSR

Hu Shih

胡适
Liberalism and republicanism China China 1891–1962 ○ Heart attack

The liberal of the New Culture Movement who led the vernacular-language campaign and later served the Nationalists as a diplomat

A Columbia-trained pragmatist under John Dewey, he led the literary revolution that replaced classical Chinese with the written vernacular. A critic of both New Youth's Marxists and the Nationalist abandonment of constitutionalism, he died in Taipei in 1962.

A philosopher trained under John Dewey in the United States, he proposed literary reform in New Youth in 1917 and launched the vernacular-language movement. In the May Fourth years he urged “more study of problems, less talk of isms”, parting ways with Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu as they turned to Marxism. He was a professor and later president of Peking University and served as ambassador to the United States during the war with Japan. After 1949 he worked in the United States and Taiwan, while the mainland mounted a mass campaign against his thought in the 1950s. He died of a heart attack in Taipei.

Career timeline
  • 1917–1926Professor at Peking University
  • 1938–1942Ambassador of the Republic of China to the United States
  • 1946–1948President of Peking University