With the May Fourth Movement, Chinese intellectuals launched themselves on a crusade to transform their countrymen. They were convinced that something was rotten with being Chinese and searched for evils inside what they called their “national characteristics.” Here again, they drew inspiration from Americans. The most influential treatise on the Chinese in the late nineteenth century was written by an American. Arthur H. Smith was a missionary who fought on the side of the Union during the Civil War and in 1872 moved to China to preach for the Congregationalist church. He stayed in China for
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