China Against the Decision of the Versailles Treaty – May 4 Movement. The State of China's International Environment and Changes in the System of International Relations in the Far East Region
Authors: Mencel Marian 
Published: June 2021

Decisions made after World War I at the Paris Peace Conference had serious political consequences on a global scale. In Europe, new state entities disintegrated and created, the balance of power of the main po-wers changed, with the United States of America taking the first posi-tion. A bipolar system of international relations developed gradually. It reached its final form after World War II. Under the influence of the idealistic vision of the world of American President, Woodrow Wilson, the League of Nations was created. It was a universal international organization the main task of which was to ensure the "territorial integrity and political independence” of its members and to supervise the implementation of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty, regulating the global principles of international political and economic relations. They were expressed by W. Wilson in the so-called "14 points", announced in Congress on January 8, 1918. However, China was not among the beneficiaries of the "new world order" despite the fact that the Middle Kingdom participated in the war on the side of the Entente countries. The decisions made during the Paris conference were against China's raison d'état. For this reason, the country was still an economic base for strengthening its position as superpowers, especially Japan, which had been granted the rights to German concessions in China. The public protest resulted in the revolutionary May 4 Movement, which spread from Beijing to all major cities of the Republic of China, revealing the new face of Chinese society.
The 100-year anniversary of these events gives rise to considerations aimed at determining the proper causes of the outbreak of the May 4 Movement and its impact on shaping internal social relations and changes occurring in the social and political space in China. The consi-derations presented in this lecture focused mainly on a synthetic appro-ach to the issue of changes occurring in the international environment, especially the policy of the powers towards China and phenomena obse-rved in Chinese society, resulting in the May 4 Movement. The material, published in subsequent volumes of "Studia Gdańskie. Wizje i rzeczywi-stość", is presented in four parts, due to the need to analyse a wide range of factors influencing the shaping of the social movement in China. In the first part, an attempt was made to indicate the conditions of the state of China's international environment and changes in the system of international relations in the Far East region in the period preceding the outbreak of World War I until its end. The changes observed in the Chinese political and economic system under the pressure of external factors and reactionary internal phenomena will be presented in the following part of the lecture. The third part will focus on the analysis of the phenomena occurring in Chinese society, especially in the context of the creation of civil society and the rejection of the Confucian tradition under the influence of liberal, socialist ideology and communism, of which the May 4 Movement was a consequence. The conclusion will involve an attempt to show the influence of the May 4 Movement on the socio-political phenomena seen during the rule of the Communist Party of China.