Young China in Europe: The lives and politics of the may fourth youth in France, 1919–23

This article highlights an important source of Chinese political radicalism in interwar Europe in the early nineteen-twenties. In contrast to current scholarship centred on the emergent Chinese Communist Party in this period, it examines the rise of both leftists and rightists in the community of Chinese work-study youth in Europe. Besides ideological inspiration, it argues that the different material conditions in which these students found themselves laid a significant foundation for the emergence of different political ideologies, expressed through the founding of the first Chinese communist organization in mid 1922 and the establishment of the Chinese Youth Party in late 1923.