Britannica Sources used in this answer

What reforms did Hu Shih propose in his 1917 article on literature?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Scene from Romance of the Three Kingdoms — Chinese literature *Zhang Fei on the Long Sloped Bridge Turning Away One Million Wei Troops with a Powerful Stare*, woodblock colour print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1884. It depicts a scene from the novel *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*.

In his 1917 article titled "Wenxue gailiang chuyi" ("Tentative Proposal for Literary Reform"), published in the magazine New Youth, Hu Shih advocated for a fundamental shift in Chinese literature.21

His primary proposal was to abandon the traditional classical language, which he viewed as a "dead" language that hampered the development and dissemination of new ideas. Instead, he called for the creation of a new national literature written in the vernacular, or baihua—the living, spoken "national language" (guoyu). Hu argued that this shift was essential to liberate literature from the constraints of rigid, archaic styles and to make it accessible to the people, thereby providing a flexible medium capable of expressing modern ideas.21

This proposal served as a foundational "call to arms" for the literary revolution that became a central component of the broader New Culture Movement.21