(1891–1962), Chinese intellectual. Born in Jixi, Anhui Province, Hu Shi was China's leading liberal scholar and educator of his time. Hu laid an important foundation for the 1919 May 4th Movement with an essay published in 1917 in the Chinese journal Xin Qing Nian (New Youth), which advocated the avoidance of the classical language and the adoption of the vernacular in literature. Chang Shi Ji (The Trials), his collection of poetry published in March 1920, was the first noticeable attempt at vernacular poetry in modern China. During the May 4th period, Hu criticized Confucianism and called for individualism and women's liberation. From 1917 to 1948, Hu worked at Beijing University at intervals, serving as the chair of various departments, academic dean, dean of humanities, and university president. The framework he designed in 1922 for the Chinese school system, from primary school to college, remained in practice until the early 1950s. He died as president of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, which position he had held since 1958.
Hu studied at Cornell (1910–1914) and Columbia (1915–1917, awarded a Ph.D. in 1927), served as China's ambassador to the United States (1938–1942), and resided in the United States from 1949 to 1958. A student of the West, he promoted Western ideas in China in an attempt to better serve the country. However, his advocacy of the total Westernization—reworded later as Internationalization—of China in his earlier years has remained controversial.
Further Reading
Chou Min-chih. (1984) Hu Shih and Intellectual Choice in Modern China. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Grieder, Jerome B. (1970) Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Literature in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Zhu Wenhua. (1991) Hu Shi Pingzhuan (The Life and Times of Hu Shi). Chongqing, China: Chongqing Press.
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