China's New Culture Movement

which had started in the mid 1910s

was a response to the realities of modernity and the changes that resulted in China as international and domestic forces interacted in unforeseen ways. The thinkers that engaged in discussion and inquiry into the changes surrounding them

and thereby defining the movement

were given even more to ponder at the close of World War I. World War I was the first time the world as a whole had witnessed prolonged industrialized warfare and as a global event came to redefine the modern nation state

draw a striking blow to a number of feudal monarchies and reshape geographic borders across the globe. These monumental shifts were far reaching and difficult for any country or thinker living in that time to avoid. The western powers handling of the peace talks following the war

specifically the turnover of Germany's Chinese concession on the Shandong peninsula to Japan

spurred outrage

public discord and large scale demonstrations across the country. The following presents the different approaches employed by a number of professors at the Shanghai University-Ghent University joint workshop on The Great War and China's New Culture Movement

in examining the wide scope of effects resulting from the collision of these two events.