In August 1924, the Chinese writer and poet Guo Moruo wrote to his friend Cheng Fangwu that "Marxism [was] the only truth of [their] times" (p. 38). In January 1923, Guo had written that he, andrnothers "worshipped Confucius [...] [who] was an ever-vigorous giant with great talent and perfect character, like Kant and Goethe" (p. 93). What had happened in the intervening months? In From the May Fourth Movement to Communist Revolution, Xiaoming Chen describes the development of Guo Moruo's thinking in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Guo initially sought a synthesis of some elements of Chinese and western intellectual traditions as a solution for his own predicaments, China's national and intellectual crisis, and what he saw as an international crisis. Latterly, he advocated a synthesis of Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism. The particular relevance in studying Guo Moruo s intellectual development, the author argues, lies in the fact that unlike many of his contemporaries, Guo was not resolutely opposed to Confucianism, but strove for a synthesis of Chinese tradition and western modernity (pp. 53, 93).
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