Is the New Culture Movement a complete negation of traditional Chinese culture?

No.

The value orientation of the New Culture Movement is anti-tradition, which is not bad. But the New Culture Movement did not come out of nowhere. In addition to the external conditions of the impact and influence of Western culture, there was also the soil provided by the internal evolution of Chinese humanistic traditions.

The New Culture Movement did a lot of work in "organizing the national heritage." Hu Shi's "Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy" and textual research on Chinese classical novels, Lu Xun's "A Brief History of Chinese Novels", discussions on "ancient history" represented by Gu Jiegang, and Chen Duxiu and Qian Xuantong's philology research can all be called "organizing National Heritage" achievements.

Their working methods are scientific and modern, and are greatly influenced by Western academics. Therefore, their work of "organizing national heritage" is often inferior to many old-style scholars in terms of methods, vision, and topic selection. place.

Extended information:

The relationship between the New Culture Movement and Chinese traditional culture:

The New Culture Movement proposed "re-evaluation of all values", which seems to be the next step. The slogan of the Western thinker Nietzsche is actually in the same vein as the "retro liberation" launched since the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.

Although there was a trend of criticizing tradition during the May Fourth period, and it was even very popular, we cannot say that the New Culture Movement at that time was a "rupture" in Chinese tradition. The ideal New Culture Movement of Cai Yuanpei and Hu Shi was China’s “Renaissance”.

The New Culture Movement criticized and abandoned the orthodox things of traditional culture. They chose the Qing Dynasty's simple learning methods, vernacular, classical novels, and operas. They studied the pre-Qin scholars and discovered the ideological value of Mozi. These not only show that they are in the tradition, but also carry forward and promote the Chinese humanistic tradition.

People's Daily Online-The May Fourth Movement was not a rupture in traditional culture