This study is focused on political and cultural controversies about narratives and discourses of nation states in early Republican China. The main participants of this controversies are Xinqingnian(新靑年)'s Chen-Duxiu(陳獨秀) and Dongfangzazhi(東方雜誌)'s Du-Yaquan(杜亞泉). Their debates presented a kind of public sphere in the intellectual society of modern china. The competitions and conflicts of discourses at discussion space symbolized ideological meaning of the public sphere.
Chen-Duxiu's Xinqingnian, as discussed in this paper, had grasped a crucial link between shanghai and beijing's public sphere. This paper makes a comparative study of a historical views and recognitions about nation states between Chen and Du. Their differences of recognitions heavily influenced in their each political positions and practices. In this process, we can find a formation of many kinds of intellectual groups and their differences. This paper reverberates Benjamin Schwartz's reference: “An intellectual history of China should be concerned not simply with ‘Chinese thought' but with Chinese thinking and thinking within the framework of historical situations.”
In fact, this paper is most interested in the changing process of discourse's hegemony. The main subject of this paper have originated from the search to find what enabled Xinqingnian discourse's hegemony at May forth's public sphere. This paper attempts to explain their psychological and narrative strategy. This paper also explains a part of the bigger understanding the May forth's public sphere as a whole.