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While the Chinese students in the United States or those studying under Hu Shih paid more attention to cultural and educational problems, those in Japan trended in other directions, and their various activities produced divergent effects in China. Most of the Chinese students who went overseas before the May Fourth Movement went to Japan. These students primarily studied science during their stay in Japan, and when they returned, they provided much of the leadership of the May Fourth Movement. According to Chow, "they furnished, in the main, the militant elements, most of the leading creative writers and many of the revolutionary extremists including nationalists, socialists, and anarchists." (Chow 1960: 31)

The liberals in general veered away from politics and paid more attention to educational and cultural reforms, where as the leftists (in cooperation with the nationalists) favored direct political reform (Chow 1960: 222)

For those May Fourth intellectuals, it was evident that critical thinking of the individual is the foundation for a modern nation, but this belief was in contradiction with another more pressing need--national salvation. This was suggested by others such as Liang, who argued that China in the 1920s needed to stand up on her own two feet and not be eaten away by imperialism, before the Chinese should talk about individualism or enlightenment. The commitment by the May Fourth intellectuals to building a new cultural foundation based on education and individualism seemed too ideal. "Among Chinese liberals there seems to have been a widespread tendency to appreciate democracy more as an indispensable functioning part of a modern nation-state than as an institution to protect individual rights and liberties" (Ip 1991: 470) Such a generalization regarding the May Fourth movement in general by scholars might not sound too unreasonable, given the fact that during the May Fourth Movement, nationalistic concerns were paramount.

In time, the tension would force the anti-traditional new culture movement to give way to the ever changing political landscape. This happened especially during the 1930's where under the reactionary policies of the Nationalist party, liberalism as suggested by the May Fourth intellectuals was washed away by waves of uncritical nationalism carried out by the New Life movement. In the 1940s the war against the Japanese made any form of cultural reform become virtually impossible. In addition, the May Fourth intellectuals' attacks on traditional Chinese culture as being oppressive to the rights of individuals did not win support from many old scholar-officials of imperial times. The individual liberalization movement suggested by the those May Fourth intellectuals did not have the political, financial, and the required time to make an impact on the Chinese masses.