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This article reexamines the relationship between the May Fourth Movement and warlordism by questioning the long-held assumption that the movement was from its inception as anti-warlord as it was anti-imperialist. In particular, it shows that popular nationalism before and at the beginning of the May Fourth Movement received continual support from many provincial warlords under and beyond the nominal control of the Beijing government. It demonstrates how and why these provincial warlords endorsed the patriotism of the movement at the national and international levels, even as they suppressed radical protests in their political domains. This analysis uncovers the long-obscured fact that the May Fourth Movement succeeded with crucial support from such provincial warlords because of its broad nationalism and the disunity of warlord politics. This rediscovery also reveals how military involvement in the movement changed the trajectory of both warlord politics and anti-warlordism in modern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the rise of the True Jesus Church (TJC) as part of an emerging indigenous Chinese Christianity. Begun in 1917 under the influence of American Pentecostalism, the TJC developed into a lively popular sect with more than a million members by the 1990s. The birth of this independent and often antiforeign group coincided with, and was aided by, the surge of patriotism in the early Republican period and arguably constituted a religious expression of Chinese nationalism. More importantly, the TJC—with its messianic proclamations and bold displays of Pentecostal power—helped shape a twentieth-century Protestant millenarian movement in China amidst political disintegration, foreign aggression, and widespread suffering. Its growth signaled an evolution of popular religion in which Christianity joined local beliefs in supplying the core ideology of sectarian movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]