China underwent massive change during the 20th century. It was a period of doing away with the old and bringing rise to the new. These changes were political, cultural, linguistic, and societal. The pragmatist philosopher Hu Shih was at the center of many of these debates and changes. Being a student of John Dewey, Hu applied pragmatist thinking to traditional ideas in chinese culture and critiqued them in favor of more modern and efficient ideas. Most famously, he critiqued classical Chinese language in exchange for a more modern vernacular language.
Despite pushing for progress and change, Hu Shih was very skeptical about marxism and it's rise in China. He saw too many similarities between people dogmatically following confucianism and people dogmatically following marxism. Ideologies, to Hu, are theories to be tested, not absolute truths. This led to much of his work being destroyed by the Chinese Communist party and unfortunately he has faded somewhat into obscurity.
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