Investigating the concept of “person” (ren人) in contemporary China, especially the New Culture Movement, in terms of the concept of the “individual” and “individualism” provides an important perspective because this perspective offers insight on the differences between Chinese individualism and Western individualism. For example, Benjamin I. Schwartz gave an appraisal of Chen Duxiu who “persuasively argues in his essay that the ‘individualism’ of the May Fourth period, an individualism which at least for a time seemed to be not simply a utilitarian individualism but a kind of cri de coeur—a call for the liberation of the individual from all enmeshing coils of social relationship—was not in the end to produce what he regards as a solid base for the belief in the value of the individual as an end in himself. The protest against the oppression of the individual, in his view, was used as a weapon to smash older forms of authoritarianism but because it was not accompanied by any positive faith in the inviolability of the individual, it provided no bar against new forms of authoritarianism of the Left and Right. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that, for a brief moment in time in a very small circle of Chinese society it did lead some individuals to a kind of existential individualism.”