create women who would be equipped to “raise healthy and morally sound sons”, who would then help build a new China. So even though education was encouraged for women, it was not for their personal benefit but instead for the state and nation. Early New Women such as Hu Binxia, an early editor for The Ladies Journal, promoted in her articles the ideas of education to learn how to support a family and participate in the cult of domesticity. However, like minded male reformers to Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu promoted a very different kind of women for China’s changing political, social, and economic landscape pre-May Fourth era. Founder of the New Youth journal, Chen Duxiu called for gender and family reforms and pushed for the emancipation of women and the dismantling of the restrictive Confucian family system. Chen, like other radical-minded male intellectuals of his time, believed “women’s equality to be the hallmark of a modern civilization” and the strength behind a nation. Thus “customs of concubinage, foot binding, widow chastity, and female seclusion”, from these male intellectual's view points, needed to be eliminated to allow women to freely participate in the nation's rebuilding. While Chinese men at this time backed the idea of the dismantling the Confucian system, they did not do so solely for women to be freed from it. Chinese male intellectuals backed women's emancipation from the system, but not their emancipation as individuals. The hope was that women could be freed from Confucianism's confines and then mobilized for the cause of nationalism. This can be seen by such reformers as Liang Qichao who believed that the "future strength of the nation was the ultimate goal, and that women's rights were only a means" to meet that goal, not the end of it. Furthermore, the New Women of China during this time drew heavily on American and European literature, feminist movements, and female missionaries along with Japanese feminists and New Women too. Both Chinese men and women looked to the United States, which was believed to be the most advanced in regards to women's rights, as a source of inspiration. Education and economic opportunities, such as those that Chinese male intellectuals of the time promoted for women, were considered to be the hallmark of a free and independent women. These ideas of economic independence and educational opportunities were promoted by both the male and female intellectuals of