In Chinese literary history, it is especially the work of Guo Moruo 郭沫若(1892-1978) that postdates his self-declared conversion to Marxism - a transition that allegedly occurred in 1924 after he had read thetheories of the Japanese economist Kawakami Hajime 河上肇(1879-1946), while in Japan - that has been studied. This paper will, however, focus on Guo Moruo爷s thinking prior to his conversion to Marxism. This will, more precisely, be done through an analysis of the essay "Guojiade yu chao guojiade" (国家的与超国家的; The Nationaland the Supranational). Guo Moruo wrote this essay in 1923 as a response to a novel written in 1919 by Henri Barbusse 亨利·巴比塞(1873-1935), entitled Clarté (Guangming 光明 ) in which the absurdity of World War I (1914-1918) - or the European War, Ouzhan 欧战 , as it is generally referred to in China - is depicted. Against the background of the just finished First World War, Guo Moruo argues that the traditional Chinese mind has always had the supranational as
norm, not the national. With this, he posits a claim for 'universal peace' that is characteristic of Chinese philosophy.