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Qian Xuantong (188717 January 1939) was a Chinese linguist and writer considered to be a leading figure of the Doubting Antiquity School, along with Gu Jiegang. He was a professor of literature at National Peking University.
A close friend of Lu Xun, Qian was a key figure in the May Fourth Movement and the New Culture Movement. Despite his close relationship with the Chinese classics, he promoted the abolition of Literary Chinese. He was also a strong supporter of Esperanto, at one time even proposed the substitution of Chinese by it. An open letter Qian wrote in response to an anti-Confucian essay by Chen Duxiu stated:
Chen thought that abolishing written Chinese would destroy the spoken language as well, and he countered Qian's proposal by suggesting that Chinese could use a Roman alphabet.
He and Liu Bannong promoted vernacular Chinese, attacking classical stylists such as Lin Shu. His skepticism of the Chinese heritage was such that he at one time wanted to change his surname to Yigu (). He also did important work regarding standardization of simplified characters, as well as the Standard Chinese dialect and the design of pinyin.
His son Qian Sanqiang was a nuclear physics who was instrumental in China's early nuclear weapons program, sometimes referred to as the "father of the atomic bomb" for China.
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