The New Life Movement was a government-led civic campaign in the 1930s Republic of China to promote cultural reform and Neo-Confucian social morality and to ultimately unite China under a centralised ideology following the emergence of ideological challenges to the status quo. Chiang Kai-shek as head of the government and the Chinese Nationalist Party launched the initiative on 19 February 1934 as part of an anti-Communist campaign, and soon enlarged the campaign to target the whole nation. Chiang and his wife, Soong Mei-ling, who played a major role in the campaign, advocated a life guided by four virtues, proper rite, righteousness or justice, honesty and cleanness and sense of right and wrong).