Imported Modernism

In her book, Shu-mei Shih regards modernism in China, from May Fourth period to 1930s, as an imported product from Western civilization and (Westernized) Japanese culture due to the metropolitan lure and colonial power. Sometimes I feel it is too easy to conclude that modernism is only an imported ideology. I would rather know more about the process and details of how the indigenous intellectual adopt and adapt the imported ism and on which ground they implanted foreign ism. Even if modernism could be mostly regarded as foreign species, it would be meaningful to know why this particular group of intellectuals rather than other group of elites are more likely inclined to modernism. While Shih considered the Republican Chinese writers were not critical to modernity in their practice of modernism, I cannot help but doubt that the Republican Chinese modernists were practicing a superficial version of modernism? That is, did they only grasp something "looks modern," such as racecourse, ice-cream or skyscrapers, (read: imported materiality) in their modernism works? Moreover, I would regard the concerns of the May Fourth intellectuals as modernization and modernity rather than modernism.