During the New Culture Movement (1915–1919), China's urban intellectuals rejected the Confucian family values espoused by the late imperial government. But the system they challenged was deeply rooted in local custom and lineage power. The Qing government had created an informal system of control that minimized reliance on punitive legal sanctions to maintain the family-based social order. In addition, as we have seen, the late imperial state stressed positive rewards and transformation through education, rather than coercion, to enforce its policies. The imperial government's exceptional success in spreading its messages internalized gender values, especially in women, who were honored for widow fidelity and even for martyrdom in resisting rape or asserting their sexual purity. Court records show individual women testifying to their deep commitment to chastity, not only as a matter of family honor but also as a personal individual responsibility, to the point where a woman would take her own life to express her moral conviction (Theiss 2004).