In 1912, the new Republic of China government banned foot binding, though the ban was not actively implemented, and leading intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement saw foot binding as a major symbol of China's backwardness. Local warlords such as Yan Xishan in Shanxi engaged in their own sustained campaign against foot binding with feet inspectors and fines for those who continued with the practice, while regional governments of the later Nanjing regime also enforced the ban. The campaign against foot binding was very successful in some regions; in one province, a 1929 survey showed that whereas only 2.3% of girls born before 1910 had unbound feet, 95% of those born after were not bound. In a region south of Beijing, Dingxian, where over 99% of women were once bound, no new cases were found among those born after 1919. In Taiwan, the practice was also discouraged by the ruling Japanese from the beginning of Japanese rule, and from 1911 to 1915 it was gradually made illegal. The practice lingered on in some regions in China; in 1928, a census in rural Shanxi found that 18% of women had bound feet, while in some remote rural areas such as Yunnan Province it continued to be practiced until the 1950s. In most parts of China, however, the practice had virtually disappeared by 1949. The practice was also stigmatized in Communist China, and the last vestiges of foot binding were stamped out, with the last new case of foot binding reported in 1957. By the 21st century, only a few elderly women in China still had bound feet. In 1999, the last shoe factory making lotus shoes, the Zhiqian Shoe Factory in Harbin, closed.