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[The Kuomintang controlled only some southern and eastern parts of China;
the center and north were in the hands of war-lords and was also faced
with division after Sun's death. On 1/7/1925, the Military Governemnt at
Canton transformed into the Nationalist Government of China. Its armed
forces became the National Revolutionary Army. The leadership of the
Kuomintang were in the hands of Hu-Han-Min (Ho^` Ha'n Minh) and
Wang-Ching-Wei (Uo^ng Tinh Ve^.). After Hu's younger brother was
implicated in the 20/8/1925 assassination of leftist minister of finance -
Liao Chung-K'ai (Lie^u Tro.ng Kha?i), an ardent supporter of Borodin -, Hu
felt compelled to resign and took a trip abroad. It was then disclosed
that the left wing in the Kuomintang rose to the power with Wang who was
supported by Borodin. In the spring of 1926, Chiang made a coup d'etat to
overthrow Wang, chairman of the Nationalist Government. Borodin returned
to Canton in April and demanded a restoration of previous balance of
power, failing this Soviet aid would stop. Chiang agreed to curb the
Kuomintang Right in exchange for a counter commitment that communist
activities within the Kuomintang should be circumscribed. In 5/1926,
Chiang took the important Organization department of the Kuomintang and
Mao-Tse-Tung lost his position as deputy chief of the Propaganda
department. On 5/6/1926, Chiang became commander-in-chief of the National
Revolutionary Army. By alternate shows of force and of leniency, Chiang
could prevent a communist coup without losing Soviet support.
One of many reasons for Chiang to do that he started recognizing Soviet
maneuvers. The unstable union between the Kuomintang and the Comintern
was obviously produced by a common desire to expel Western and Japanese
influence from China and to eliminate the power of warlords. However, the
Comintern had another intention that it hoped the CCP could gradually
control over the Kuomintang by infiltrating top positions and by putting
pressure on this party through communist-dominated labor and peasant
unions. The Soviet plan made considerable progress at first with the
politically unexperience Sun-Yat-Sen, but when Sun died, Chiang-Kai-Shek
became alarmed at the threat of Soviet domination of China and the more
immediate threat of an ill-defined "social revolution". Then Chiang
determined to head off these threats by military force which he began to
do in 1926-1927 by breaking with the Comintern, the CCP and the left-wing
of his own party.
Another reason was the strong expansion of the CCP. This party originated
from the May Fourth movement (phong tra`o Ngu~ Tu+', 4/5/1919) where there
was a demonstration of 3,000 students of Peking university to show
dissatisfaction with the Paris decision (the Versailles Peace Conference,
1/1919) to give Japan German concession. Tuan-Ch'i-Yui's government
arrested many students, interdicted parades, speeches and the
dissemination of literature, but to no avail. In 6/1919, the government
must back down, released arrested students and removed people who signed
the Japan's 1915 ultimatum for acceptance of the 21 demands. The entire
cabinet resigned on 12/6/1919. On the diplomatic front, the May Fourth
movement made the superpowers have more open policy towards the Chinese
who lived in foreign concessions.
There were many Marxist faces in that movement like Ch'en-Tu-Hsiu (Tra^`n
DDo^.c Tu', dean of the Peking university's school of letters), Li-Ta-Chao
(Ly' DDa.i Chie^u, Peking university librarian), Chang-Tai-Lei (Tru+o+ng
Tha'i Lo^i). Ch'en launched a magazine called Hsin Ch'ing Nien (New
Youth, Ta^n Thanh Nie^n) early in 1915 which he translated as "La
Jeunesse", for he was a student by then and admirer of the French culture
and Revolution. Ch'en had many famous disciples one of whom was
Mao-Tse-Tung. Li-Ta-Chao was a powerful thinker and quickly viewed the
Russian Revolution of 2/1917 as "presaging the dawn of new era".
While the Chinese Revolution attempted to restore the emperor Hsuan T'ung
to the throne (1917), Russian revolutionaries who were more radical
proposed to change the whole social order. After Lenin declared
cancellation of unequal peace treaties signed with China, many Chinese
Marxist groups were born. In 7/1921, through Ch'ing and Li's campaign,
the 12 Marxist groups gathered in a meeting in the French concession and
created the Communist Party of China (CCP) with the presence of a Dutch
Comintern representative, H. Sneevliet, known by the alias of Maring.
Ch'en-Tu-Hsiu who was elected as first general secretary was not present
due to engaging in a conspiratory work in Canton. Mao was present at that
meeting. The party birthday was officially 1/7/1921. The Chinese
left-wing no longer looked at the French Revolution but to the Russian
Revolution. The Comintern started to establish connection with the CCP.
With only 57 party members at the beginning, the CCP came up to 58,000
members after 6 years.
Communist cadres were very active in rural areas and set up peasant
associations (no^ng ho^.i) and many external organizations. After there
was cooperation between the Kuomintang and the CCP, some CCP cadres,
including Mao-Tse-Tung, were assigned to work for land revolution (ca'ch
ma.ng dda^'t ddai or ca'ch ma.ng tho^? ddi.a). However, there were also
extremist and dogmatic cadres who would like to seize all lands to
redistribute to the poor. This method was opposed by officers and
leadership in the Kuomintang because they almost came from landowners and
middle peasants. Borodin, through Liao Chung-K'ai (Lie^u Tro.ng Kha?i),
always tried to intervene to reconcile between the two groups, but in
reality Borodin pressed the CCP to postpone extreme methods to heal the
crack. However, this could not stop peasant associations developing.
Early in 1927, there were around 10 million peasants to join these
associations and created chaos in rural areas. This atmosphere was
totallly out of the control of the CCP.
Another reason for Chiang's action was there was turbulence caused by a
workers' movement to strike against foreigners who oppressed the Chinese.
This created unstability all over China. The "May Thirtieth movement"
(phong tra`o ngu~ ta'p, 30/5/1925) was sparked by the incident on
30/5/1925 whereby 12 students were killed in a demonstration by the
Shanghai International Settlement police led by a British officer. This
resulted in boycotting British trade extending to Hong Kong.
Anti-foreignism was high and Borodin said, "we did not make May 30. It
was made for us". But the Kuomintang and even the CCP were not able
immediately to exploit this potential. The flame of antiforeignism was
exploded when on 23/6/1925, British and French cooperated with each other
to crush a demonstration and killed 50 Chinese. Demonstrations, strikes,
boycotting foreign goods and violent clashes were everywhere. They made
hundreds of foreigners and Chinese businessmen killed, especially in Hong
Kong activities of which were in limbo for 16 months. Thousands workers
from Hong Kong went to Canton to join with their counterparts.]
(continued)