China

KMT opposition to radicals

The two parties competed for direction of nationalist policy, control of mass organizations, and recruitment of new members. Under Comintern coaching, the CCP strategy was to try to split the KMT, drive out its conservative members, and turn it to an ever-more-radical course. In August 1925, KMT conservatives in Guangzhou tried to stop the leftward trend. One of the strongest advocates of the Nationalists’ Soviet orientation, Liao Zhongkai, was assassinated. In retaliation, Borodin, Chiang Kai-shek, and Wang Ching-wei (Wang Jingwei) deported various conservatives. A group of KMT veterans in the north then ordered the expulsion of Borodin and the communists and the suspension of Wang Ching-wei; they set up a rival KMT headquarters in Shanghai. The left-wing leaders in Guangzhou then held the Second National Congress in January 1926, confirming the radical policies and the Soviet alliance. But as the Soviet presence became increasingly overbearing, as the strike and boycott in Guangzhou and Hong Kong dragged on, and as class conflict intensified in the south, opposition to the radical trend grew stronger, particularly among military commanders.

Wang Ching-wei (Wang Jingwei), 1941.UPI—Bettmann/Corbis

Chiang Kai-shek, now commander of the National Revolutionary Army, took steps in March to curb the communists and to send away several Soviet officers whom he believed were scheming with Wang Ching-wei against him. In a readjustment of party affairs, communists no longer were permitted to hold high offices in the central headquarters, and Wang Ching-wei went into retirement in France. Chiang also demanded Comintern support of a northern military campaign and the return of Gen. V.K. Blücher as his chief military adviser. Blücher, who used the pseudonym Galen in China, was a commander in the Red Army who had worked with Chiang in 1924 and 1925 in developing the Whampoa Military Academy and forming the National Revolutionary Army. Blücher returned to Guangzhou in May and helped refine plans for the Northern Expedition, which began officially in July, with Chiang as commander in chief.