China

Expulsion of communists from the KMT

The climax of the conflict came after Nationalist armies had taken Shanghai and Nanjing in March. Nanjing was captured on March 23 as Beiyang troops evacuated it, and the following morning some Nationalist soldiers looted foreign properties, attacked the British, U.S., and Japanese consulates, and killed several foreigners. That afternoon, British and U.S. warships on the Yangtze fired into the concession area, allowing some of the foreign nationals to flee, and others subsequently were evacuated peacefully.

In Shanghai a general strike led by communists aroused fears that Chinese might seize the International Settlement and the French concession, now guarded by a large international expeditionary force. Conservative Nationalist leaders, some army commanders, and Chinese business leaders in Shanghai encouraged Chiang to expel the communists and suppress the Shanghai General Labour Union. On April 12–13, gangsters and troops bloodily suppressed the guards of the General Labour Union, arrested many communists, and executed large numbers. Similar suppressions were carried out in Guangzhou, Nanjing, Nanchang, Fuzhou, and other cities under military forces that accepted Chiang’s instructions. The KMT conservatives then established a rival Nationalist government in Nanjing.

Wang Ching-wei had returned to China via the Soviet Union. Arriving in Shanghai, he refused to participate in the expulsions and went secretly to Wuhan, where he again headed the government. In July, however, the leftist Nationalist leaders in Wuhan, having learned of a directive by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to Borodin to arrange for radicals to capture control of the government, decided to expel the communists and compel the Soviet advisers to leave. The leftist government thereby lost important bases of support; furthermore, it was ringed by hostile forces and cut off from access to the sea, and it soon disintegrated.

The CCP went into revolt. Using its influence in the Cantonese army of Zhang Fakui (Chang Fa-k’uei), it staged an uprising at Nanchang on August 1 and in October attempted the “Autumn Harvest” uprising in several central provinces. Both efforts failed. In December communist leaders in Guangzhou started a revolt there, capturing the city with much bloodshed, arson, and looting; this uprising was quickly suppressed, also with much slaughter. Between April and December 1927 the CCP lost most of its membership by death and defection. A few score leaders and some scattered military bands then began the process of creating military bases in the mountains and plains of central China, remote from centres of Nationalist power.

The now-more-conservative KMT resumed its Northern Expedition in the spring of 1928 with a reorganized National Revolutionary Army. In the drive on Beijing it was joined by the National People’s Army under Feng Yuxiang, part of the Guangxi army, and the Shanxi army of Yan Xishan. In early June they captured Beijing, from which Zhang Zuolin and the Fengtian army withdrew for Manchuria. As his train neared Mukden (present-day Shenyang), Zhang died in an explosion arranged by a few Japanese officers without the knowledge of the Japanese government. Japan did not permit the Nationalist armies to pursue the Fengtian army into Manchuria, hoping to keep that area out of KMT control. By the end of the Northern Expedition, the major warlords had been defeated by the Nationalists, whose armies now possessed the cities and railways of eastern China. On October 10 the Nationalists formally established a reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, with its capital at Nanjing; Beijing was renamed Beiping (Pei-p’ing), “Northern Peace.”