A History of China (73 page)

While the Chinese Communist Party continued its efforts to rouse the ­proletariat, the Soviets and Sun Yat-sen sought to come to an agreement. The relatively miniscule number of members in the party precluded much influence. The USSR dispatched Adolph Joffe (1883–1927) to work out an agreement with Sun. In a pronouncement in January 1923, Joffe concurred that communism was not suited to China and that the USSR would help the Guomindang to unify the country and expel the imperialists. Within a few months, the Comintern sent a political operative named Mikhail Borodin (1884–1951) to strengthen the Guomindang, using the USSR’s Communist Party as a model. Other Soviets assisted in the development of a military elite by founding the Whampoa Military Academy near Canton, with Sun’s future brother-in-law Chiang Kai-shek as its military commander and Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), a communist who had studied in France, as its political commissar. Although the USSR would be the Guomindang’s most important partner, their agreement ensured that the Chinese communists would be subordinate to Sun’s party. Lenin had concluded that the Chinese communists were too weak to take power and had also decided that the most significant priority was national revolution, or expulsion of the imperialist powers. Only after the ­success of the national revolution would Lenin sanction a social revolution, which would lead to a communist struggle against the bourgeois Guomindang. Until then, the Chinese communists would, in Lenin’s formulation, play a subsidiary role.

Although many Chinese communists disapproved of Lenin’s policy, they acquiesced to Soviet demands and suffered the consequences. At first, the communists’ so-called united front with the Guomindang proved to be effective. Tensions remained beneath the surface. However, Lenin’s death in 1924 and Sun’s death in 1925 subverted the alliance at a time when unrest and instability were accelerating. In the aftermath of a strike in a Japanese-owned cotton mill in Shanghai, a worker was shot and students were arrested. The workers and students responded by initiating a boycott and then, on May 30, 1925, organizing a demonstration near the police station where the students were held. In panic, Sikh, British, and Chinese guards shot at the assembled group and killed anywhere from thirty to two hundred demonstrators. This incident on May 30 reverberated throughout the country and aroused nationalist sentiments. Chinese protested by demonstrating in the streets, which led to more violence and deaths, and by boycotting foreign products. The Shanghai Municipal Council imposed martial law in the city, exacerbating the tensions, although the violence had finally ceased by the end of the year. These signs of unrest offered the Guomindang–Chinese communist united front an opportunity, but they first had to find new leaders for their respective parties.

Meanwhile, leadership in the USSR ultimately centered on a struggle between Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) and Joseph Stalin (1878–1953). Trotsky veered away from Lenin’s views. Distrusting the bourgeoisie, he advocated a much more radical policy. He opted for world revolution or an immediate proletarian accession to power and an avoidance of united fronts and coalitions. His views, if accepted, would spur the Chinese communists to sever relations with the Guomindang and to move expeditiously toward proletarian rule. His Jewish background was a potential disadvantage because of the covert anti-Semitism of many of the communist leaders. Stalin, his adversary, appeared to be more conservative. He instructed the Chinese communists to maintain their alliance with the Guomindang. However, he faced a dilemma that eventually proved damaging to the Chinese communists. By adopting Lenin’s formulation, he would have to support the united front in China, at least until he could overwhelm Trotsky. Whatever the circumstances or however costly, he demanded that the Chinese communists back the Guomindang.

Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen’s death eventually led to the unraveling of the united front. The landlords and industrialists, an important constituency in the Guomindang, were concerned about their communist “allies,” while some leftists feared the right wing of the party. After Sun’s death, suspicions between them exploded into violence. In August of 1925, the same year as Sun’s death, Liao Zhongkai (1877–1925), a prominent leader in the Guomindang who had studied in Japan and who supported closer relations with the USSR, was assassinated, and many Chinese blamed the rightists within the Guomindang umbrella for the murder. Liao had been a potential rival for Chiang Kai-shek and via his murder the moderates’ and leftists’ preferred candidate to succeed Sun was removed. By March of 1926, the right-leaning Hu Hanmin (1879–1936) and the left-leaning Wang Jingwei (1883–1944), both of whom had also studied in Japan and were potential challengers to Chiang’s supremacy, had been accused of conspiring to kidnap Chiang and ousted from the top leadership, which provided Chiang with undisputed domination over the Guomindang. His marriage in December of 1927 to Soong Meiling (1898–2003) – younger sister of Sun Yat-sen’s widow Soong Qingling (1893–1981) and daughter of the successful Christian businessman Charlie Soong (1863–1918), who had ­originally been close to Sun Yat-sen – provided additional confirmation of his increasing stature. Charlie Soong had broken with Sun when his daughter Soong Qingling had, over his wishes, married Sun (who, embarrassingly, had not yet divorced his first wife). In this case, the Soong family apparently overcame its embarrassment and tolerated Chiang’s marital status. A few years later, he regained their allegiance by converting to Christianity. Chiang himself profited from his association with the Soongs because he secured not only a powerful, American-educated wife but also his wife’s brother, T. V. Soong (1891–1971), a Harvard- and Columbia-educated businessman who would eventually become minister of finance and proved to be adept at raising revenue, and H. H. Kung (1881–1967), his wife’s brother-in-law, the richest man in China and also a minister of finance.

Figure 11.2
Chiang Kai-shek. © Bettmann / CORBIS

Facing no competition for the leadership of the Guomindang, Chiang now was determined to expand the territory under his control. Based primarily in Canton, he conceived of what was known as the Northern Expedition up the east coast of China to establish jurisdiction over the traditional centers of Chinese civilization. He wanted, in particular, to overthrow the warlords based in Beijing lest they attract foreign support and become entrenched. Mikhail Borodin, the Comintern agent in China, the remaining power broker, and the main conduit for USSR aid, did not entirely approve of such an expedition and did not trust Chiang. However, his objections did not impress Chiang, nor did Stalin support the Comintern agent. Still engaged in his struggle with Trotsky, Stalin could not afford to alienate and thus subvert his relationship with Chiang. He had differentiated himself from Trotsky by avidly embracing the united front and collaborating with the bourgeoisie. Having placed himself squarely in the united-front camp, he had no choice but to support Chiang in his military campaigns.

Labor-union leaders, communists, and leftists in general served as the advance detachments during the expedition, without realizing that Chiang was increasingly allying himself with rightists. Chiang had been meeting with landlords and industrialists and had sought to curry favor with them. Simultaneously, he began to cooperate with the Green Gang, a secret society in Shanghai that was involved in such criminal activities as gambling, narcotics, protection rackets, and prostitution. Du Yuesheng (1888–1951), the sybaritic leader of the Green Gang, who had dozens of concubines and four official wives, provided Chiang with funds and equipment. With such support, Chiang planned to ­suppress the leftists who would unwittingly assist his expedition. The leftists provoked demonstrations and work stoppages in cities and towns, facilitating the often peaceful entrance of Chiang’s forces. Once his troops had occupied a site, they quickly unleashed an assault on the leftists who had helped them win. Borodin reported on these so-called betrayals to Stalin and appealed to the USSR leader to issue a call to sever the alliance with the Guomindang. However, Stalin had to hew to the united-front policy. He rejected Borodin’s advice, leaving the Chinese communists vulnerable to Chiang’s armies and their civilian supporters, as well as to troops controlled by warlords. For example, in April of 1927, Zhang Zuolin (1875–1928), a warlord from Manchuria who occupied Beijing, raided the Soviet embassy in the capital, helped himself to secret documents, and captured and then executed Li Dazhao, one of the principal leaders of the Communist Party.

The culmination of what the Chinese communists perceived to be betrayals and massacres took place on April 12, 1927. After strikes and demonstrations led by leftists, Chiang’s troops and allies had moved into Shanghai in late March and early April. On April 12, his military and civilian forces and the Green Gang initiated a murderous rampage against labor unions and Communist Party members, imprisoning and killing many of them and putting an end to strikes and demonstrations. News about the killings spread throughout China, preventing Stalin from dismissing the betrayals and from seeking to maintain an already frayed, if not disastrous, alliance.

Stalin tried to deflect criticism away from himself in three ways. First, he criticized the Chinese communists for not attracting sufficient support from the proletariat. Second, he asserted that Chiang Kai-shek had finally revealed himself to be a rightist who represented landlords, industrialists, militarists, and criminal gang leaders. Third, he interpreted April 12, 1927 in this new light as reflecting a rise in the revolutionary wave. The Chinese communists could now, according to Stalin, adopt increasingly radical policies because of the duplicity of the bourgeoisie, which had revealed itself to be an unstable ally. He called upon the Chinese communists to cooperate with the Guomindang leftists against Chiang and immediately to take up arms. However, his earlier insistence upon maintaining the alliance with Chiang had left the Chinese communists vulnerable. Chiang’s troops, the Green Gang, and other forces had murdered or imprisoned the top leftists and communists. Despite this, the Chinese communists would attempt to fulfill Stalin’s intentions.

The communists would work on three fronts. As Stalin suggested, they sought to collaborate with a Left Guomindang government based in the industrial heartland in Wuhan. Wang Jingwei, who had been one of Chiang Kai-shek’s competitors as successor to Sun Yat-sen, had moved to Wuhan to lead the Left Guomindang. Sun Yat-sen’s widow and Sun Fo (1895–1973), Sun’s son from an earlier marriage, joined him, bolstering his position. However, the Left Guomindang did not have a powerful military force at its command. Moreover, its leaders were wary of the Chinese communists and instead began to negotiate with Chiang. Further, because the bulk of the population lived in the countryside and distress in the rural areas was pervasive, the communists foresaw that revolution could originate from there. Mao Zedong had just started to emerge, and, based on his investigations of peasant life in his native province of Hunan, he had concluded that a communist victory would require peasant support. However, the communists had scarcely made any efforts to propagandize and organize among the peasants. Yet they abided by Stalin’s instructions and called for immediate rural outbreaks and disturbances. The ensuing Autumn Harvest Uprising in August of 1927 involved small groups who were not well organized or well supplied. The Guomindang, aided by local forces, quickly suppressed them. Similarly, an urban insurrection, known as the Canton Commune, barely lasted for four days, from December 11 to 15. Poor organization and inadequate supplies and preparation doomed the rebels.

By the end of 1927, Chiang and the Guomindang appeared to have achieved most of their territorial ambitions. Their troops occupied the east coast from Guangzhou to Shanghai and had eliminated the threat posed by the leftists and the communists. In 1928, Chiang defeated Zhang Zuolin and forced him out of Beijing. Fortunately for Chiang, Japanese expansionists in the military perceived of Zhang as a stumbling block, while other Japanese were appalled that he had lost Beijing. When Chiang’s allies headed for Beijing, the Japanese urged Zhang to withdraw in return for a guarantee that the Guomindang would not be permitted entry into Manchuria. As Zhang headed back to Manchuria by train, Japanese militarists planted a bomb that detonated and killed him. Although Chiang now controlled Beijing, he decided to select a capital in Nanjing in southern China, where he had a strong base.

The Guomindang had optimal circumstances to establish its rule after the ­volatile conditions since 1900. Its Chinese communist opposition was on the run, and important warlords, along with the notorious Green Gang, pledged to support Chiang. Peasants sought relief from landlord exploitation and from punitive taxation. An agrarian reform program, which provided them with their own land, would surely be popular. Industrialists and traders, whom the communists had labeled as part of the national bourgeoisie, hoped the new government would protect their economic interests against foreign-owned enterprises and even foster industrialization through loans. Professionals, including attorneys, physicians, professors, students, and other intellectuals, hoped that the government would create stable conditions and would endorse and promote civil liberties. Workers in factories and mines, who were grossly underpaid and had hardly any safety and health guarantees, looked to the Guomindang for assistance and assumed that this nationalist party would protect their interests. Feminists lobbied for laws that would protect women’s rights. All these groups appeared to have confidence in Chiang, but the Guomindang would lose the support of one after another.