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By the early 1940s, the Communists in Yan’an were feeling relatively secure. The Japanese advance in north China had not reached that area. The Sino-Japanese War and the United Front meant that Chiang Kai-shek’s main concern had been Japan and not the Communist Party. The Nationalist Government in China even funded the Communists in Yan’an.
Thousands of recruits flocked to Yan'an.
Chairman Mao Zedong used this opportunity to consolidate his leadership of the Communist Party of China. The term Mao Zedong Thought was first introduced and a cult of personality built around Chairman Mao. Mao became the ideological leader of the Chinese Communists. Wang Ming and the 28 Bolsheviks were criticized for Factionalism. Wang Shiwei was purged and executed for criticizing Mao and the "big men" in Yan'an. Intense self-criticism and public criticism sessions re-educated Communists to rebuild them into loyal, obedient Communists with a fighting spirit. This was the first Rectification Campaign, but it was not the last.
Major source: Gao, Hua. (2018). How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan’an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945. The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Image source: "In Memory of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Publication of Chairman Mao's Splendid “Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art” (纪念毛主席的光辉著作《在延安文艺座谈会上的讲话》发表三十周年)" by Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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For ten months in 1938, Hankou in Wuhan was the center of China's Second United Front and defense against the Japanese invasion.
Artistic expression, political parties and free speech all blossomed. Neither the KMT nor the Communist Party fully controlled the city and a variety of generals, thinkers and artists came together to defend against Japanese aggression. Wuhan was under the control of Generals Li Zongren and Bai Zhongxi, heroes of the Chinese victory at Taierzhuang.
There was optimism that the Japanese could be stalled and stopped. Robert Capra came to Wuhan to film the heroic defence. Dr. Norman Bethune brought medical care to the Eighth Route Army. W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood visited and wrote a book about the war zone. General Han Fuju was executed for giving up Shandong without a fight.
But the Chinese underestimated Japanese combined arms and amphibious attacks. The forts they built to defend against the Japanese Navy moving up the Yangzi River were vulnerable to land based attacks. The Chinese Nationalist Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War suffered similar defeats to the Qing defenders during the Opium War.
With the fall of Hankou came an end to the freedom and optimism of Wuhan in 1938. Chiang Kaishek lost 80% of his officers and over a million soldiers dead or injured. The Japanese attackers also suffered their worst losses of the war and stopped their assault on the Yangzi River and instead turned their focus to north China.
The internationalist wing of the Communist Party of China also had their final moment with the fall of Hankou. Soon, Mao Zedong's supremacy from rural Yanan would become dominant.
Major sources:
MacKinnon, Stephen. (1996). The Tragedy of Wuhan, 1938. Modern Asian Studies , Oct., 1996, Vol. 30, No. 4, Special Issue: War in Modern China (Oct., 1996), pp. 931-943. Cambridge University Press
and
Wu, D. (2022). The cult of geography: Chinese riverine defence during the Battle of Wuhan, 1937-1938. War in History, 29(1), 185-204.
Image: "Joris Ivens, John Fernhout en Robert Capa aan het werk in Hankow, China, RP-F-2012-139.jpg" by Rijksmuseum is marked with CC0 1.0.
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The treasures of the National Palace Museum, originally the Forbidden City, followed China's path. They escaped the invading Japanese by leaving Beijing, first for Shanghai, then Nanjing and then followed southern, central and northern routes to Sichuan and safety. The Chinese government followed a similar path, as did countless Chinese individuals and families. Japanese bombers followed these refugees west, devastating China. But the Chinese people, Chinese government, Chinese culture and the antiquities from the National Palace Museum survived the Sino-Japanese War. This is the story of China's survival during the war.
Topics like wartime inflation, the Chinese victory at Taierzhuang and the government decision to breach the Yellow River dikes and to flood Chinese land are also discussed.
Image Source: National Palace Museum
Main Source: Brookes, Adam. (2022). Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China's Forbidden City. Atria Books
Secondary Source: Bloch, Kurt. Far Eastern War Inflation. Pacific Affairs , Sep., 1940, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep., 1940), pp. 320-343. Pacific Affairs, University of British Columbia
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On July 7, 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. It is also known as the Lugou Bridge Incident. Within days of the small skirmish with 100 Chinese garrison troops, the Japanese had brought in 180,000 troops. After that, the fighting between the Chinese and the Japanese did not stop until 1945.
Japan then attacked Shanghai. Nationalist troops resisted for three months, including with hidden artillery that killed the Japanese Empress' cousin during an amphibious landing. But the Japanese eventually captured China's largest port city and turned their attention to the national capital of Nanjing, after sacking the historic, cultural city of Suzhou.
Chiang Kai-shek ordered Nanjing to be both defended and evacuated. Treasures from the Forbidden City were moved west, along with government officials. Soldiers were brought in and they fortified in anticipation of the attack. Refugees streamed west, including some to Nanjing. Trapped between the attacking columns and the Yangzi River, only a small number were able to evacuate once the battle was lost. Those who were not able to find refuge in the Nanjing Safety Zone were most often killed or raped and murdered. The Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was one of the worst war crimes in human history.
John Rabe, a Nazi, helped save thousands, perhaps even two hundred thousand lives as he led the Nanjing Safety Zone. He used his Nazi armband to get Japanese soldiers to leave the Chinese alone. He reported Japanese abuses to German officials, including Hitler, but in Germany, after being transferred back to Berlin, he was taken and interrogated by the Gestapo.
Robert Wilson, a surgeon, refused to leave and gave medical care day and night for free, at the cost of his own health.
Minnie Vautrin gave up food, took beatings and had her life threatened for protecting Chinese in the Safety Zone, which the Japanese did not recognize. Her efforts to save Chinese lives and spirits cost her life. She told the Chinese that China would not perish and that Japan would fail in the end.
It did and War Criminals were tried and executed, both in Tokyo and in Nanjing, for acts during the Nanjing occupation.
The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall is today a place of remembrance and of education.
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After the Long March, the Chinese Communists were mostly in northern Shaanxi, wanting a breather.
Japan had continued its aggression in China after it set up the puppet state of Manchukuo under Emperor Pu Yi. It manufactured incident after incident and had expanded its army’s reach into northern and northeast China. It was trying to influence Inner Mongolia and Hebei, around Beijing. It looked to set up warlords as puppet leaders under Japanese control.
Students and intellectuals in Beijing and other Chinese cities began protesting against the Japanese and against politicians that they perceived as being too friendly to Japan. It was a reminder of earlier demonstrations against Japan like the May Fourth movement of 1919.
The Communist Party and Comintern supported these student protests against Japan. The Soviet Union was very concerned by Japan’s aggression and the fact that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had signed an anti-Comintern pact in late 1936. Stalin wanted either an anti-Japanese China, or alternatively, a Communist controlled buffer state between it and Japan.
Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT government in Nanjing was prioritizing pacifying internal enemies before resisting foreign aggression. Chiang was not against resisting Japan. He had done so when Japan had attacked Shanghai and at other times, but Chiang Kai-shek's strategy was clear-cut. First, eliminate the internal threat posed by the Chinese Communists, then turn attention towards the aggressive expansion of Japan.
His subordinates, especially Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng had other ideas.
They then kidnapped Chiang Kai shek and placed him under house arrest in Xi'an. Negotiations ensued. Madame Chiang Kai Shek and Zhou Enlai both travelled to Xi'an. Eventually Chiang was released and Zhang Xueliang volunteered to travel with him back to Nanjing.
Zhang was then put under house arrest for 5 decades.
This ended the encirclement of the Chinese Communists and started the Second United Front. This time, they would focus on resisting Japanese expansion into China. But Japan was furious by this development and the Xian Incident helped cause the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Image: "1937 China Nanking Chiang Kai-Shek" by manhhai is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Zhou Enlai planned in secret the details of the Chinese Communist's escape from the encirclement of the Central Soviet. He identified a Guangdong warlord who preferred to save his troops rather than fight the Red Army.
The First Red Army was able to pass through a number of blockhouses, before reaching the last of Chiang Kai-shek's fortifications near the Xiang River and suffering major casualties. They lost their heavy weapons and almost half their troops at that battle.
Then the Red Army moved quickly and often at night on The Long March. They reached northern Guizhou, close to the base of the Second Red Army, and rested.
At the Zunyi Conference, the 28 Bolsheviks lost their previous influence over the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong began his rise to power. Mobile and guerilla warfare again became military policy.
The destination for the Long March changed at this point and instead of staying in Guizhou, the First Red Army tried to cross north into Sichuan. Faced with defensive resistance and at risk of annihilation, the First Red Army crossed the Chishui River four times. They escaped destruction, but now chose to move west and then north through Yunnan. They reached western, rather than eastern Sichuan.
The Long Marchers faced Snowy Mountains and a treacherous bog.
The First Red Army finally met up with the leader of the Fourth Red Army, Zhang Guotao, but couldn't reach agreement on a destination. Zhang preferred that they all settle around Sichuan, where he already had built a base and had the strongest Red Army.
Mao preferred to continue travelling to northern Shaanxi. His column arrived there in late 1935 and in 1936, moved within northern Shaanxi to Yenan.
It is said they crossed 18 mountain ranges and 24 rivers to reach there. Early on, Mao saw the Long March's myth-making potential and used it to turn this military retreat into a story of the Communists trip through the wilderness to a new land. It was symbolic of the journey from the old China to the new promised China.
Zhang Guotao's column was soon defeated and, having lost his military strength, Zhang also lost power in the Communist Party and after a trial and self-criticism, went over to the Guomindang.
Chiang Kai-shek might have allowed the Communists to retreat westward in order to follow them and take greater control over autonomous provinces like Guangxi and Sichuan. Because of the Long March, he was able to influence Sichuan for the first time and later made its then city of Chongqing his capital during World War II.
The Communist Party leadership survived because of the Long March, but most ordinary soldiers did not. Mao's wife gave birth painfully along the way. Of the approximately 80,000 troops who left the Central Soviet, only about 7,000 arrived in northern Shaanxi, and that was with recruitment along the way. Yet much had changed, including greater autonomy of the Chinese Communists from Moscow.
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Mao Zedong had been chosen as President of the Chinese Soviet Republic, but he never controlled its Red Army. Wang Ming and the 28 Bolsheviks had more control, including over land policy and preparations to defend against the Fifth Encirclement Campaign.
On land, the Communist Party of China officials didn't want land redistribution to result in a countryside of middle peasants holding private property. With the Land Investigation Movement, they wanted to root out any hidden landlords or rich peasants. But what they didn't change was the limited amount of land to divide among a huge rural population. The result was that basically everyone would farm at the subsistence level.
Chiang Kai-shek was preparing for the Fifth Encirclement Campaign against the Chinese Soviets. This time it would be Seven Parts Political and Three Parts Military. His wife and he advocated for the New Life Movement. The Chinese people should live according to the four virtues.
He also carefully prepared for the military campaign by supervising the construction of roads in Jiangxi and block houses. The Chinese Soviets would be blockaded and logistics and supplies improved.
Otto Braun, Comintern Representative and Communist military strategist, through out the previously successful strategy of Luring the Enemy In Deep and guerrilla warfare and copied the KMT's blockhouse strategy. This time, the Communists would defend the territory of the Chinese Soviet Republic and only commit to Short, Swift Thrusts. Soviet territory was stripped bare to commit the resources for the new blockhouses and supplies for the Red Army defences.
It was a disaster for the Red Army and for the Chinese Soviets. The armies were wiped out by conventional warfare against a numerically and economically superior opponent. Residents, especially "class enemies" began to defect to the KMT. Eventually, even soldiers and Communist officials defected too.
The Fifth Encirclement Campaign was a great success for the Nationalists. The Chinese Soviet Republic was defeated, and this time, the Chinese people supported the KMT. Mao Zedong would blame the defeat on the Communists on Wang Ming and the 28 Bolsheviks. Mao would further rise to power. But first, would come The Long March.
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In September 1931, junior officer's of Japan's Kwantung Army in Manchuria set off explosives to make it look like a Chinese attack on Japanese interests along the South Manchuria Railway. This is often called the Mukden Incident or named after the nearby Liutiao Lake. The Kwantung Army then attacked Zhang Xueliang's nearby garrison and, with Japanese reinforcements, moved into the rest of Manchuria.
In 1932, the puppet state of Manchukuo was formed, with Puyi, the last Qing Emperor, as Chief Executive and then Emperor of Manchuguo. Few states other than Japan recognized the new State.
China increased tariffs on Japan complained to the League of Nations, which investigated and requested that Japan withdrew its troops. Instead, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations.
Zhang Xueliang, the Young Marshal, did not resist the Japanese takeover of his territory. But over 200,000 provincial army soldiers and long-time bandits did. Railcars were attacked and railways torn up. The Japanese responded by bombing hideouts and killing civilians in the process.
Then Japan's naval marines attacked the Chinese controlled part of Shanghai, in further unprovoked aggression following some anti-Japanese protests resulting from Japan's moves in Manchuria. China's 19th Army and Chiang's 5th Army under the command of the 19th Army, resisted Japan fiercely. For 33 days they fought a modern urban warfare battle and then Chinese soldiers defended against combined arms attacks in the river delta outside Shanghai. Japan's Navy couldn't win and needed help from its Army. Still, the Chinese resisted and Japan had to bring in more and more soldiers and equipment to save face. A negotiated settlement resulted in Japanese troops withdrawing and China demilitarizing Shanghai.
Japan had begun a new period of aggression against China and a 14 year war was beginning. The Nationalist government now was faced with a new threat. Not only did it have to face internal challenges like warlords, strong provincial governors and Communists committed to overthrowing the government. It also battled an aggressive and powerful country to its east that was beginning its invasions.
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Mao had long desired revolution to peace. Even as a student, he wrote of his desire for the destruction of the old universe.
Thanks to his teacher Yang Changji, he met early leaders of the Communist Party, got a job as a junior librarian in Beijing and met his second wife. Yang Kaihui fell deeply in love with Mao and stayed loyal to him, even after Mao left her and took a new wife. She preferred to be executed than to renounce Mao.
Mao felt ignored by the urban intellectuals at Peking University. Later, those intellectuals and students who had travelled to France and Moscow, controlled the Communist Party of China. Many of them believed urban workers were key to the Chinese Revolution. They started putsches trying to capture key Chinese cities. Those efforts failed and even more urban communists were captured and eliminated.
Gu Shunzhang, head of the Communist Secret Service was arrested and chose to collaborate and revealed the names and locations of key Communists. Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam was arrested and deported. Others were killed, including the Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party. Li Lisan was blamed for this failures.
Mao Zedong survived in Jiangxi and Fujian provinces by leading Soviets there. He led investigations into local conditions, including in Xunwu, before land redistributions. Mao came to understand in detail the peasant situation, who were the revolutionary classes and who were the true counterrevolutionaries.
At times Mao and his group called other Communists counterrevolutionaries and engaged in purges. They were not alone. This was a challenging time for Communists.
They benefited from the KMT armies being distracted. First by the Central Plains War and then by Japan's invasion of Manchuria. Efforts by Chiang Kai-shek to eliminate the Communists would have to wait.
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Chiang Kai-shek used strong-armed tactics to fundraise for his army and government. Kidnapping, ransoms and execution were part of his tactics. He allied with the Green Gang of Shanghai, as did the French authorities.
Shanghai businessmen were kidnapped and held for ransom unless they bought Nanjing's bonds during the Northern Expedition.
T.V. Soong found a better way to sell Chinese bonds. He increased the interest rate. He also abolished the likin system in areas under Nationalist control, gained control over Chinese tariffs and negotiated the return of some Boxer Indemnity funds. But he made Japan his enemy and annoyed Chiang by pushing back against the constant demands for more money for the KMT's armies. He was forced out in favour of his brother-in-law H.H. Kung, who understood his job as Finance Minister was to provide Chiang with money for the military regardless of the cost.
Deng Yanda and the Provisional Action Committee of the Guomindang offered an alternative to Chiang's leadership. It sought mass appeal by organizing students, peasants and workers. It also gained supporters who had graduated from the Whampoa Military Academy. An insurrection was planned and Commander Chen Cheng appeared ready to bring Deng to power. But instead he was arrested and executed.
This was the final straw for Song Qingling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen and sister of T.V. Soong. She had already supported the USSR when it invaded Manchuria in a dispute over the China Eastern Railway. Now she asked a Comintern representative to join the Communist Party. They preferred her to be outside the party, criticizing the Nationalists as a disgruntled ex-KMT member. But she received secret agent training and was loyal to the Communist Party of China until her death, when she was rewarded with a party membership on her deathbed.
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After the Northern Expedition, the Guomindang (KMT) ejected Communists from the Nationalist Party. The Communist Party of China had no army.
Zhou Enlai had inserted Communists into the Nationalists' Army and the Nanchang Uprising was a coup planned to carve a Red Army out from the Guomindang's troops. It succeeded and they briefly formed a Revolutionary Committee in Nanchang and He Long took command. They retreated before Zhang Fakui could attack them.
While Moscow hoped they would march south and support the Canton Commune, instead they headed south east to Shantou, along the coast. The hoped for resupply ship from Russia never arrived and the Red Army troops were scattered.
Zhu De, future Commander-in-Chief of the People's Liberation Army, survived by assuming a fake name and briefly joining the Nationalist Army again and pretending to be loyal. Then he and his troops escaped north and formed Soviets and burned villages under orders of the Communist Party. He then joined forces with Mao Zedong.
Mao had already been in the Ridge of Wells area along with the remainder of troops from the unsuccessful Autumn Hills Uprising. Mao had joined forces with bandits and then taken over those gangs and absorbed them. His forces were raiding and looting from "the rich", which included farmers with a few hens.
Mao and Zhu and 3000 troops then moved in 1929 before Chiang Kai-shek's troops could capture them. These early days for the Red Army and for Mao's leadership in the countryside held plenty of lessons. They were surviving and learning.
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Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) wanted to shrink the Chinese armies following the Northern Expedition. However, the warlords wouldn't agree without a fight. The result was the War of the Central Plains when Chiang defeated the warlords who had helped him win the Northern Expedition. One by one and then as a group they resisted his efforts to assert Nanjing's control over the provincial and regional armies.
Thanks to the classic Chinese Empty Fortress Strategy, the Nationalists were able to deter Li Zongren from taking the underdefended Wuhan. They then got between his columns and interrupted his supply lines. This allowed the KMT to win the southern campaign and to move troops north to then push Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang back.
Over 1 million soldiers fought in the war and the casualties were about 300,000 dead, injured or captured. Chiang Kai-shek was able to overcome a three front war and emerge dominant, better able to turn his attention from Warlords to the Communists and to Japan.
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Zhang Zuolin paid for his defeat by the Northern Expedition with his life. Japan assassinated their former Manchurian ally by detonating a bomb as his train passed. Manchuria was becoming chaotic as refugees arrived fleeing battles and famine in Shandong.
Other former warlords also died as family members of their victims took revenge.
The Nationalists suspended the Constitution and decreed that China had entered a period of tutelage when the KMT would guide China and, in theory, towards eventual democracy.
The KMT had to face multiple issues, including strong provincial and regional governors who controlled the most important land tax and who all had local armies.
Chinese spoke many different local tongues and a national speech project was pursued.
The Soong family, all of whom had studied in the USA, became close with the Nanjing government. Many became leading cabinet ministers. Meiling married Chiang Kai-shek.
But the middle sister Qingling, also known as Madame Sun Yat-sen, publicly resigned from the KMT and chose exile in Moscow. While the business minded siblings appreciated Chiang's rejection of communism, Qingling thought it was subverting the principles of her late husband.
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The Nationalists' Northern Expedition began with doubts by their Communist allies.
But it was a military success and quickly Henan and then Hebei provinces were captured. Mikhail Borodin then wanted the armies to move north along the Hankou-Beijing railway line. Instead, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) preferred to follow the Yangzi River downstream and take the rich provinces controlled by the warlord Sun Chuanfang. That was slower going and the new KMT administration in Wuhan was threatening Chiang's funding and role as Commander-in-Chief.
Chiang supported a purge of Communists in his territories and the crackdown on Communism in Shanghai and other cities caused a split in the Guomindang. Two rival capitals and governments were set up. One in Wuhan was allied with the Communists and Soviets. Chiang's in Nanjing was anti-Communist.
Warlords joined in and the Manchurian General had Li Dazhao killed when the Soviet Embassy was raided. Zhou Enlai barely escaped Shanghai.
The Wuhan administration pushed the military campaign north towards Beijing while trying to stop the peasants from "excesses" in the countryside. Then Wuhan and the Soviet's ally, the Christian Warlord Feng Yuxiang, turned on the Communists and insisted that the Wuhan government purge itself of Communists. The first United Front was over and the split in the Guomindang ended. The crackdown on Communists and the social revolution intensified.
Chiang and his allies were then able to push north and capture Beijing. The Northern Expedition had been a military success. The Nationalists had achieved their long held goal of forming a national government.
Mao Zedong was a survivor of the anti-communist violence and led a small group of rebels in the countryside. They would need to relocate to a mountain hideout. Mao learned a few things during the Northern Expedition. "Political power is obtained from the barrel of the gun." He also realized that taking land from independent cultivators who neither paid rent nor received rent, was a mistake. They were the "swing voters" of the rural revolution. By 1928, he realized he needed those middle peasants as allies.
Chiang Kai-shek had won the battles of the Northern Expedition. But would he win the peace?
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In the lead up to Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition, both the KMT's Hu Hanmin and the Christian General Feng Yuxiang were in Moscow. Hu sought admission by the KMT to the Comintern as China's representative. Feng was seeking weapons and engineers for his National People's Army.
Both returned deeply skeptical about the Soviet Union and its intentions towards China.
The USSR wanted an alliance with a northern warlord to bolster its interests in Mongolia and Manchuria. For two years, the Christian Warlord and the atheist Soviets formed an awkward alliance. It wouldn't work out for the Communists, but Feng would end up helping Chiang's Northern Expedition. Chiang needed all the help he could get. The Nationalist's Army was only one-tenth the size of the combined forces of the other armies on the eve of the Northern Expedition.
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Two funerals were held for Sun Yat-sen on the same day. One involved Christian rites by his family, to prove that Sun was not a Bolshevik. The other was organized by the Communist Party and involved the Soviet Ambassador and a loudspeaker playing Sun's message about nationalism. Already there was a fight to claim Sun's legacy.
Sun's widow, Song Qingling, was from a family which had all studied in the United States. Her father had become a Methodist, then entered into business and paid for all his children to study in the USA. One of his daughters had married Sun Yat-sen at age 21. The youngest would later marry Chiang Kai-shek and become China's First Lady.
With Sun's passing, Wang Jingwei became KMT leader. He had the support of his party's left and the Communists. After an assassination of a KMT executive member and some unsuccessful manuevers by the KMT right, the Communists were more important than ever in the KMT. Mao Zedong was in an important role in propaganda for the KMT.
But just when Mikhail Borodin (Grusenberg) thought that Soviet interests were managed, he left Guangzhou and a coup resulted. Communist Party members of the KMT were weakened and the party was re-organized. Chiang Kai-shek went from being Director of the Whampoa Military Academy to Commander-In-Chief. He confused the Soviets and avoided their blame for the coup. He was well positioned, with Soviet and Communist support, to launch the Northern Expedition that Sun Yat-sen had long dreamed of.
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The Communist Party of China and the KMT both needed organizing. The KMT and Sun Yat-sen were overly reliant on southern warlords. When they turned on Sun, that made the KMT homeless and risked the life of Sun and those close to him, like his wife Song Qingling. She suffered a miscarriage when Chen Jiongming attacked their house in Guangzhou. Never again would Madame Sun Yat-sen be able to bear children.
Mikhail Borodin, born Mikhail Grusenberg, was valued by Sun and lead the re-organization of the KMT and the Communist Party's outreach in Guangdong. Students went to the people and organized the peasants and began class struggle in rural Guangdong. Sun helped turn a labour strike in Guangzhou into a nationalist victory.
The Whampoa Military Academy and the KMT and Communist Party were now able to train revolutionary soldiers. Borodin thought he had the perfect unpolitical soldier in its Director, Chiang Kai-shek.
The corrupt Cao Kun, leader of the Zhili Clique, was ousted as President in a coup and Sun hoped to assume the national presidency and unite China. But he was dying of cancer and Duan Qirui had more support in the north and with the Japanese.
What would happen after Sun's death?
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A detailed look at China's internal divisions and its neighbours in 1921 when its Communist Party was founded.
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Image; Map of China and Asia in 1921 Created for the Chinese Revolution Podcast and Chinese Revolution YouTube series.
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The new Communist Party of China faced decisions on how to grow. Henk Sneevliet, representative of the Communist International (Comintern) to the Far East recommended allying with Sun Yat-sen and the KMT and forming a United Front. Communist Party members could join the KMT as individuals while the Communist Party criticized it and organized the workers and peasants for revolution.
Henk faced resistance among the Chinese Communists who preferred to go a different way. They tried to organize railway workers and call for a General Strike. Meanwhile, the Seamen's Union in Guangzhou had more success.
What was the best way forward for the Communists in China?
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"Comintern Logo" by Thespoondragon is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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A discussion with Anthony Vernon about atheism in China, both before and since Communism. The distinction between Chinese and foreign religions is featured, as well as how the Chinese Communist Party has changed its policies towards religions over time.
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