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Republican period
The first half of the 20th century saw the gradual
disintegration of the old order in China and the turbulent
preparation for a new society. Foreign political philosophies
undermined the traditional governmental system, nationalism became
the strongest activating force, and civil wars and Japanese invasion
tore the vast country and retarded its modernization. Although the
revolution ushered in a republic, China had virtually no preparation
for democracy. A three-way settlement ended the
revolution--abdication by the dynasty; relinquishment of the
provisional presidency by Sun Yat-sen in favour of
Yüan Shih-k'ai, regarded as the indispensable man to restore unity;
and Yüan's promise to establish a republican government. This placed
at the head of state an autocrat by temperament and training, and
the revolutionaries had only a minority position in the new national
government.
Early power struggles
During the first years of the republic there was a continuing
contest between Yüan and the former revolutionaries over where
ultimate power should lie. The contest began with the election of
parliament (National Assembly) in February 1913. The Nationalist
Party (Kuomintang; KMT), made up largely of former revolutionaries,
won a commanding majority of seats. Parliament was to produce a
permanent constitution. Sung
Chiao-jen, the main organizer of the KMT's electoral victory,
advocated executive authority in a cabinet responsible to parliament
rather than to the president. On March 20, 1913, Sung was
assassinated; the confession of the assassin and later
circumstantial evidence strongly implicated the Premier and,
possibly, Yüan himself.
Parliament tried to block Yüan's effort to get a
"reorganization loan" (face value $125,000,000) from a consortium of
foreign banks, but in April Yüan concluded the negotiations and
received the loan. He then dismissed three Nationalist military
governors. That summer, revolutionary leaders organized a revolt
against Yüan, later known as the Second Revolution, but his military
followers quickly suppressed it. Sun Yat-sen, one of the principal
revolutionaries, fled to Japan. Yüan then coerced parliament into
electing him formally to the presidency, and he was inaugurated on
October 10, the second anniversary of the outbreak of the
revolution. By then his government had been recognized by most
foreign powers. When parliament promulgated a constitution placing
executive authority in a cabinet responsible to the legislature,
Yüan revoked the credentials of the KMT members, charging them with
involvement in the recent revolt. He dissolved parliament on Jan.
10, 1914, and appointed another body to prepare a constitution
according to his own specifications. The presidency had become a
dictatorship.
China in World
War I
Japanese
gains
With the outbreak of World War I, in August 1914, Japan
joined the side of the Allies and seized the German leasehold around
Chiao-chou Bay together with German-owned railways in Shantung.
China was not permitted to interfere. Then, on Jan. 18, 1915, the
Japanese government secretly presented to Yüan the Twenty-one
Demands, which sought, in effect, to make China a Japanese
dependency. Yüan skillfully directed the negotiations by which China
tried to limit its concessions, which centred
around greater access to Chinese ports and railroads and even a
voice in Chinese political and police affairs. At the same time Yüan
searched for foreign support. The European powers, locked in war,
were in no position to restrain Japan. The United States was
unwilling to intervene. The Chinese public, however, was aroused.
Most of Yüan's political opponents supported his resistance to
Japan's demands. Nevertheless, on May 7 Japan gave Yüan a 48-hour
ultimatum, forcing him to accept the terms as they stood at that
point in the negotiations.
Japan gained extensive special privileges and concessions in
Manchuria and confirmation of its gains in Shantung from Germany.
The Han-yeh-p'ing mining and metallurgical enterprise in the middle
Yangtze Valley was to become a joint Sino-Japanese company. China promised not to alienate to any
other power any harbour, bay, or island on the coast of China nor to
permit any nation to construct a dockyard, coaling station, or naval
base on the coast of Fukien, the province nearest to Japan's colony
of Taiwan.
Yüan's attempts to become
emperor
In the wake of the humiliation of these forced concessions,
Yüan launched a movement to revive the monarchy, with some
modernized features, and to place himself on the throne. The
Japanese government began to "advise" against this move in October
and induced its allies to join in opposing Yüan's plan. Additional
opposition came from the leaders of the Nationalist and Progressive
parties. In December, Ch'en Ch'i-mei and Hu
Han-min, two followers of Sun Yat-sen, who was actively scheming
against Yüan from his exile in Japan, began a movement against the
monarchy. More significant was a military revolt in Yunnan, led by
Gen. Ts'ai O, a disciple of Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, and by the governor of
Yunnan, T'ang
Chi-yao. Joined by Li Lieh-chün and other revolutionary
generals, they established a Hu-kuo chün (National Protection Army)
and demanded that Yüan cancel his plan. When he would not, the
Yunnan army in early January 1916 invaded Szechwan, and subsequently
Hunan and Kwangtung, hoping to bring the southwestern and southern
provinces into rebellion and then induce the lower Yangtze provinces
to join them. The Japanese government covertly provided funds and
munitions to Sun and the Yunnan leaders. One by one military leaders
in Kweichow, Kwangsi, and parts of Kwangtung declared the
independence of their provinces or districts. By March the rebellion
had assumed serious dimensions, and public opinion was running
strongly against Yüan.
A third source of opposition came from Yüan's direct
subordinates, generals Tuan
Ch'i-jui and Feng Kuo-chang, whose powers Yüan had attempted to
curtail. When he called upon them for help, they both withheld
support. On March 22, with the tide of battle running against his
forces in the southwest, Japanese hostility increasingly open,
public opposition in full cry, and his closest subordinates advising
peace, Yüan announced the abolition of the new empire. His
opponents, however, demanded that he give up the presidency as well.
The revolt continued to spread, with more military leaders declaring
the independence of their provinces. The issue became that of
succession should Yüan retire. The president, however, became
gravely ill; he died on June 6 at the age of 56.
Yüan's four years had serious consequences for China. The
country's foreign debt was much enlarged, and a precedent had been
established of borrowing for political purposes. Yüan's defiance of
constitutional procedures and his dissolution of parliament also set
precedents that were later repeated. There was much disillusionment
with the republican experiment; China was a republic in name, but
arbitrary rule based upon military power was the political reality.
The country was becoming fractured into competing military
satrapies--the beginning of warlordism.
Gen. Li
Yüan-hung, the vice president, succeeded to the presidency, and
Gen. Tuan Ch'i-jui continued as premier, a position he had accepted
in April. A man of great ability and ambition, Tuan was supported by
many generals of the former Peiyang Army, a powerful force based in
North China that developed originally under Yüan's leadership. Tuan
quickly began to gather power into his own
hands. Li favoured the restoration of parliament and a return to the
provisional constitution of 1912. Parliament reconvened on August 1;
it confirmed Tuan as premier but elected Gen. Feng Kuo-chang, the
leader of another emerging faction of the Peiyang Army, as
vice-president. The presidential transition and restoration of
parliament had by no means answered the underlying question of where
the governing power lay.
Conflict over entry into the
war
In February 1917 the U.S. government severed diplomatic
relations with Germany and invited the neutral powers, including
China, to do the same. This brought on a crisis in the Chinese government. Li opposed the step, but Tuan
favoured moving toward entry into the war. Parliamentary factions
and public opinion were bitterly divided. Sun Yat-sen, now in
Shanghai, argued that entering the war could not benefit China and
would create additional perils from Japan. Under heavy pressure,
parliament voted to sever diplomatic relations with Germany, and Li
was compelled by his premier to acquiesce. When the United States
entered the war in April, Tuan wished China to do the same but was
again opposed by the President.
Tuan and his supporters demanded that China enter the war and
that Li dissolve parliament. On May 23, Li dismissed Tuan; he then
called upon Gen. Chang Hsün, a power in the Peiyang clique and also
a monarchist, to mediate. As a price for mediation, Chang demanded
that Li dissolve parliament, which he did reluctantly on June 13.
The next day Chang entered Peking
with an army and set about to restore the Ch'ing dynasty. Telegrams
immediately poured in from military governors and generals
denouncing Chang and the coup; Li refused to sign the restoration
order and called upon Tuan to bring an army to the capital to
restore the republic. Li requested that Vice President Feng assume
the duties of president during the crisis and then took refuge in
the Japanese legation. Tuan captured Peking on July 14; Chang fled
to asylum in the Legation Quarter. Thus ended a second attempt to
restore the Imperial system.
Tuan resumed the premiership, and Feng came to Peking as
acting president, bringing a division as his personal guard. The two
powerful rivals, each supported by an army in the capital, formed
two powerful factions--the Chihli clique under Feng and the Anhwei
clique under Tuan. Opposed neither by Li nor by the dissolved
parliament, Tuan pushed through China's declaration of war on
Germany, announced on Aug. 14, 1917.
Formation of a rival southern
government
Meanwhile, in July Sun Yat-sen, supported by part of the
Chinese navy and followed by some 100 members of parliament,
attempted to organize a rival government in Canton. The initial
costs of this undertaking, termed the Movement to Protect the
Constitution, probably were supplied by the German consulate in
Shanghai. On August 31 the rump parliament in Canton established a
military government and elected Sun commander in chief. Real power,
however, lay with military men, who only nominally supported Sun.
The southern government declared war on Germany on September 26 and
unsuccessfully sought recognition from the Allies as the legitimate
government. A Hu-fa chün (Constitution Protecting Army) made up of
southern troops launched a punitive campaign against the government
in Peking and succeeded in pushing northward through Hunan. Szechwan
also was drawn into the fight. Tuan tried to quell the southern
opposition by force, while Feng advocated a peaceful solution. Tuan
resigned and mustered his strength to force Feng to order military
action; Gen. Ts'ao K'un was put in charge of the campaign and drove
the Southerners out of Hunan by the end of April 1918. In May the
southern government was reorganized under a directorate of seven, in
which military men dominated. Sun therefore left Canton and returned
to Shanghai. Although his first effort to establish a government in
the South had been unsuccessful, it led to a protracted split
between South and North.
Wartime changes
Despite limited participation, China made some gains from its
entry into the war, taking over the German and Austrian concessions
and canceling the unpaid portions of the Boxer indemnities due its
enemies. It was also assured a seat at the peace conference. Japan,
however, extended its gains in China. The Peking government,
dominated by Tuan after Feng's retirement, granted concessions to
Japan for railway building in Shantung, Manchuria, and Mongolia.
These were in exchange for the Nishihara loans, amounting to nearly
$90,000,000, which went mainly to strengthen the Anhwei clique with
arms and cash. Japan also made secret agreements with its allies to
support its claims to the former German rights in Shantung and also
induced the Peking government to consent to these. In November 1917
the United States, to adjust difficulties with Japan, entered upon
the Lansing-Ishii
Agreement, which recognized that because of "territorial
propinquity . . . Japan has special interests in China." This seemed
to underwrite Japan's wartime gains.
Important economic and social changes occurred during the
first years of the republic. With the outbreak of the war, foreign
economic competition with native industry abated and native-owned
light industries developed markedly. By 1918 the
industrial labour force numbered some 1,750,000. Modern-style
Chinese banks increased in number and expanded their
capital.
Intellectual
movements
A new intelligentsia
had also emerged. The educational reforms and the ending of the
governmental examination system during the final Ch'ing years
enabled thousands of young people to study sciences, engineering,
medicine, law, economics, education, and military skills in Japan.
Others went to Europe and the United States. Upon their return they
took important positions and were a modernizing force in society.
Their writing and teaching became a powerful influence on upcoming
generations of students. In 1915-16 there were said to be nearly
130,000 new-style schools in China with more than 4,000,000
students. This was mainly an urban phenomenon, however; rural life
was barely affected except for what may have been a gradual increase
in tenancy and a slow impoverishment that sent rural unemployed into
cities and the armies or into banditry.
An intellectual
revolution
An intellectual revolution took place during the first decade
of the republic, sometimes referred to as the New
Culture Movement. It was led by many of the new intellectuals,
who held up for critical scrutiny nearly all aspects of Chinese
culture and traditional ethics. Guided by concepts of individual
liberty and equality, a scientific spirit of inquiry, and a
pragmatic approach to the nation's problems, they sought a much more
profound reform of China's institutions than had resulted from
self-strengthening or the republican revolution. They directed their
efforts particularly to China's educated youth.
In September 1915 Chen
Duxiu (Ch'en Tu-hsiu), who had studied in Japan and France,
founded Hsin ch'ing-nien ("New
Youth") magazine to oppose Yüan's Imperial ambitions and to
regenerate the nation's youth. This quickly became the most popular
reform journal, and in 1917 it began to express the iconoclasm of
new faculty members in Peking
University (Pei-ta), which Chen had joined as dean of the
College of Letters. Peking University, China's most prestigious
institution of higher education, was being transformed by its new
chancellor, Ts'ai
Yüan-p'ei, who had spent many years in
advanced study in Germany. Ts'ai made the university a centre of
scholarly research and inspired teaching. The students were quickly
swept into the New Culture Movement. A proposal by Hu Shih, a former
student of John Dewey, that literature be written in the vernacular
language (pai-hua)
rather than in classical style won quick acceptance. By 1918 most of
the contributors to Hsin ch'ing-nien were writing in
pai-hua, and other journals and newspapers soon> followed
suit. Students at Peking University began their own reform journal,
Hsin ch'ao ("New Tide". A new experimental literature
inspired by Western forms became highly popular, and scores of new
literary journals were founded.
Riots and protests
On May 4, 1919, patriotic students in Peking protested the
decision at the Versailles Peace Conference that Japan should retain
defeated Germany's rights and possessions in Shantung. Many students
were arrested in the rioting that followed. Waves of protest spread
throughout the major cities of China. Merchants closed their shops,
banks suspended business, and workers went on strike to pressure the
government. Finally, the government was forced to release the
arrested students, to dismiss some officials charged with being
tools of Japan, and to refuse to sign the Treaty
of Versailles. This outburst helped spread the iconoclastic and
reformist ideas of the intellectual movement, which was renamed the
May
Fourth Movement. By the early 1920s China was launched on a new
revolutionary path.
The interwar years
(1920-37)
Beginnings of a national
revolution
This new revolution was led by the Nationalist Party (KMT)
and the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP).
The Nationalist Party
The Nationalist Party had its origins in the earlier United
League (T'ung-meng hui) against the Manchu. The name Nationalist
Party was adopted in 1912. After the suppression of this expanded
party by Yüan Shih-k'ai, elements from it were organized by Sun
Yat-sen in 1914 into the Chinese Revolutionary Party, which failed
to generate widespread support. Sun and a small group of veterans
were stimulated by the patriotic upsurge of 1919 to rejuvenate this
political tradition, as well as to revive the Nationalist Party
name. The party's publications took on new life as the editors
entered the current debates on what was needed to "save China."
Socialism was popular among Sun's followers.
The formation of an effective party took several years,
however. Sun returned to Canton from Shanghai late in 1920, when
Gen. Ch'en
Chiung-ming drove out the Kwangsi militarists. Another rump
parliament elected Sun president of a new southern regime, which
claimed to be the legitimate government of China. In the spring of
1922 Sun attempted to launch a northern campaign as an ally of the
Manchurian warlord, Chang
Tso-lin, against the Chihli clique, which by now controlled
Peking. Ch'en, however, did not want the provincial revenues wasted
in internecine wars. One of Ch'en's subordinates drove Sun from the
presidential residence in Canton on the night of June 15-16, 1922.
Sun took refuge with the southern navy, and he retired to Shanghai
on August 9. He was able to return to Canton in February 1923; he
then began to consolidate a base under his own control and to
rebuild his party.
The Chinese Communist
Party
The CCP grew directly from the May Fourth Movement. Its
leaders and early members were professors and students who came to
believe that China needed a social revolution and who began to see
Soviet Russia
as a model. Chinese students in Japan and France had earlier studied
socialist doctrines and the ideas of Karl Marx, but the Russian
Revolution of 1917 stimulated a fresh interest in keeping with the
enthusiasm of the period for radical ideologies. Li
Dazhao (Li Ta-chao), the librarian of Peking University, and
Chen Duxiu were the CCP's cofounders.
In March 1920 word reached China of Soviet Russia's
revolutionary foreign policy enunciated in the first Karakhan
Manifesto, which promised to give up all special rights gained
by tsarist Russia at China's expense and to return the Russian-owned
Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria without compensation. The
contrast between this promise and the Versailles award to Japan that
had touched off the 1919 protest demonstrations could hardly have
been more striking. Although the Soviet government later denied such
a promise and attempted to regain control of the railway, the
impression of this first statement and the generosity still offered
in a more diplomatic second Karakhan Manifesto
of September 1920 left a favourable image of Soviet foreign policy
among Chinese patriots.
Russia set up an international Communist organization, the Comintern,
in 1919 and sent Grigory N. Voytinsky to China the next year.
Voytinsky met Li Dazhao in Peking and Chen Duxiu in Shanghai, and
they organized a Socialist Youth League, laid plans for a Communist
Party, and started recruiting young intellectuals. By the spring of
1921 there were about 50 members in various Chinese cities and in
Japan, many of them former students who had been active in the 1919
demonstrations. Mao
Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), a protégé of Li Dazhao, had started one
such group in Ch'ang-sha. The CCP held its First Congress in
Shanghai in July 1921, with 12 or 13 attendants and with a Dutch
Communist--Hendricus Sneevliet, who used his Comintern name, Maring,
in China--and a Russian serving as advisers. Maring had become head
of a new bureau of the Comintern in China, and he had arrived in
Shanghai in June 1921. At the First Congress Chen Duxiu was chosen
to head the party.
The CCP spent the next two years in recruiting, in
publicizing Marxism and the need for a national revolution directed
against foreign imperialism and Chinese militarism, and in
organizing unions among railway and factory workers. Maring was
instrumental in bringing the KMT and the CCP together in a national
revolutionary movement. A number of young men were sent to Russia
for training. Among the CCP members were many students who had
worked and studied in France, where they had
gained experience in the French labour movement and with the French
Communist Party; Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) was one of these. Other
recruits were students influenced by the Japanese Socialist
movement. By 1923 the party had some 300 members, with perhaps 3,000
to 4,000 in the ancillary Socialist Youth
League.
Communist-Nationalist
cooperation
By then, however, the CCP was in serious difficulty. The
railway unions had been brutally suppressed, and there were few
places in China where it was safe to be a known Communist. In June
1923 the Third Congress of the CCP met in Canton, where Sun Yat-sen
provided a sanctuary. After long debate this congress accepted the
Comintern strategy pressed by Maring--that
Communists should join the KMT and make it the centre of the
national revolutionary movement. Sun had rejected a multiparty
alliance but had agreed to admit Communists to his party, and
several, including Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, had already joined the
KMT. Even though Communists would enter the other party as
individuals, the CCP was determined to maintain
its separate identity and autonomy and to attempt
to control the labour union movement. The Comintern strategy called
for a period of steering the Nationalist movement and building a
base among the Chinese masses, followed by a second stage--a
socialist revolution in which the proletariat would seize power from
the capitalist class.
By mid-1923 the Soviets had decided to renew the effort to
establish diplomatic relations with the Peking government. Lev
M. Karakhan, the deputy commissar for foreign affairs, was
chosen as plenipotentiary for the negotiations. In addition to
negotiating a treaty of mutual recognition, Karakhan was to try to
regain for the Soviet Union control of the Chinese Eastern Railway.
On the revolutionary front, the Soviets had decided to financially
assist Sun in Canton and to send a team of military men to help
train an army in Kwangtung. By June, five young Soviet officers were
in Peking for language training. More importantly, the Soviet
leaders selected an old Bolshevik, Mikhail
M. Borodin, as their principal adviser to Sun Yat-sen. The
Soviet leaders also decided to replace Maring with Voytinsky as
principal adviser to the CCP, which had its headquarters in
Shanghai. Thereafter three men--Karakhan in Peking, Borodin in
Canton, and Voytinsky in Shanghai--were the field directors of the
Soviet effort to bring China into the anti-imperialist camp of
"world revolution." The offensive was aimed primarily at the
positions in China of Great Britain, Japan, and the United
States.
Reactions to warlords and
foreigners
These states, too, were moving toward a new, postwar
relationship with China. At the Washington
Conference (November 1921-February 1922), eight powers agreed to
respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial and
administrative integrity of China, to give China opportunity to
develop a stable government, to maintain the principle of equal
opportunity in China for the commerce and industry of all nations,
and to refrain from taking advantage of conditions in China to seek
exclusive privileges. The powers also agreed to steps leading toward
China's tariff autonomy and to the abolition of extraterritoriality.
Japan agreed separately to return the former German holdings in
Shantung, although under conditions that left Japan with valuable
privileges in the province. For a few years thereafter Great
Britain, Japan, the United States, and France attempted to adjust
their conflicting interests in China, cooperated in assisting the
Peking government, and refrained, on the whole, from aiding
particular Chinese factions in the recurrent power struggles. But
China was in turmoil, with regional militarism in full tide.
Furthermore, a movement against the "unequal treaties" (see below)
began to take shape.
Militarism in China
During the first years of the republic China had been
fractured by rival military regimes to the extent that no one
authority was able to subordinate all rivals and create a unified
and centralized political structure. The South was detached from
Peking's control; but even the southern provinces, and indeed
districts within them, were run by different military factions
(warlords). Szechwan was a world in itself, divided among several
military rulers. The powerful Peiyang Army had split into two major
factions whose semi-independent commanders controlled provinces in
the Yangtze Valley and in the North; these factions competed for
control of Peking. In Manchuria, Chang Tso-lin headed a separate
Fengtien army. Shansi was controlled by Yen Hsi-shan. Each separate
power group had to possess a territorial base from which to tax and
recruit. Arms were produced in many scattered arsenals. Possession
of an arsenal and control of ports through which foreign-made arms
might be shipped were important elements of power. Most of the
foreign powers had agreed in 1919 not to permit arms to be smuggled
into China, but this embargo was not entirely effective.
The richer the territorial base, the greater the potential
power of the controlling faction. Peking was the great prize because
of its symbolic importance as the capital and because the government
there regularly received revenues collected by the Maritime Customs
Service, administered by foreigners and protected by the powers.
Competition for bases brought on innumerable wars, alliances, and
betrayals. Even within each military system there was continuous
conflict over spoils. To support their armies and conduct their
wars, military commanders and their subordinates taxed the people
heavily. Money for education and other government services was
drained away; revenues intended for the central government were
retained in the provinces. Regimes printed their own currency and
forced "loans" from merchants and bankers. This chaotic situation
partly accounts for the unwillingness of the maritime powers to give
up the protection that the treaties with China afforded their
nationals.
The foreign presence
As a result of several wars and many treaties with China
since 1842, foreign powers had acquired a variety of unusual
privileges for their nationals. These were specified in the "unequal
treaties," which patriotic Chinese bitterly opposed. Hong Kong,
Taiwan, and vast areas in Siberia and Central Asia had been detached
from China. Dependencies such as Korea, Outer Mongolia, Tibet, and
Vietnam had been separated. Leaseholds on Chinese territory were
granted to separate powers--such as the southern part of the
Liaotung Peninsula and the territory in Shantung around Chiao-chou
Bay, which Japan had seized from Germany, to Japan; the New
Territories to the adjacent British Crown Colony of Hong Kong; and
the Kuang-chou Bay area to France. In most major cities there were
concession areas, not governed by China, for the residence of
foreigners. Nationals and subjects of the "treaty powers" were
protected by extraterritoriality (i.e., they were subject
only to the civil and criminal laws of their own countries); this
extended to foreign business enterprises in China, providing a great
advantage in competition with Chinese firms, which was enhanced when
foreign factories or banks were located in concession areas under
foreign protection. The Chinese had to compete with foreign ships in
Chinese rivers and coastal waters, with foreign mining companies in
the interior, and with foreign banks that circulated their own
notes. Foreign trade also had a great advantage
because there could be no protective tariff to
favour Chinese products.
Christian missionaries operated many schools, hospitals, and
other philanthropic enterprises in China, all protected by
extraterritoriality. The separate school system, outside of Chinese
governmental control, was a sore point for nationalists, who
regarded the education of Chinese youth as a Chinese prerogative.
There were bodies of foreign troops on Chinese soil and naval
vessels in its rivers and ports to enforce treaty rights. Bound by a
variety of interlocking treaties, the Chinese government was not
fully sovereign in China. Past regimes had accumulated a vast
foreign debt against which central government revenues were pledged
for repayment. All this was the foreign imperialism against which
the KMT launched its attack after being reorganized along Bolshevist
lines.
Reorganization of the
KMT
The KMT held its First National Congress in Canton on Jan.
20-30, 1924. Borodin, who had reached Canton in October 1923, began
to advise Sun in the reorganization of his party. He prepared a
constitution and helped draft a party program as a set of basic
national policies. Delegates from throughout China and from overseas
branches of the party adopted the program and the new constitution.
The program announced goals of broad social reform and a fundamental
readjustment of China's international status. Its tone was
nationalistic; it identified China's enemies as imperialism and militarism. It singled out farmers and
labourers as classes for special encouragement but also appealed to
intellectuals, soldiers, youth, and women. It threatened the
position of landlords in relation to tenants and
of employers in relation to labour. Western
privileges were openly menaced.
The constitution described a centralized organization,
modeled on the Soviet Communist Party, with power concentrated in a
small, elected group and with a descending hierarchy of geographical
offices controlled by executive committees directed from above.
Members were pledged to strict discipline and were to be organized
in tight cells. Where possible they were to penetrate and try to gain control of such other
organizations as labour unions, merchant associations, schools, and
parliamentary bodies at all levels. Sun was designated as leader of
the party and had veto rights over its decisions. The congress
elected a central executive committee and a central supervisory
committee to manage party affairs and confirmed Sun's decision to
admit Communists, though this was opposed by numerous party
veterans, who feared the KMT itself might be taken over. A few
Communists, including Li Dazhao, were elected to the executive
committee.
The executive committee set up a central headquarters in
Canton. It also decided to strengthen the party throughout the
country by deputizing most of its leaders to manage regional and
provincial headquarters and by recruiting new members. A military
academy was planned for training a corps of young officers, loyal to
the party, who would become lower level commanders in a new national
revolutionary army that was to be created. Borodin provided funds
for party operations, and the Soviet Union promised to underwrite
most of the expenses of, and to provide training officers for, the
military academy. Chiang Kai-shek was chosen to be the first
commandant of the academy and Liao Chung-k'ai to be the party
representative, or chief political officer.
From February to November 1924 Sun and his colleagues had
some success in making the KMT's influence felt nationally; they
also consolidated the Canton base, although it was still dependent
upon mercenary armies. The military academy was set up at Whampoa,
on an island south of Canton, and the first group of some 500 cadets
was trained. In September Sun began another northern campaign in
alliance with Chang Tso-lin against Ts'ao K'un and Wu
P'ei-fu, who now controlled Peking. The campaign was
interrupted, however, when Wu's subordinate, Feng
Yü-hsiang, betrayed his chief and seized Peking on October 23,
while Wu was at the front facing Chang Tso-lin. Feng and his fellow
plotters invited Sun to Peking to participate in the settlement of
national affairs, while Feng and Chang invited Tuan Ch'i-jui to come
out of retirement and take charge of the government. Sun
accepted the invitation and departed for the North on November 13.
Before he arrived in Peking, however, he fell gravely ill with
incurable cancer of the liver. He died in Peking on March 12,
1925.
Struggles within the two-party
coalition
After Sun's death the KMT went through a period of inner
conflict, although it progressed steadily, with Russian help, in
bringing the Kwangtung base under its control. The conflict was
caused primarily by the radicalization of the party under the
influence of the Communists. They organized labour
unions and peasant associations and pushed class struggle and the
anti-imperialist movement.
Clashes with
foreigners
On May 30, 1925, patriotic students, engaged in an
anti-imperialist demonstration in Shanghai, clashed with foreign
police. The British
captain in charge ordered the police to fire upon a crowd that he
believed was about to rush his station. Some 12 Chinese were killed
in the May
Thirtieth Incident, including students. This aroused a
nationwide protest and set off a protracted general strike in
Shanghai. A second incident occurred on June 23, when French and
British marines exchanged fire with Whampoa cadets who were part of
an anti-imperialist parade, killing 52 Chinese, many of them
civilians, and wounding at least 117; which side had fired first
became a matter of dispute. This set off a strike and boycott
against Britain, France, and Japan, which was later narrowed to
Britain alone. The strike and boycott, led mainly by Communists,
lasted for 16 months and seriously affected British trade. These
incidents intensified hostility toward foreigners and their special
privileges, enhanced the image of the Soviet Union, and gained
support for the KMT, which promised to end the unequal treaties. By
January 1926 the KMT could claim some 200,000 members. The CCP's
membership grew from less than 1,000 in May 1925 to about 10,000 by
the end of that year.
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 Communist 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 Canton tried to
stop the leftward trend. One of the strongest advocates of the
Nationalists' Soviet orientation, Liao Chung-k'ai, was assassinated.
In retaliation, Borodin, Chiang
Kai-shek, and Wang
Ching-wei 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 Canton then
held a Second National Congress in January 1926, confirming the
radical policies and the Soviet alliance. But as the Soviet presence
became increasingly overbearing, as the Canton-Hong Kong strike and
boycott dragged on, and as class conflict intensified in the South,
opposition to the radical trend grew stronger, particularly among
military commanders.
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 Canton in May and
helped refine plans for the Northern
Expedition, which began officially in July, with Chiang as
commander in chief.
The Northern
Expedition
In the Northern Expedition the outnumbered southern forces
were infused with revolutionary spirit and fought with great élan.
They were assisted by propaganda corps, which subverted enemy troops
and agitated among the populace in the enemy's rear. Soviet military
advisers accompanied most of the divisions, and Soviet pilots reconnoitred the enemy
positions. The army was well financed at the initial stages because
of fiscal reforms in Kwangtung during the previous year, and many
enemy divisions and brigades were bought over. Within two months the
National Revolutionary Army gained control of Hunan and Hupeh, and
by the end of the year it had taken Kiangsi and Fukien. The
Nationalist government moved its central headquarters from Canton to
the Wu-han cities of the Yangtze. By early spring of 1927,
revolutionary forces were poised to attack Nanking and
Shanghai.
The political situation, however, was unstable. Hunan and
Hupeh were swept by a peasant revolt marked by violence against
landlords and other rural power holders. Business
in the industrial and commercial centre of the middle Yangtze, the
Wu-han cities, was nearly paralyzed by a wave of strikes. Communists
and KMT leftists led this social revolution. In January the British
concessions in Han-k'ou and Chiu-chiang were seized by Chinese
crowds. The British government had just adopted a conciliatory
policy toward China, and it acquiesced in these seizures, but it was
readying an expeditionary force to protect its more important
position in Shanghai. Foreigners and many upper-class Chinese fled
from the provinces under Nationalist control. The northern armies
began to form an alliance against the Southerners.
Conservative Nationalist leaders in Shanghai mobilized
against the headquarters in Wu-han. There was a deep rift within the
revolutionary camp itself; the leftists at Wu-han, guided by
Borodin, pitted themselves against Chiang and his more conservative
military supporters, who were also laying plans against the
leftists. Resolutions of the CCP's Central Committee in January
1927, showed apprehension of a counterrevolutionary tide against
their party, Soviet Russia, and the revolutionary peasant and
workers' movement; they feared a coalition within the KMT and its
possible alliance with the imperialist powers. The central
leadership resolved to check revolutionary excesses and give all
support to the KMT leadership at Wu-han. Others within the CCP,
notably Mao Zedong, disagreed; they believed the mass revolution
should be encouraged to run its
course.
Expulsion of Communists from the
KMT
The climax of the conflict came after Nationalist armies had
taken Shanghai and Nanking in March. Nanking was captured on March
23, and the following morning Nationalist troops looted foreign
properties, attacked the British, U.S., and Japanese consulates, and
killed seven foreigners. In Shanghai a general strike led by
Communists aroused fears that Chinese might seize the International
Settlement and 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
Canton, Nanking, Nan-ch'ang, Fu-chou, and other cities under
military forces that accepted Chiang's instructions. The KMT
conservatives then established a rival Nationalist government in
Nanking.
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 Wu-han, where he again headed the government.
In July, however, the leftist Nationalist leaders in Wu-han, having
learned of a directive by Joseph Stalin to Borodin to arrange for
radicals to capture control of the government, decided to expel the
Communists and invite 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 seas,
and it soon disintegrated.
The CCP went into revolt. Using its influence in the
Cantonese army of Chang Fa-k'uei, it staged an uprising at Nan-ch'ang
on August 1 and then attempted an "Autumn Harvest" uprising in
several central provinces. Both efforts failed. In December
Communist leaders in Canton started a revolt known as the Canton
Commune. They captured the city with much bloodshed, arson, and
looting; but 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 Peking it was joined by the National People's
Army under Feng Yü-hsiang, part of the Kwangsi army, and the Shansi
army of Yen Hsi-shan. In early June they captured Peking, from which
Chang
Tso-lin and the Fengtien army withdrew for Manchuria. As his
train neared Mukden (modern Shen-yang), Chang died in an explosion
arranged by a few Japanese officers without knowledge of the
Japanese government. Japan did not permit the Nationalist armies to
pursue the Fengtien 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
Nanking.
The National Government from
1928 to 1937
The most serious immediate problem facing the new government
was the continuance of military separatism. The government had no
authority over the vast area of western China, and even regions in
eastern China were under the rule of independent regimes that had
lately been part of the Nationalist coalition. After an unsuccessful
attempt at negotiations, Chiang launched a series of civil wars
against his former allies. By 1930 one militarist regime after
another had been reduced to provincial proportions, and Nanking's
influence was spreading. Explained in material terms, Chiang owed
his success to the great financial resources of his base in Kiangsu
and Chekiang and to foreign arms. Quick recognition by the foreign
powers brought the National Government the revenues collected by the
efficient Maritime Customs Service; when the powers granted China
the right to fix its own tariff schedules, that revenue
increased.
Although the aim of constitutional, representative government
was asserted, the National Government at Nanking was in practice
personally dominated by Chiang Kai-shek. The army and the civil
bureaucracy were marked by factional divisions, which Chiang
carefully balanced against one another so that ultimate decision
making was kept in his own hands. The KMT was supposed to infuse all
government structures and to provide leadership, but the army came
to be the most powerful component of government. Chiang's regime was
marked by a military orientation, which external circumstances
reinforced.
Nevertheless, the Nationalists did much to create a modern
government and a coherent monetary and banking system and to improve
taxation. They expanded the public educational system, developed a
network of transportation and communication facilities, and
encouraged industry and commerce. Again it was urban China that
mainly benefited; little was done to modernize agriculture or to
eradicate disease, illiteracy, and underemployment in the villages,
hamlets, and small towns scattered over a continental territory.
With conscription and heavy taxation to support civil war, and a
collapsing export market for commercial crops, rural economic
conditions may have grown worse during the Nationalist
decade.
The National Government during its first few years in power
had some success in reasserting China's sovereignty. Several
concession areas were returned to Chinese control, and the foreign
powers assented to China's resumption of tariff autonomy. Yet these
were merely token gains; the unequal treaties were scarcely
breached. The country was in a nationalistic mood, determined to
roll back foreign economic and political penetration. Manchuria
was a huge and rich area of China in which Japan had extensive
economic privileges, possessing part of the Liaotung Peninsula as a
leasehold and controlling much of southern Manchuria's economy
through the South Manchurian Railway. The Chinese began to develop
Hu-lu-tao, in Liaotung, as a port to rival Dairen (modern Lü-ta) and
to plan railways to compete with Japanese lines. Chang
Hsüeh-liang, Chang Tso-lin's son and successor as ruler of
Manchuria, was drawing closer to Nanking and sympathized with the
Nationalists' desire to rid China of foreign privilege.
For Japan,
Manchuria was regarded as vital. Many Japanese had acquired a sense
of mission that Japan should lead Asia against the West. The Great
Depression had hurt Japanese business, and there was deep social
unrest. Such factors influenced many army officers to regard
Manchuria as the area where Japan's power must be consolidated,
especially officers of the Kwantung
Army, which protected Japan's leasehold in the Liaotung
Peninsula and the South Manchurian Railway.
Japanese aggression
In September 1931 a group of officers in the Kwantung Army
set in motion a plot to compel the Japanese government to extend its
power in Manchuria.
The Japanese government was drawn, step by step, into the conquest
of Manchuria and the creation of a regime known as Manchukuo. China
was unable to prevent Japan from seizing this vital area. In 1934,
after long negotiations, Japan acquired the Soviet interest in the
Chinese
Eastern Railway, thus eliminating the last legal trace of the
Soviet sphere of influence there. During 1932-35 Japan seized more
territory bordering on Manchuria. In 1935 it attempted to detach
Hopeh and Chahar from Nanking's control and threatened Shansi,
Suiyüan, and Shantung. The National Government's policy was to trade
space for time in which to build military power and unify the
country. Its slogan "Unity before resistance" was directed
principally against the Chinese
Communists.
War between Nationalists and
Communists
In the meantime, the Communists had created 15 rural bases in
central China, and they established a soviet government, the Kiangsi
Soviet, on Nov. 7, 1931. Within the soviet regions the Communist
leadership expropriated and redistributed land and in other ways
enlisted the support of the poorer classes. The Japanese occupation
of Manchuria and an ancillary localized war around Shanghai in 1932
distracted the Nationalists and gave the Communists a brief
opportunity to expand and consolidate. But the Nationalists in late
1934 forced the Red armies to abandon their bases and retreat. Most
of the later Communist leaders, including Mao Zedong, Zhu De (Chu
Teh), Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi (Liu Shao-ch'i), and Lin
Biao (Lin Piao), marched
and fought their way across western China. By mid-1936 the remnants
of several Red armies had gathered in an impoverished area in
northern Shensi, with headquarters located in the town of Yen-an,
which lent its name to the subsequent period (1936-45) of CCP
development.
During the Long March Mao
Zedong rose to preeminence in the CCP leadership. In the early
1930s he had engaged in bitter power struggles with other party
leaders and actually had found himself in a fairly weak position at
the start of the Long March campaigns; but in January 1935 a rump
session of the CCP Political Bureau (Politburo) confirmed Mao in the
newly created post of chairman. It was also during the Long March
that the CCP began to develop a new political strategy--a united
front against Japan. It was first conceived as an alliance of
patriotic forces against Japan and the National Government; but as
Japan's pressure on China and the pressure of the Nationalist armies
against the weakened Red armies increased, the Communist leaders
began to call for a united front of all Chinese against Japan alone.
Virtually all classes and various local regimes supported this, and
the Communists moderated their revolutionary program and terminated
class warfare in their zone of control.
Chiang was determined, however, to press on with his
extermination campaign. He ordered the Manchurian army under Chang
Hsüeh-liang, now based in Sian, and the Northwestern army under Yang
Hu-ch'eng to attack the Communist forces in northern Shensi. Many
officers in these armies sympathized with the Communist slogan
"Chinese don't fight Chinese"; they preferred to fight Japan, a
sentiment particularly strong in the homeless Manchurian army. Chang
Hsüeh-liang was conducting secret negotiations with the Communists
and had suspended the civil war. In December 1936 Chiang Kai-shek
flew to Sian to order Chang and Yang to renew the anti-Communist
campaign. Under pressure from subordinates, Chang detained Chiang on
the morning of December 12 (this became known as the Sian
Incident).
The United Front against
Japan
Fearing that, if Chiang were killed,
China would be plunged into renewed disorder,
the nation clamoured for his release. The Soviet Union quickly
denounced the captors and insisted that Chiang be freed (the Soviet
Union needed a united China opposing Japan, its potential enemy on
the east). The CCP leaders also decided that Chiang's release would
serve China's interests as well as their own, if he would accept
their policy against Japan. Zhou Enlai and several other Communist
leaders flew to Sian to try to effect this. Chang Hsüeh-liang
finally agreed to free his captive, with the understanding that
Chiang would call off the civil war and unite the country against
the invader. On December 25 Chiang was freed.
The two Chinese parties began protracted and secret
negotiations for cooperation, each making concessions. But it was
not until September 1937, after the Sino-Japanese War had begun,
that the National Government formally agreed to a policy of
cooperation with the CCP. For its part, the CCP publicly affirmed
its adherence to the realization of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles
of the People, its abandonment of armed opposition to the KMT and of
the forcible confiscation of landlords' property, the substitution
of democracy for its soviet government, and the reorganization of
the Red Army as a component of the national army under the central
government.
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