Shanghai massacre | |||||||
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Communists being rounded up during the purges | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Green Gang | Left Kuomintang | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Chiang Kai-shek (NRA commander-in-chief) Bai Chongxi (NRA commander in Shanghai) Du Yuesheng (Green Gang leader) | Chen Duxiu (CCP general secretary) Zhou Enlai | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
National Revolutionary Army; Green Gang and other Shanghai gangs | Chinese Communist Party; Kuomintang leftists; Shanghai labor union militias | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
Approx. 5,000 soldiers of the 2nd Division of the 26th Army and members of various gangs | Thousands from labor union militias | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Minimal | 5,000 [1] –10,000 [2] killed |
Shanghai massacre | |||
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Traditional Chinese | 四一二事件 | ||
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Alternative name | |||
Traditional Chinese | 四一二清黨 | ||
Simplified Chinese | 四一二清党 | ||
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Alternative name(2) | |||
Traditional Chinese | 東南清黨 | ||
Simplified Chinese | 东南清党 | ||
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Alternative name(3) | |||
Traditional Chinese | 四一二反革命政變 | ||
Simplified Chinese | 四一二反革命政变 | ||
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Alternative name(4) | |||
Traditional Chinese | 四一二慘案 | ||
Simplified Chinese | 四一二惨案 | ||
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Part of a series on the |
Chinese Communist Revolution |
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Outline of the Chinese Civil War |
Communismportal |
The Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927, the April 12 Purge or the April 12 Incident as it is commonly known in China, was the violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organizations and leftist elements in Shanghai by forces supporting General Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party or KMT). Following the incident, conservative KMT elements carried out a full-scale purge of communists in all areas under their control, and violent suppression occurred in Guangzhou and Changsha. [3] The purge led to an open split between left-wing and right-wing factions in the KMT, with Chiang Kai-shek establishing himself as the leader of the right-wing faction based in Nanjing, in opposition to the original left-wing KMT government based in Wuhan, which was led by Wang Jingwei. By 15 July 1927, the Wuhan regime had expelled the Communists in its ranks, effectively ending the First United Front, a working alliance of both the KMT and CCP under the tutelage of Comintern agents. For the rest of 1927, the CCP would fight to regain power, beginning the Autumn Harvest Uprising. With the failure and the crushing of the Guangzhou Uprising at Guangzhou however, the power of the Communists was largely diminished, unable to launch another major urban offensive. [4]
In KMT historiography, the event is occasionally referred to as the April 12 Purge (simplified Chinese :四一二清党; traditional Chinese :四一二清黨; pinyin :Sìyī'èr Qīng Dǎng; Wade–Giles :Ssu4-i1-erh4 Ch'ing1 Tang3), while Communist historiography refers to the event as either the April 12 Counter-revolutionary Coup (simplified Chinese :四一二反革命政变; traditional Chinese :四一二反革命政變; pinyin :Sìyī'èr Fǎngémìng Zhèngbiàn; Wade–Giles :Ssu4-i1-erh4 Fan3-ko2-ming4 Cheng4-pien4) or the April 12 Massacre (Chinese :四一二慘案; pinyin :Sìyī'èr Cǎn'àn; Wade–Giles :Ssu4-i1-erh4 Ts'an3-an4). [5]
The roots of the April 12 Incident go back to the Kuomintang's alliance with the Soviet Union, formally initiated by the KMT founder Sun Yat-sen after discussions with Soviet diplomat Adolph Joffe in January 1923. The alliance included both financial and military aid and a small but important group of Soviet political and military advisors, headed by Mikhail Borodin. [6] The Soviet Union's conditions for alliance and aid included co-operation with the small Chinese Communist Party. Sun agreed to let the Communists join the KMT as individuals but ruled out an alliance with them or their participation as an organized bloc. In addition, he demanded that the Communists, upon joining the KMT, adhere to KMT ideology and observe party discipline. Following their admission to the KMT, Communist activities, often covert, soon attracted opposition to the alliance among prominent KMT members. [7] Internal conflicts between left- and right-wing leaders of the KMT with regards to the United Front with the CCP continued right up to the launch of the Northern Expedition.
Plans for a Northern Expedition originated with Sun Yat-sen. After his expulsion from the government in Peking, he had by 1920 made a military comeback and gained control of some parts of Guangdong province. His goal was to extend his control over all of China, particularly Peking. After Sun's death from cancer in March 1925, KMT leaders continued to push the plan, and after they had purged Guangzhou's Communists and Soviet advisors during the "Canton Coup" on 20 May 1926, they finally launched the Expedition that June. Initial successes in the first months of the Expedition soon saw the KMT National Revolutionary Army (NRA) in control of Guangdong and large areas in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Fujian.
With the growth of KMT authority and military strength, the struggle for control of the Party's direction and leadership intensified. In January 1927, the NRA, commanded by Chiang Kai-shek captured Wuhan and went on to attack Nanchang, and KMT leader Wang Jingwei and his left-wing allies, along with the Chinese Communists and the Soviet agent Borodin, transferred the seat of the Nationalist Government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. On 1 March, the Nationalist government reorganized the Military Commission and placed Chiang under its jurisdiction while it secretly plotted to arrest him. Chiang found out about the plot, which most likely led to his determination to purge the CCP from the KMT. [8]
In response to the advances of the NRA, Communists in Shanghai began to plan uprisings against the warlord forces controlling the city. On 21–22 March, KMT and CCP union workers, led by Zhou Enlai and Chen Duxiu, launched an armed uprising in Shanghai and defeated the warlord forces of the Zhili clique. The victorious union workers occupied and governed urban Shanghai except for the international settlements prior to the arrival of the NRA's Eastern Route Army, led by Generals Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren. After the Nanking Incident in which foreign concessions in Nanjing were attacked and looted, both the right wing of the Kuomintang and Western powers became alarmed by the growth of the influence of the Communists, who continued to organize daily mass student protests and labor strikes to demand the return of Shanghai international settlements to Chinese control. [9] With Bai's army firmly in control of Shanghai, on 2 April the Central Control Commission of KMT, led by former Chancellor of Peking University Cai Yuanpei, determined that the CCP actions were anti-revolutionary and undermined the national interest of China, and it voted unanimously to purge the Communists from the KMT. [10] [ better source needed ]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(April 2017) |
On 5 April, Wang Jingwei arrived in Shanghai from overseas and met with the CCP leader Chen Duxiu. After their meeting they issued a joint declaration re-affirming the principle of cooperation between the KMT and the CCP, despite urgent pleas from Chiang and other KMT elders to eliminate Communist influence. When Wang left Shanghai for Wuhan the next day, Chiang asked Green Gang leader Du Yuesheng and other gang leaders in Shanghai to form a rival union to oppose the Shanghai labor union controlled by the Communists, and made final preparations for purging CCP members.
On 9 April, Chiang declared martial law in Shanghai and the Central Control Commission issued the "Party Protection and National Salvation" proclamation (simplified Chinese :保党救国; traditional Chinese :保黨救國; pinyin :Bǎo dǎng jiùguó; Wade–Giles :Pao3 tang3 chiu4-kuo2), denouncing the Wuhan Nationalist Government's policy of cooperation with the CCP. On 11 April, Chiang issued a secret order to all provinces under the control of his forces to purge Communists from the KMT.
Before dawn on 12 April, gang members began to attack district offices controlled by the union workers, including Zhabei, Nanshi, and Pudong. Under an emergency decree, Chiang ordered the 26th Army to disarm the workers' militias; that resulted in more than 300 people being killed and wounded. The union workers organized a mass meeting denouncing Chiang Kai-shek on 13 April, and thousands of workers and students went to the headquarters of the 2nd Division of the 26th Army to protest. Soldiers opened fire, killing 100 and wounding many more. Chiang dissolved the provisional government of Shanghai, labor unions and all other organizations under Communist control, and reorganized a network of unions with allegiance to the Kuomintang and under the control of Du Yuesheng. Some sources say that over 1,000 Communists and KMT leftists [11] were arrested, some 300 were executed and more than 5,000 went missing; some state that 5,000 Communists and leftists were killed [1] while others claim up to 10,000 were killed. [2] Western news reports later nicknamed Gen. Bai "The Hewer of Communist Heads". [12] Some National Revolutionary Army commanders with Communist backgrounds who were graduates of Whampoa Military Academy kept their sympathies for the Communists hidden and were not arrested, and many switched their allegiance to the CCP after the start of the Chinese Civil War. [13]
During the White Terror, local Kuomintang officials specifically targeted short-haired women who had not been subjected to foot binding. These officials presumed that women who rejected foot binding and traditional hair styles were radicals. Kuomintang forces would cut off their breasts and shave their heads, displaying their mutilated corpses to cow the populace. [14]
During the White Terror, the Kuomintang killed more than one million people, primarily peasants. [14] More than 10,000 communists were executed in Changsha within 20 days. The Soviet Union officially terminated its cooperation with the KMT while Wang, fearing retribution as a Communist sympathizer, fled to Europe. The Wuhan Nationalist government soon disintegrated, leaving Chiang as the sole legitimate leader of the Kuomintang. In the years after April 1927, 300,000 people were killed in Hunan in three years of warfare against the Communists while many Hakkas and She people's whole families killed in the mountains, including infants, while young women were sold to prostitution. [15] [16] About 80,000 people were killed in Hunan's Liling and about 300,000 Hunanese civilians were killed in Hunan's Chaling County, Leiyang, Liuyang and Pingjiang. [17]
For the Kuomintang, 39 members of the Kuomintang Central Committee in Wuhan publicly denounced Chiang Kai-shek as a traitor to Sun Yat-sen, including Sun's widow Soong Ching-ling immediately after the purge. However, Chiang was defiant, forming a brand new Nationalist Government to rival the Communist-tolerant Nationalist Government in Wuhan controlled by Wang Jingwei on 18 April. The purges garnered the Nanjing government the support of much of the NRA, the Chinese merchant class, and foreign businesses, bolstering its economic and military position. [18]
The twin rival KMT governments, known as the Ninghan [lower-alpha 1] Split (simplified Chinese :宁汉分裂; traditional Chinese :寧漢分裂; pinyin :Nínghàn Fēnliè; Wade–Giles :Ning2-han4 Fen1-lie4), did not last long. In May 1927, Communists and peasant leaders in the Wuhan area were repeatedly attacked by Nationalist generals. [19] On 1 June, Joseph Stalin sent a telegram to the Communists in Wuhan, calling for mobilisation of an army of workers and peasants. [20] This alarmed Wang Jingwei, who decided to break with the Communists and come to terms with Chiang Kai-shek.
On the Communists' side, Chen Duxiu and his Soviet advisers, who had promoted cooperation with the KMT, were discredited and lost their leadership roles in the CCP. Chen was personally blamed, forced to resign and replaced by Qu Qiubai, who did not change Chen's policies in any fundamental way. The CCP planned for worker uprisings and revolutions in the urban areas. [15] The White Terror completely routed the Communists, and only 10,000 party members out of 60,000 survived. [14]
The first battles of the ten-year Chinese Civil War began with armed Communist insurrections in Changsha, Nanchang, and Guangzhou. During the Nanchang Uprising in August, Communist troops under Zhu De were defeated but escaped from Kuomintang forces by withdrawing to the mountains of Jiangxi. In September Mao led a small peasant army in the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan. It was brutally crushed and the survivors retreated to Jiangxi as well, forming the first elements of what would become the People's Liberation Army. By the time the CCP Central Committee was forced to flee Shanghai in 1933, Mao had established peasant-based soviets in Jiangxi and Hunan provinces, turning the Communist's base of support from urban proletariat to the countryside, where the People's War would be fought.
In June 1928, the National Revolutionary Army captured the Beiyang government's capital of Beijing, leading to the nominal unification of China and worldwide recognition of the Republic as the legal government of China. [21]
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a political party in the Republic of China, initially based on the Chinese mainland and then in Taiwan since 1949. The KMT is a centre-right to right-wing party and the largest in the Pan-Blue Coalition, one of the two main political groups in Taiwan. Its primary rival is the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the largest party in the Pan-Green Coalition. As of 2024, the KMT is the largest single party in the Legislative Yuan. The current chairman is Eric Chu.
Zhou Enlai was a Chinese statesman, diplomat, and revolutionary who served as the first Premier of the People's Republic of China from September 1954 until his death in January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and aided the Communist Party in rising to power, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the Chinese economy.
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with armed conflict continuing intermittently from 1 August 1927 until Communist victory resulted in their total control over mainland China on 7 December 1949.
The Long March was a military retreat by the Chinese Red Army from advancing Nationalist forces during the Chinese Civil War in 1934 through to 1936.
Wang Zhaoming, widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician who was president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang (KMT), leading a government in Wuhan in opposition to the right-wing Nationalist government in Nanjing, but later became increasingly anti-communist after his efforts to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party ended in political failure.
The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The purpose of the campaign was to reunify China, which had become fragmented in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution. The expedition was led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and was divided into two phases. The first phase ended in a 1927 political split between two factions of the KMT: the right-leaning Nanjing faction, led by Chiang, and the left-leaning faction in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei. The split was partially motivated by Chiang's Shanghai Massacre of Communists within the KMT, which marked the end of the First United Front. In an effort to mend this schism, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as the commander of the NRA in August 1927, and went into exile in Japan.
Mikhail Markovich Gruzenberg, known by the alias Borodin, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Communist International (Comintern) agent. He was an advisor to Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang (KMT) in China during the 1920s.
He Long was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and a Marshal of the People's Republic of China. He was from a poor rural family in Hunan, and his family was not able to provide him with any formal education. He began his revolutionary career after avenging the death of his uncle, when he fled to become an outlaw and attracted a small personal army around him. Later his forces joined the Kuomintang, and he participated in the Northern Expedition.
The First United Front, also known as the KMT–CCP Alliance, of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was formed in 1924 as an alliance to end warlordism in China. Together they formed the National Revolutionary Army and set out in 1926 on the Northern Expedition. The CCP joined the KMT as individuals, making use of KMT's superiority in numbers to help spread communism. The KMT, on the other hand, wanted to control the communists from within. Both parties had their own aims and the Front was unsustainable. In 1927, KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek purged the Communists from the Front while the Northern Expedition was still half-complete. This initiated a civil war between the two parties that lasted until the Second United Front was formed in 1936 to prepare for the coming Second Sino-Japanese War.
Anarchism in China was a strong intellectual force in the reform and revolutionary movements in the early 20th century. In the years before and just after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty Chinese anarchists insisted that a true revolution could not be political, replacing one government with another, but had to overthrow traditional culture and create new social practices, especially in the family. "Anarchism" was translated into Chinese as 無政府主義 literally, "the doctrine of no government."
Zhang Fakui was a Chinese Nationalist general who fought against northern warlords, the Imperial Japanese Army and Chinese Communist forces in his military career. He served as commander-in-chief of the 8th Army Group and commander-in-chief of NRA ground force before retiring in Hong Kong in 1949.
The Second United Front was the alliance between the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to resist the Imperial Japanese invasion of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, which suspended the Chinese Civil War from 1937 to 1945.
The Canton Coup of 20 March 1926, also known as the Zhongshan Incident or the March 20th Incident, was a purge of Communist elements of the Nationalist army in Guangzhou undertaken by Chiang Kai-shek. The incident solidified Chiang's power immediately before the successful Northern Expedition, turning him into the paramount leader of the country.
The Chinese Communist Revolution was a social revolution in China that began in 1927 and culminated with the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The revolution was led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which afterwards became the ruling party of China. The revolution resulted in major social changes within China and has been looked at as a model by revolutionary Communist movements in other countries.
Yun Daiying was an early leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Baise Uprising was a short-lived uprising organized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in northwestern Guangxi around the city of Baise. It officially began on December 11, 1929, and lasted until late 1931. The uprising established the Seventh Red Army and a soviet over a number of counties in the You River valley. It drew support from a pre-existing movement of Zhuang peasants led by Wei Baqun, and focused on land redistribution in the area it controlled. After a brief but costly attempt to capture Guangxi's major cities, the soviet was suppressed and surviving soldiers made their way to Jiangxi. Today, it is most famous for the role played by Deng Xiaoping, who was the CCP Central Committee's leading representative in Guangxi during the Uprising. Deng was strongly criticized, both during the Cultural Revolution and by modern historians, for the uprising's swift defeat and his decision to abandon the retreating Seventh Red Army.
Zhan Dabei (1888-1927) was a Chinese revolutionary and politician. He was an anti-Manchu rebel active at the time of the 1911 Revolution. He later became a left-wing member of the Nationalist Party, or KMT, and was executed as a Communist partisan in 1927.
The July 15 Incident, known by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the July 15 counter-revolutionary coup, and as the Wuhan–Communist split by the Kuomintang (KMT), occurred on 15 July 1927. Following growing strains in the coalition between the KMT government in Wuhan and the CCP, and under pressure from the rival nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, Wuhan leader Wang Jingwei ordered a purge of communists from his government in July 1927.
The Chongqing Negotiations were a series of negotiations between the Kuomintang-ruled Nationalist government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 29 August to 10 October 1945, held in Chongqing, China. The negotiations were highlighted by the final meeting between the leaders of both parties, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, which was the first time they had met in 20 years. Most of the negotiations were undertaken by Wang Shijie and Zhou Enlai, representatives of the Nationalist government and CCP, respectively. The negotiations lasted for 43 days, and came to a conclusion after both parties signed the Double Tenth Agreement.
The Wuhan Nationalist government, also known as the Wuhan government, Wuhan regime, or Hankow government, was a government dominated by the left-wing of the Nationalist or Kuomintang (KMT) Party of China that was based in Wuhan from 5 December 1926 to 21 September 1927, led first by Eugene Chen, and later by Wang Jingwei.
In the next weeks five thousand Communists were butchered by the stammering machine-guns of the Kuomintang and by the knives of the criminal gangs whom Chiang recruited for slaughter.