by Emily Hahn
The Chinese united in furious indignation. It was only an aggravation to them when a diplomatic commission that sat on the May 30 incident decided that the shooting at Louza police station had been justified. Men of all parties joined together in showing their resentment. Chang Tso-lin was one sympathizer, Feng Yu-hsiang another, and Chiang Kai-shek for a while actually forgot his distrust of the Communists. They were in this together, facing a common enemy—Western imperialism. In such a mood Chiang sent his young son Ching-kuo to Moscow to study military science. Anywhere was better than the West.
The situation in Peking took on fresh interest for Sun’s heirs, anxious to get started on the long-awaited expedition. Wu Pei-fu, dispossessed by treachery, had gathered about him a number of war lords south of the city, and another threat to Canton’s success was a general, Sun Chuan-fang, formerly a subordinate to Chang Tso-lin, who had made himself lord of five provinces in the Southeast. The Nationalists would have to deal with three separate foes, or compound with three leaders, in order to unify China.
At the beginning of July 1925 Canton seemed peacefully busy, with all Sun’s bright young men getting on like little birds in their nests. Hu Han-min was Foreign Minister. Wang Ching-wei was Chairman of the State Council of a new national government. On Borodin’s advice, a model organization plan was drawn up for towns and provinces all over China. Most important of all, Kuomintang propagandists were busy preparing people in Kiangsu, Hunan, Shantung—all the provinces involved—for the great day when the Nationalists should arrive.
But schism was dividing the party, and a left-wing member Liao Chung-kai was its first victim. Openly Communist in his sympathies, his position became less and less popular as the right wing of the Kuomintang gained in strength. He was third in rank in the new Military Council, headed by Wang Ching-wei, but not for long. Six weeks after his appointment he was shot and killed, and among the instigators was the rightist Hu Han-min’s brother. It was declared that they had been encouraged to do the job by “the British Imperialists in Hongkong,” but everything was being blamed on the British that year, and there was never any proof of the allegations. There were plenty of Chinese who had reasons for wanting a pro-Russian out of the government.
In Liao, Chiang lost an old friend. Grief may have hastened his decision, though there was little time for grief: clearly he felt that the moment for dealing with plots and counterplots had arrived. The Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang (the most important body of all) met with both State and Military councils and decided that the situation called for emergency measures. Wang Ching-wei, Hsu Chung-chih, who was Chiang’s C-in-C, and Chiang himself were given unlimited powers.
Liao was assassinated on August 20. Four days later Chiang sent out a detachment of his Whampoa cadets in a search party. They broke into the houses and offices of all the government officials, and seized and examined documents. About a hundred men were arrested and imprisoned. Hu Han-min was taken under guard to Whampoa, and later sent away on a “diplomatic mission” to Russia. That left, leading the government, Wang Ching-wei, Chiang himself, and Hsu Chung-chih.
Hsu had been on good terms with Chiang, or vice versa, a long time. But now Chiang quarreled with this friend. He was in no mood to knuckle down to anyone, and at that moment it must have galled him particularly that Hsu was nominally his superior. Hsu’s judgment was not as good as his own: he was sure of it. In the hothouse temperature of Russian-dominated Canton, ambitions burst into bloom overnight like tropical flowers. Hsu and Chiang did not agree on the old vexed question of Chen Chiung-ming: Hsu had insisted upon letting that war lapse, and now it looked as if Chen were rising up to plague them again. Hsu’s judgment was not good, according to Chiang. No one could accuse him of being a conspirator, but some of his officers were mixed up in the affair. Altogether, it would be better for Hsu, too, to retire.… Before the end of September, Hsu Chung-chih was taking refuge in Shanghai, and Wang Ching-wei and Chiang Kai-shek now shared the responsibility for the government.
The Central Executive Committee awarded Chiang full military powers, and he marched against Chen Chiung-ming and his allies in full strength, determined to put down these local disturbances for good and all, before he set out for the North. On this campaign, which was called the East River Expedition, the Chinese proved to the world what a transformation had been wrought by reorganization. The first encounter with the enemy took place at Tamshui; the war lords were beaten off and the Nationalists marched on to Waichow. Waichow, a walled city surrounded by a moat, had been captured only once before in all of China’s history, and that was a thousand years ago. Chiang stormed the town himself, leading a contingent across the moat and fighting with reckless courage. Several officers who later became famous in their own right bore testimony to his bravery.
“It is now only a month since we started … but we have captured from the enemy over six thousand rifles, seven field guns, more than thirty machine guns and over six thousand prisoners.… Today we are in Swatow,” he said in a telegram to Canton on November 6. He added that propaganda had wrought a tremendous change in the public. “The common people from all four directions have come out in crowds to see us and welcome us with food and drink.”
Everything should have been set now for the final great adventure, the march to Peking. The troops had been tested and passed the test brilliantly. But politically Canton was still not strong, the Communist question having stirred up so much trouble that it was bound to break out here and there in spite of Wang Ching-wei’s skillful handling of both extremes. While Chiang was still marching toward Waichow, anti-Communists held a secret meeting near Peking, at Sun Yat-sen’s tomb in the Western Hills, and passed a number of resolutions—that all Communists be expelled from the Kuomintang, that Borodin and the other Russians be sent back to Moscow, and others of the same sort. Chiang was in sympathy with the spirit of these proposals, but in his position he couldn’t afford to admit his sentiments.
When the news came out Borodin offered to resign and go away, but the Kuomintang wouldn’t hear of it. They repeated the old protests of friendship for Russia, and Chiang even made fun of the Western Hills Conference for demanding the expulsion of Communists from the C.E.C.: “There are 24 members in the … Committee, and only four of them belong to the Communist Party. That shows a ratio of six to one. If we still fear that the Communists will slowly gobble us up, we indeed have no self-respect and no confidence in ourselves.” As an added assurance to Borodin of the love they bore him, the Party made a public presentation to him of a silver souvenir, inscribed with the words “Co-operative Struggle.”
So it was a letdown when Canton heard that Borodin had suddenly gone North to confer with Feng Yu-hsiang. The gossips got busy with a story that Chiang had broken with the Russians after all and was going to attempt the Northern Expedition alone and independent of Moscow. What had happened? Had Wang Ching-wei given in to him? If so, thought many foreigners abroad, China was in the grip of a new dictator, Chiang Kai-shek.
Now, in 1925, American papers began to take notice of his name, and their general attitude toward it was disapproving. They interpreted Chiang as an opportunist, working his way to the top, heedless of his people’s good. Americans, not unnaturally, couldn’t unravel the complexities of the Chinese scene, but they could see that the Canton government was splitting into two factions. It looked as if the leftist faction was for the People, and so of course the rightists, because they were opposed to the leftists, must be oppressors of the People. By their own traditions Americans felt themselves committed to be on the side of the leftists, again because of the People.… Of course this wasn’t consistent with American distrust of Soviet Russia, but most of them weren’t aware that Soviet Russia was deeply involved in the business, or, if they were aware, they felt that Russia, no matter how objectionable she might be at close quarters, was all right for China.
Happenings early in the next year added to the sinister element hi Chiang’s reputation. Whi
le Borodin was in Peking, two other Russians took his place as advisers hi Canton. They hadn’t Borodin’s brilliant tact, and Chiang didn’t like them. Not being an American, not being far from the scene or full of innocence and ideals, he could see only that they represented a rival power and treated him as something to be used. They insulted his intelligence. Chiang had his own, or anyway Sun’s, notions of what was needed for the country. He may have been mistaken; it is hard nowadays to decide that, but he was not unreasonable in wishing to avoid being taken over by Soviet Russia. Chiang had no illusions about their intentions.
“I offer them sincerity,” he wrote in his diary. “They return deceit. It is impossible to work together with them.”
The disputes were especially rancorous on the subject of the Northern Expedition. Chiang kept pressing to get it moving, and the advisers continued to put him off, for what minor strategical reason it is impossible now to say. There was another difficult point; Chiang could not pin down the war lords who controlled Kwangsi and Hunan. He had to assure himself of their support because he needed their troops, but they held off, objecting to Russian influence in the high command. And the Hunan war lord was especially important for another reason; he must ensure a peaceful, swift passage for the expedition across his territory, as everything depended on speed in the early stages. Chiang decided to reduce the Russians’ participation in his affairs. As a first step he arrested a divisional commander suspected of working for them under cover. The chief Russian adviser promptly protested, and Chiang was plunged into a long argument with Wang Ching-wei.
A few weeks passed tensely. He complained to his diary that he could not sleep. His mind was made up, but he had to wait for the right moment. He couldn’t go to the C.E.C. and put the matter through proper channels because that would tip off the Russians. “My Master and the martyrs of the Party in heaven have pity on me and protect me,” he wrote.
On March 20 he moved as suddenly as he had done in the raid of the government offices. The police under his orders arrested a number of officials. They disarmed a regiment suspected of wholehearted allegiance to Communism rather than the Kuomintang. They surrounded the headquarters of the Canton Strikers’ Committee, a concentration of Communist adherents. But their most startling arrests were of several Russians, including those who had so annoyed Chiang; these men were told they must get out of China.
It was all highly unconstitutional, and Wang Ching-wei did not pretend to be pleased. Chiang stopped short of declaring himself dictator, but he didn’t deign to give more than partial explanations of his actions. (It was rumored, however, that he had moved quickly to nip in the bud a kidnaping plot against himself.) He went through the formality of trying to make peace with the Council Chairman: Wang himself, he declared, had lately given him a warning and suggested that he leave Canton. Surely it was only natural to defend himself? What else had Wang expected him to do?
Apparently, Wang had expected him to take fright and follow his suggestion, and get out of the city. As Chiang had not done so, Wang himself found it more prudent to retire, which he did, disappearing only five days after the incident. From his hideaway he wrote to Chang Ching-kiang that he was henceforth eschewing all political activity. A few months later he went to France. Chiang was left triumphant, the only survivor of the original three.
Now, having made his point, he behaved in a more conciliatory manner. It had never been his intention, he said, to break off completely with Moscow. Sun Yat-sen had believed in co-operating with Russia, and so did he. His behavior didn’t belie the statement when Borodin came back from the domain of Feng Yu-hsiang in May. (At the same time, Hu Han-min returned from Moscow and was treated as one who had expiated his crime. But he soon moved on to Shanghai. He seemed to consider Canton crowded.) Chiang and the Russian had an interview from which they emerged calm and friendly. Immediately thereafter Chiang piously criticized the extreme anti-Communists of the Party and went through some elaborate play-acting regarding the Chief of Police, who had carried out his directions in March. The Chief was punished by a prison sentence, but he took it philosophically; it was all part of the show.
For several weeks Chiang might as well have been Wang Ching-wei. He trod the middle path and earnestly scolded everybody who deviated from it. Then, abruptly, he came out again squarely pro-Right. Something must be done, he said, to curb the power of the Communists in the Kuomintang, and thereupon he called an emergency meeting of the Central Executive Committee and made a fiery speech. Henceforth, he said, the Reds must refrain from attacking Sun Yat-sen and his Three Principles. It was a safe enough suggestion as no Red would ever have admitted doing such a thing in any case: the Committee docilely accepted the command. Chiang continued with a resolution that no Communist should hold high office in the Kuomintang; this, too, was passed. But the Committee voted down his next suggestion, that all Communists should be expelled from the Kuomintang—the same resolution that Chiang himself had opposed when it came from the Western Hills Conference—though they agreed that relations between the parties must be revised, and that the Reds must supply a list of their members to the Kuomintang. Various other rules were formulated, all aimed at curtailing Communist powers. Throughout the meeting, Borodin listened and said never a word in disagreement. The two men had evidently promised each other to get along until the Northern Expedition should be successfully carried through.
In June, in preparation for the now imminent expedition, Chiang was named commander-in-chief of the Army. He was Chairman of the C.E.C. and of the Military Council as well. Every Communist who held too high a post in the Army was removed. Every Communist, even in civilian life, who seemed to be getting too big for his boots was shifted. One of those was Mao Tse-tung, head of the Propaganda Department. By the middle of June, Mao was looking for another job.
5 SUCCESS, AND A BREAK WITH MOSCOW 1926–27
Chiang was ready to begin marching as soon as the Canton air cleared. On July 9, ’26, the C.E.C. gave him unlimited powers over the military. Careful plans had long been laid for the two-thousand-mile trek. Feng Yu-hsiang, sounded out by Borodin, seemed amenable to suggestion; he was to withdraw from the vicinity of Peking into the Northwest. The friendly war lords of Kweichow and Szechuan would stand by and protect the Nationalist Army on the southern side from an unfriendly general who was running Yunnan. Sun Chuan-fang of the five provinces of the lower Yangtze was willing to remain neutral—at least he said so, though later he changed his mind. The war lord of Hunan had finally promised to permit a quick passage through his domain and would join the Nationalists as soon as he was assured they would win, which guaranteed a swift take-off. Chiang’s chief enemies were Old Marshal Chang—who would very probably be supported unofficially by Japan—and Wu Pei-fu, now hovering about in Central China.
Chiang had eight corps, each under a general to whom, in the old-fashioned way, the men owed their allegiance. As he had never collected a personal army for himself, this might have put him at a disadvantage, but the concentrated training given at the Whampoa Academy had changed all that. Junior officers in all the corps were Whampoa men. The combined troops numbered fifty thousand, only half the size of Wu Pei-fu’s army.
At Hengchow, in Hunan, Chiang met his men on August 10. There had not been the slightest opposition to their entry into the province, and when the main army moved on to Changsha, the capital, there was little resistance, though Wu’s forces were supposed to hold the city. The propagandists had been hard at work in Hunan, and the Nationalists moved forward to cheers and shouted slogans from the populace.
Two subsidiary Nationalist armies made their own way, going in the general direction of the main branch; one through Kiangsi toward Nanking and the other through Fukien. All this activity was not a secret to the North, but Wu Pei-fu was slow getting started and his forward troops were a second-string lot. The Nationalists were well along by the time he got to Hankow, approaching Hankow’s sister city, Wuchang, and they arrived in its environs at the beg
inning of September.
Here, for the first time, they encountered soldiers of good caliber and a garrison commander who refused to turn coat. Wuchang was a walled city and it held out against several attacks led by Chiang. Tired of losing men and gaining nothing, the Nationalists turned their attention instead to the third of the cities, Hanyang, whose garrison was willing to listen to reason. Hanyang was occupied on September 6, and Wu fled from Hankow, and the Nationalists moved in on the eighth. In another month Wuchang too had fallen.
Next item on the list was Kiangsi, where Sun Chuan-fang of the lower-Yangtze provinces had massed his troops against them after all. Chiang had good reason to feel cocky. So far, he was ahead of his timetable. The generals of the North, already quarrelsome among themselves, became less and less cohesive as their enemy approached. Now, however, as was inevitable, the initial Nationalist push slowed down. At the Hunan-Kiangsi border there was a battle which neither side won. On September 19 the Nationalists, aided by sympathizers within, captured Chiang’s goal, Kiangsi’s capital city of Nanchang, but a couple of days later they were driven out again, and for two months thereafter the struggle stalled in the Nanchang area, with Chiang vainly trying to recapture the city. All his army was committed to this task, so he sent General Ho Ying-chin, commander-in-chief of the Eastern Route Army, to carry on in Fukien meanwhile. When, in November, Nanchang did fall, Sun Chuan-fang retreated to Nanking and enlisted under Chang Tso-lin’s banner.