by Emily Hahn
Fukien fell to the Nationalists early in December; Chekiang was to be next. The northern war lords belatedly realized that their personal troubles must be shelved while they dealt with the threat, and they redistributed their power in a new pattern in the common cause. But old habits die hard, and at least two northern generals had soon double-crossed their companions. While they wrangled, their cause went wrong in Chekiang.
During these maneuvers, the places already occupied by Chiang’s army were living in uneasy imitation of normality, with temporary military governors in charge of a people who had been stirred by Communist-type propaganda to anticipation of a bright new world. The public were in volatile mood; a lot of excitement was floating around, and in January the bubble burst in Hankow. A mob of locals listened to a fiery speech against foreign imperialists, made, it is said, by some anonymous attaché of the conquering army, and then rushed to the British Concession and stormed it. The Concession was guarded by British marines, who were forewarned, being under standing orders not to fire. Protecting all foreigners as well as they could, they ushered their charges straight to the foreign ships riding at anchor in the Yangtze, while the Chinese mob, exultant, had its own way with British property and houses in the Concession. In older days the incident would have been followed by apologies from the Chinese authorities and some sort of restitution, but nothing of the sort now happened. The mob remained in the Concession and the British stayed away. This unorthodox arrangement was made official in the Chen-O’Malley agreement, when Eugene Chen, the Kuomintang Foreign Minister, signed a treaty with the British representative whereby the concessions of both Hankow and Kiukiang were returned to the Chinese as their rightful territory. Every Chinese, regardless of his politics, was wildly happy at this symptom of growing independence. Foreign imperialism was at last on the wane! (But Chiang Kai-shek, in the midst of triumph, looked thoughtfully toward Moscow.)
Meanwhile the Chekiang campaign, so important to Chikow’s native son, was flourishing. Under the command of Pai Chung-hsi, the Moslem lord of Kwangsi, Hangchow was occupied by the southerners in February 1927, and soon the whole province was in their hands. Central China was practically theirs, and nearly half the long trek to Peking was over.
The northerners now hastened to occupy Nanking, but they did not stay there long. The Nationalists were on their way to nearby Shanghai, and entered it on March 22. Inhabitants of the foreign concessions were in wild alarm. Troops of European and American countries stood at the ready while their warships waited all along the Bund for the sack of the city. However, the soldiers didn’t interfere with foreigners or their belongings. After a day or so the denizens of the Concession calmed down and began congratulating each other, and Chiang Kai-shek, for the control he maintained over his men.
But congratulations swiftly veered back again to panic at the news from Nanking, occupied by the Nationalists two days after they took Shanghai. Why what happened did happen is still a point of argument. Looting and lynching in the town began on the twenty-fourth, as soon as the Nationalists arrived: mobs attacked foreign buildings regardless of their nature—missions, consulates, and all—and handled the people roughly before the men aboard the British and American gunboats on the river realized what was going on. Then a bombardment from the boats quieted the malefactors, but not until six foreigners were dead, several of the women raped, and a number of people wounded.
Chiang was on his way downriver by boat from Kiukiang while this was happening. He didn’t arrive until several days afterward, when all the foreigners had been evacuated to Shanghai. He was terribly angry. His office claimed that the mischief had been done by the fleeing northern troops, but the foreigners would not accept this explanation: among their excited voices were those of missionaries who insisted they had recognized the Cantonese dialect. For a little while Chiang hesitated. He could come out publicly with a possible defense that Communists among his troops were responsible for the incitement but that would mean a definite break with the Reds, and he had not expected to bring things to such a point quite yet. On the other hand the foreign governments were clamoring for satisfaction; Shanghai milled with terror and rage. He could hardly permit the accusation to be carried by default.
At last he apologized all round and sent word to the foreigners involved in the incident that he would investigate carefully, punish everyone who had taken part, and hold himself personally responsible thereafter for the safety of the whites. A rough inquiry promptly followed. Chiang continued being conciliatory to the nationals concerned, but other Kuomintang officials’ reactions were not thus calculated to soothe ruffled feelings. Eugene Chen made wild claims: he declared that more than a hundred Chinese had been killed or wounded for every foreign casualty. Chiang brusquely denied these figures: seven Chinese lives had been lost in all, he said, and fifteen Chinese were wounded. He made a good impression on the intermediaries who were managing the matter, and in Shanghai the strain relaxed. In Hankow things were different.
“He is rather clever,” said a Russian just returned to Moscow from China, reporting on Chiang. “He understands pretty well political questions, not only of a local Chinese but of a world-wide nature.… He uses us and the Chinese Communists, but only as long as we assist him and are useful to him.”
Since this one Russian, at least, understood Chiang as well as Chiang understood the Russians, it is all the more strange that the others should have underrated him so fantastically. He had resolved to get on with the Communists, come what might, until the Northern Expedition should be successfully concluded. He and Borodin had a gentlemen’s agreement to maintain an armistice until then. But later events made it clear that the Reds had no intention of permitting him to come out winner in Peking. When the Wuhan cities were captured in October, while Chiang was with his troops in Nanchang, Borodin moved the government to Hankow and immediately called a meeting of the Central Executive Committee. They elected a new standing committee, voted Chiang out of office as Chairman and Generalissimo, and announced that Wang Ching-wei, who was still abroad, was to be his successor in the civil post. It is extraordinary that they should have expected Chiang to let this attack pass unchallenged. Stalin’s plan, as Robert North says, was “brutally clear; to use the Wuhan government for building Communist strength and then to take it away from those to whom it belonged.”
The Communists evidently thought that repeated public statements would reassure Chiang, even when they had already voted him out of his posts. Wang Ching-wei came back from Europe in April and published a joint declaration with a Communist leader contradicting rumors that the Reds intended to overthrow the Kuomintang and opposite rumors that the Kuomintang intended to make war on the C.C.P. In Moscow, Stalin replied to criticisms and demand for immediate action from the Comintern Executive Committee with reassuring words:
“Why drive away the Right when we have the majority and when the Right listens to us? The peasant needs an old worn-out jade as long as she is necessary. He does not drive her away. So it is with us. When the Right is of no more use to us, we will drive it away. At present we need the Right. It has capable people who will direct the Army and lead it against the imperialists. Chiang Kai-shek has perhaps no sympathy for the revolution, but he is leading the Army and cannot do otherwise than lead it against the imperialists. Besides this, the people of the Right have relations with the generals of Chang Tso-lin and understand very well how to demoralize them and to induce them to pass over to the side of the revolution, bag and baggage, without striking a blow. Also, they have connections with the rich merchants and can raise money from them. So they have to be utilized to the end, squeezed out like a lemon, and then thrown away.”
Naturally, Chiang decided to jump the gun. He went to Shanghai on the pretense of tracking down rioters escaped from Nanking after the looting incident, and there he had an interview with Chang Ching-kiang and the leading businessmen of the town. The Shanghai men agreed to back him in his coming action and to give him, immediately, three million Sh
anghai dollars to make up for the Russian support which would be sacrificed.
Some Communists must certainly have expected the blow, yet the Comintern continued to order inaction. “The bulk of their weapons lay carefully buried. On March 26 Chiang arrived aboard a gunboat unannounced and walked ashore without opposition from anyone.” (North, Moscow and Chinese Communists, p. 95.) Two more weeks elapsed, and still the Reds did nothing. Then on April 12 Chiang acted.
In the subsequent outcry, Communist sympathizers claimed that Chiang’s attitude and behavior were those of a wicked bully. Their writing is full of clichés—“running dog of Western imperialism,” and so on—and from those days there is left in most American minds a residue, a conviction that he didn’t behave nicely. Even non-Communists feel that Chiang used honest companions in his campaign, climbing on them as on a ladder, and then, as soon as he saw his chance and felt himself strong enough, kicked the ladder down and away. Without going into the fundamental question of the rights and wrongs of military force, it seems pretty difficult to figure out what else he could have done with the Reds. Quite simply, they wanted to get rid of him and take control of China. To talk of his “betrayal” seems a strange sort of logic.
Still, his diary shows that he didn’t arrive at his decision without a good deal of soul-searching and sleeplessness, for it was no light matter to reverse the trend set by Sun Yat-sen. Already he was at outs with his revered Master’s widow, and with a good many of his old companions who were either in the Red conspiracy up to their necks or hopeful that unity might yet be preserved. Most troubling was the personal question of his son, young Ching-kuo, now in Russia as a student. What would happen to Ching-kuo?
On the “white massacre” that began April 12 Communists are eloquent. Chiang did not wait to be betrayed; he committed the unforgivable sin; he outguessed Stalin and struck first. “Chiang’s long-sword detachments marched through the streets, executing workers on the spot; some of the strikers in the Railway Department were thrown into the furnaces of the locomotives. Communist Party, Trades Union movement, all workers’ organisations, were smashed to pieces and driven into illegality. The Chinese counterrevolution, backed by imperialism, reigned triumphant in Shanghai.…” (James, World Revolution.)
It is a fair description of what happened. Chiang did not use many soldiers for the coup: to be effective the stroke had to be administered in a lot of places at once, and he was reluctant to draw troops from the expeditionary front line. Instead he employed the strong-arm men of two of those secret societies that have flourished in China for centuries. Much capital has been made of the fact that he had connection with secret societies. Westerners have been told over and over that it proves what a sinister figure he really is, whose friends are gangsters and gang leaders. But though secret societies and gangs are not socially acceptable in New York or London, in China they are a part of ordinary life. Had he not been intimately acquainted with such characters, especially after his years in the Army, Chiang Kai-shek would have been a freak.
The killings were only a part of the action: the trade unions were closed, and all units organized by the Reds among peasants and workers were disbanded. But the executions were the most horrible and sensational of the proceedings. Thousands of people died, not only in the first flush of the attack but for days thereafter. Trials were summary, where there were trials at all. As in other upheavals in Chinese history, beheadings often took place on the spot of apprehension, in the street or the house. On the whole, however, the character of the action was not markedly Chinese; a new influence was apparent. “Oddly enough,” writes Mr. Berkov, perhaps not as ingenuous as he sounds, “the purge was organized on principles similar to the early institutions of the Soviet Union.”
The ruthlessness of the coup is undeniable: the “treachery” depends on your point of view.
Sharply criticized by Moscow for Moscow’s own stupidity, the Hankow government was unhappy. And now the Generalissimo added to their troubles by sending them directions which they keenly resented. All Communist propaganda must cease forthwith; Nationalist soldiers must thenceforth be controlled only by their regular officers; political agents traveling with the Army were to be stripped of all authority. Indignantly, Hankow rejected the demands and once more voted Chiang out, this time out of everything—command, government posts, and the Kuomintang. A large reward was offered for “the counterrevolutionary,” dead or alive.
Chiang ignored all this and set up in Nanking the rival government he had promised to his banker friends. Once again the West scratched its head and sighed over these confusing Chinese. People had barely got used to having two capitals in the country, north and south, and here was a third one. The situation was a worry, too, for the foreign businessmen in the treaty ports. Who were they to deal with? Who was boss? They hoped fervently that Hankow would not win out.
Waiting in Honan, Feng Yu-hsiang grew increasingly thoughtful as the expedition fought and marched toward his domain. He knew he must soon make a decision. North or south? And, if south—which seemed the obvious choice, because they were winning—Hankow or Nanking? A difficult question, even for so supple a general. Both governments were now carrying on with the expedition, in separate movements, and it was the Hankow army that pushed into Honan. Feng finally moved against Chang Tso-lin, and he made gains, but for which government he fought he himself didn’t know.
Six or seven weeks passed: the Nationalist Army still had two heads. The Wuhan government was in the throes of internal disagreement. A new Communist had recently arrived from Moscow, the Indian M. N. Roy, and he disagreed with Borodin on questions of strategy. Borodin and the Kuomintang leftists of the government wanted the Army to continue toward Peking, and also against Nanking: Borodin felt they could not rely too much on their position in Wuhan. Roy said they should drop the expedition for the time being and concentrate on strengthening themselves by capturing the South, Kiangsi and Kwantung; consolidating their position there. Later they could cut off the Nanking forces by marching in from the south to Shanghai.
To resolve the dispute, Roy referred it to the Comintern in Moscow, but when he got the reply everyone was worse off than ever, Moscow simply saying to go ahead with both plans at once. It could not be done. The potential split between what the Kuomintang wanted and what the Communists wanted was beginning to show up. Of course the Kuomintang leaders, being landowners for the most part, didn’t want to see the agrarian revolution put into action; it would mean losing their land. But the peasants were beginning to demand it: they had been organized to this end, and it was getting difficult to hold them back. There was the notorious Autumn Crop Uprising at Changsha, when twenty thousand peasants marched on the city and would have attacked it, without doubt successfully—there were only seventeen hundred Kuomintang soldiers there—if orders had not come from the C.C.P. leader in Hunan to wait for directions from the C.E.C. at Wuhan. The C.E.C. decided against the attack: they were afraid of upsetting wealthy Kuomintang members. So the peasants had to turn around and go home, and many were killed by the Nanking soldiers who occupied the city. It was a grievance that has never been forgotten or forgiven by people who later rebelled against Stalin and his works.
In Moscow, Stalin argued stubbornly that things had not yet reached the point where the Communist Party could defy the Kuomintang. The agrarian movement must be curbed, he said. To fight with the Kuomintang meant certain defeat. But other members of the Executive Committee said that the agrarian revolt could no longer be curbed, the peasants were already seizing the land. They insisted that if a break were to take place, most of the people would go to the Communist side.
Stalin finally gave in and sent a telegram to Roy and Borodin with the famous directive. The agrarian revolution was to be allowed to go forward; those old leaders of the Kuomintang C.E.C., who were “vacillating and compromising,” must be discarded or stiffened by the recruitment of new peasant and working-class leaders. Unreliable generals must be liquidated. Twenty t
housand Communists, and fifty thousand revolutionary workers and peasants should be mobilized. A revolutionary tribunal was to be set up to punish officers who maintained contact with Chiang Kai-shek. Possessions of Kuomintang officers and men should be spared in the general sharing.
Either Stalin expected all this reorganization to be done under cover or he was singularly lacking in imagination as to the reactions of the non-Communist Chinese. Borodin was not stupid; he said nothing about the telegram to the Chinese. But the Indian, Roy, thought it would be safe to confide in Wang Ching-wei. Wang had been in Moscow, stopping there on his way from France, and it was Roy’s impression, as the Indian later said, that he had already discussed the agrarian reforms and agreed to them, in return for the assurance that he would be leader of the reorganized nation. Perhaps the Comintern-disciplined Roy simply thought that the telegram was as good as a fait accompli, and that Wang would never dare fight against Fate.
But Wang was shocked and scandalized by the message, and promptly said it was no use, that the Kuomintang would not hear of such action. Sun Fo was on his side, and agreed that the Reds must be got rid of. Eugene Chen, though at first he professed as much horror as Wang had done, objected to making a break with Moscow, and Madame Sun was of his mind. They could not do without Russian help, said Chen and Chingling; they could not resist Chiang without it.
Having stirred up the wasp’s nest, Roy wanted to go on and carry out Stalin’s orders to the best of his ability. But Borodin and the others had been frightened by the Kuomintang stand, and they backed water and said the directive should be washed out. It was no use; already the Kuomintang was thoroughly up in arms. Roy quarreled with Borodin, and was the first to leave. Borodin soon followed, sent packing to Russia by the Kuomintang Madame Sun and Eugene Chen also left Hankow, voluntarily and in a hurry, in case they too might be asked to go.