Webs of Smoke by Kathryn Meyer & Terry Parssínen

Webs of Smoke by Kathryn Meyer & Terry Parssínen

Author:Kathryn Meyer & Terry Parssínen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461705871
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers


THE RISE OF CHIANG KAI-SHEK

During the warlord years of shifting alliances a new dimension to the violent politics of the age was added in 1923. Sun Yat-sen came to an agreement with agents from the Soviet Union, who helped reorganize the Guomindang and establish a power base in Guangdong. As a central figure in the Revolution of 1911, Sun acted as a magnet to those in China who yearned for a viable government. By 1925 Sun’s reforms transformed the party into a disciplined body. Well-trained officers from the newly established Whampoa Military Academy began to form the base of an effective army under the leadership of Sun’s protege, Chiang Kai-shek. This new force became doubly effective by forging a working alliance with the young Chinese Communist Party. The maneuver brought angry peasants, like those in Fujian province, and workers in the cities, like those who had gone on strike in Shanghai in 1925, into the battle against the warlords. Yet this uneasy coalition between the Guomindang and radical revolutionaries quickly came to an end once Chiang Kai-shek rose to power.

In the early 1920s no one would have considered Chiang Kai-shek a rising star in the Guomindang. Born poor in Zhejiang province, Chiang, like so many in his day, had moved to Shanghai in his teens in search of a livelihood. There he lived a dissolute life, associated with members of the Green Gang, and perhaps joined the organization. More important, he met Guomindang party members who had been associated with the martyred hero, Chen Qimei. In the early 1920s he invested in a stock exchange with the Chen brothers. When the business failed, he went south to work with Sun Yat-sen. Once there he impressed Sun with his sincerity and was duly made head of the newly established Whampoa Military Academy. Despite many opponents and rivals in the party, Chiang’s ties to graduates of this academy and to the Shanghai Guomindang gave him a solid power base.

In 1926 Nationalist armies commanded by Chiang Kai-shek, began the Northern Expedition to reunite China. By early spring of the next year, strategic areas of central China were in his control. Chiang felt secure enough to rid himself of the Communist allies that he had barely tolerated and never trusted. In executing his plan to purge the party, he sent two Whampoa Green Gang men to Shanghai to seek Du’s help: Zhang Qun and Yang Hu. On April 12, 1927, Du’s followers, along with those of Zhang Xiaolin, used weapons supplied by Yang Hu and began the systematic massacre of Communist Party workers in Shanghai. On the evening that the purge was to begin, Du invited the local Communist Party leader, Wang Shouhua, to his home for dinner. There Du’s lieutenants waylaid Wang, who had considered Du an ally, and subsequently murdered him.36

By 1928 the Nationalists began to consolidate their hold on the lower Yangzi River region. Chiang Kai-shek formed a new government, moving the capital from Beijing (renamed Beiping) to Nanjing. Nationalist officials, including Chiang, publicly affirmed their anti-opium policy.



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