In early 1927 the KMT-CPC rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CPC and the left wing of the KMT had decided to move the seat of the KMT government from Guangzhou to Wuhan, where communist influence was strong. But Chiang and Li Zongren, whose armies defeated warlord Sun Chuanfang, moved eastward toward Jiangxi. The leftists rejected Chiang's demand to eliminate Communists influence within KMT and Chiang denounced the leftists for betraying Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People by taking orders from the Soviet Union. According to Mao Zedong, Chiang's tolerance of the CPC in the KMT camp decreased as his power increased.
On April 7, Chiang and several other KMT leaders held a meeting arguing that communist activities were socially and economically disruptive, and must be undone for the national revolution to proceed.
Northern Expedition and KMT-CPC split
Main article: Northern
Expedition
On April 7, Chiang and several other KMT leaders held a meeting arguing that communist activities were socially and economically disruptive, and must be undone for the national revolution to proceed.
Communist insurgency (1927–1937)
Fighting between Nationalist and Communist forces began on April 12 in Shanghai. The KMT was purged of leftists by the arrest and execution of hundreds of CPC members. It was directed by General Bai Chongxi. This was called the April 12 Incident or Shanghai Massacre by the CPC.The massacre widened the rift between Chiang and Wang Jingwei's Wuhan. Attempts were made by CPC to take cities such as Nanchang, Changsha, Shantou, and Guangzhou. An armed rural insurrection, known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising was staged by peasants, miners and CPC members in Hunan Province led by Mao Zedong. The uprising was unsuccessful. There were now three capitals in China: the internationally recognized republic capital in Beijing, the CPC and left-wing KMT at Wuhan, and the right-wing KMT regime at Nanjing, which would remain the KMT capital for the next decade.
Eventually left-wing KMT also expelled CPC from the Wuhan government, who in turn were toppled by Chiang Kai-shek. The KMT resumed the campaign against warlords and captured Beijing in June 1928. Afterwards most of eastern China was under the Nanjing central government's control, and the Nanjing government received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China. The KMT government announced in conformity with Sun Yat-sen, the formula for the three stages of revolution: military unification, political tutelage, and constitutional democracy.
During the 1920s, Communist Party of China activists retreated underground or
to the countryside where they fomented a military revolt, beginning the Nanchang Uprising
on August 1, 1927. They combined
the force with remnants of peasant
rebels, and established control over several areas in southern China.[24] The Guangzhou
commune was able to control Guangzhou for three days and a "soviet" was
established. KMT armies
continued to suppress the rebellions. This marked
the beginning of the ten year's struggle, known in mainland China as the "Ten Year's Civil War"
(Traditional Chinese: 十年內戰 Simplified Chinese:十年内战 Pinyin:Shínían Nèizhàn). It
lasted until the Xi'an
Incident when Chiang Kai-shek was forced to form the Second United Front against the
invading Japanese.In 1930 the Central Plains War broke out as an internal conflict of the KMT. It was launched by Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and Wang Jingwei. The attention was turned to root out remaining pockets of Communist activity in a series of encirclement campaigns. There were a total of five campaigns. The first and second campaigns failed and the third was aborted due to the Mukden Incident. The fourth campaign (1932–1933) achieved some early successes, but Chiang’s armies were badly mauled when they tried to penetrate into the heart of Mao’s Soviet Chinese Republic. During these campaigns, the KMT columns struck swiftly into Communist areas, but were easily engulfed by the vast countryside and were not able to consolidate their foothold.
Finally, in late 1934, Chiang launched a fifth campaign that involved the systematic encirclement of the Jiangxi Soviet region with fortified blockhouses. Unlike in previous campaigns in which they penetrated deeply in a single strike, this time the KMT troops patiently built blockhouses, each separated by five or so miles to surround the Communist areas and cut off their supplies and food source.
In October 1934, the CPC took advantage of gaps in the ring of blockhouses (manned by the troops of a warlord ally of Chiang Kai-shek's, rather than the KMT themselves) to escape Jiangxi. The warlord armies were reluctant to challenge Communist forces for fear of wasting their own men, and did not pursue the CPC with much fervor. In addition, the main KMT forces were preoccupied with annihilating Zhang Guotao's army, which was much larger than Mao's. The massive military retreat of Communist forces lasted a year and covered what Mao estimated as 12,500 km (25,000 Li), and became known as the Long March.
The march ended when the CPC reached the interior of Shaanxi. Zhang Guotao's army, which took a different route through northwest China, waChinese Muslim ally, the Ma clique. Along the way, the Communist army confiscated property and weapons from local warlords and landlords, while recruiting peasants and the poor, solidifying its appeal to the masses. Of the 90,000-100,000 people who began the Long March from the Soviet Chinese Republic, only around 7,000-8,000 made it to Shaanxi. The remnants of Zhang's forces eventually joined Mao in Shaanxi, but with his army destroyed, Zhang, even as a founding member of the CPC, was never able to challenge Mao's authority. Essentially, the great retreat made Mao the undisputed leader of the Communist Party of China.
s largely destroyed by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and his
The Kuomintang used Khampa soldiers to battle the Communist Red Army as it advanced, and to undermine local warlords who often refused to fight Communist forces to conserve their own strength. 300 "Khampa bandits" were enlisted into the Kuomintang's Consolatory Commission military in Sichuan, where they were part of the effort of the central government of China to penetrate and destabilize the local Han warlords such as Liu Wenhui. The Chinese government sought to exercise full control over frontier areas against the warlords. Liu had refused to battle the Communists to conserve his army. The Consoltary Commission forces were used to battle the Communist Red Army, but were defeated when their religious leader was captured by Communist forces.
