Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
long since given up on any purely political solution to the problem of
warlordism in China.) He died, however, in March 1925 from cancer
before his long-envisioned march could take place. Sun was a giant of a
man with enormous prestige and following in China, and no single
leader could take his place. His mantle of leadership fell on two main
figures. Political leadership went toWang Jingwei, a left-wing Nationalist
politician who was somewhat sympathetic with the Chinese Commu-
nists. The all-important command of the military, however, went to
Chiang Kai-shek, who by this time had pronounced right-wing tenden-
cies and a deep and abiding hatred of the Chinese Communists.
On July 27, 1926, Chiang began the Northern Expedition, and it went
more smoothly than almost anyone had anticipated. By September the
Nationalists and their Communist allies had captured Wuhan, the
centrally located and strategically important city where the Revolution
of 1911 had first broken out, and left-wing elements of the Nationalist
government soon moved their capital to the city from Canton. Chiang
Kai-shek then marched on Shanghai and Nanjing, and in March 1927
his troops entered Shanghai unopposed and also captured Nanjing,
where Chiang Kai-shek set up his own right-wing government. Chiang
then turned with a vengeance on the generally pro-Communist labor
unions in Shanghai. On April 12, 1927, he launched a brutal and bloody
anti-Communist campaign in the city. His agents and police ruthlessly
tracked down Communist cells and shot suspected Communists
on sight. The Nationalist government in Wuhan was appalled at his
actions and sought to distance itself from his Nanjing regime, but by
February 1928 the Wuhan government, having concluded that it would
be unwise and futile to confront Chiang Kai-shek militarily, dissolved
itself and recognized Chiang's Nanjing-based regime as the new capital
of the restored republic. (Nanjing was, after all, where Sun Yat-sen had
wantedChina's new capital to be located.) By 1929 Chiang hadmarched
on Beijing, expelled the warlord Zhang Zuolin, and renamed the city
Beiping, which means “Northern Peace” or “Pacified North.”
By 1929, then, Chiang Kai-shek had emerged as China's new strong-
man. His forces had broken the warlords' power, nominally unified
China under the control of a Nanjing-based government, and expelled
the Chinese Communists from Shanghai, Beijing, and other major
cities. The Communists had not been defeated, however, but simply
driven underground. They quickly reemerged in the countryside
where they organized peasant resistance movements. For the next
two decades, Chiang tried in vain to rid China of communism. By
1931 a new and ominous threat would emerge: Japanese militarism
and aggression.
