| Shanghai massacre of 1927 | |||||||
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| Part of the Chinese Civil War | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Kuomintang (KMT) army & the Green Gang and other Shanghai gangs | Chinese Communist Party (CPC) & Shanghai labor union militias | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Bai Chongxi, Kuomintang commander Du Yuesheng, gang leader |
Chen Duxiu, CPC general secretary Zhou Enlai |
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| Strength | |||||||
| approx. 5,000 soldiers of the 2nd Division of the 26th Kuomintang Army & members of various gangs | thousands of workers | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| unknown, if any | 300–400 killed or executed, 5,000 missing | ||||||
The April 12 Incident of 1927 refers to the violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party organizations in Shanghai by the military forces of Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). Following the incident, conservative KMT elements carried out a full scale purge of Communists in all areas under their control, and even more violent suppressions occurred in cities such as Guangzhou and Changsha.[1] The purge led to an open split between KMT left and right wings, with Chiang Kai-shek establishing himself as the leader of the right wing at Nanjing in opposition to the original left wing KMT government in Wuhan.
By 15 July 1927, the Wuhan regime had also expelled the Communists in its ranks, effectively ending the KMT's four year alliance with Soviet Russia and its cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party. During the remainder of 1927, the Communists launched several revolts in an attempt to win back power, but with the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising (11-13 December 1927), the Chinese Communist Party's eclipse was complete; it was two decades before they were able to launch another major urban offensive.[2] The Incident was a key moment in this complex sequence of events which set the stage for the first ten years of the Nationalist government.
Depending on writers' political views, the Incident is also sometimes referred to as the "April 12 Purge" (四·一二清黨), "Shanghai Massacre"[3], the "April 12 Counter-revolutionary Coup" (四·一二反革命政变), or the "April 12 Tragedy" (四·一二慘案).
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The roots of the April 12 Incident go back to the KMT's alliance with the Soviet Union, formally initiated by Chinese Nationalists Party (KMT) founder Sun Yat-sen after discussions with Soviet diplomat Adolph Joffe in January 1923. This alliance included both financial and military aid, and a small but important group of Soviet political and military advisors, headed by Michael Borodin.[4] The Soviet Union's conditions for alliance and aid included cooperation with the small Chinese Communist Party. Sun agreed to let the Communists join the KMT as individuals, but ruled out an alliance with them or their participation as an organized block; in addition, once in the KMT he demanded that the Communists support KMT's party ideology and observe party discipline. Following their admission, Communist activities within the KMT, often covert, soon attracted opposition to this policy among prominent KMT members.[5] Internal conflicts between left and right wing leaders of the KMT with regards to the CPC problem continued right up to the launch of the Northern Expedition.
Plans for a Northern Expedition originated with Sun Yat-sen. After his expulsion from the government in Peking, Sun made a military comeback by 1920, gaining control of some parts of Guangdong province; his goal was to extend his control over all of China, particularly Peking. After Sun's death from cancer in March 1925, KMT leaders continued to push the plan, and finally launched the Expedition in June-July 1926. Initial successes in the first months of the Expedition soon saw the KMT's National Revolutionary Army (NRA) in control of Guangdong and large areas in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Fujian.
With the growth of KMT authority and military strength, the struggle for control of the Party's direction and leadership intensified. In January 1927 the NRA commanded by Chiang Kai-shek captured Wuhan and went on to attack Nanchang, while Wang Jingwei and his KMT left wing allies, along with the Chinese Communists and Soviet Agent Borodin, transferred the seat of the Nationalist Government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. On 1 March 1927 the Nationalist Government reorganized the Military Commission and placed Chiang under the jurisdiction of this commission, while secretly plotted to arrest Chiang. Later Chiang found out about this plot, which most likely led to his determination to purge the CPC from KMT.[6]
In response to the advances of the NRA, Communists in Shanghai began to plan uprisings against the warlord forces controlling the city. On 21-22 March 1927, KMT and CPC union workers led by Zhou Enlai launched an armed uprising in Shanghai, defeating the warlord forces of the Zhili clique. The victorious union workers occupied and governed urban Shanghai except for the international settlements prior to the arrival of the NRA's Eastern Route Army led by General Bai Chongxi. After the Nanjing Incident where foreign concessions in Nanjing were attacked and looted, both the right wing of the Kuomintang and western powers became alarmed by the growth of Communist influence, while CPC continued to organize daily mass student protests and labor strikes demanding the return of Shanghai international settlements to Chinese sovereignty.[7] With Bai's army firmly in control of Shanghai, on 2 April 1927 the Central Control Commission of KMT, led by former Chancellor of Peking University Cai Yuanpei, determined that CPC actions were anti-revolutionary and undermined the national interest of China, and voted unanimously to purge the communists from KMT.[8]
On April 5, 1927, Wang Jingwei arrived in Shanghai from overseas and met with CPC leader Chen Duxiu. After their meeting they issued a joint declaration re-affirming the principle of cooperation between KMT and CPC, despite urgent pleas from Chiang and other KMT elders to eliminate communists influence. When Wang left Shanghai for Wuhan the next day, Chiang Kai-shek asked Green Gang leader Du Yuesheng and other gang leaders in Shanghai to form a rival union to oppose the Shanghai labor union controlled by the communists, and made final preparation for purging CPC members.
On April 9 Chiang declared martial law in Shanghai and the Central Control Commission issued the "Party Protection and National Salvation" proclamation, denouncing the Wuhan Nationalist Government's policy of cooperation with CPC. On April 11 Chiang issued a secret order to all provinces under the control of Chiang's forces to purge Communists from the KMT.
Before dawn on April 12 gang members began to attack district offices controlled by the union workers, including Zhabei, Nanshi and Pudong. Under an emergency decree, Chiang ordered the 26th Army to disarm the workers' militias, killing and wounding more than 300 people. The union workers organized a mass meeting denouncing Chiang Kai-shek on April 13, and thousands of workers and students went to the headquarters of the 2nd Division of the 26th Army to protest. Soldiers opened fire, killing 100 and wounding many more. Chiang dissolved the provisional government of Shanghai, labor unions and all other organizations under Communist control. Over a thousand Communists were arrested, some 300 were officially executed, and more than 5,000 went missing. Communists in Canton, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Changsha were also arrested or killed. Western news reports later nicknamed General Bai "The Hewer of Communist Heads".[9]
On April 28 Beiyang warlord Zhang Zuolin killed 20 Communists who had taken up refuge at the Soviet embassy in Beijing, including Li Dazhao, co-founder of Chinese Communist Party, for plotting to overthrow the government. Some National Revolutionary Army commanders with communist background who were graduates of the Whampoa kept their sympathies for the communists hidden, and they were not arrested. Later many switched their allegiance to the CPC after the start of the Chinese Civil War.[10]
Six days after his massacre of Communists in Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek established a Nationalist government in Nanjing. The Soviet Union officially terminated its cooperation with the KMT. Within several weeks of the massacre, the leftist government in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei, disintegrated, leaving Chiang as the sole legitimate leader of the Republic. Wang, fearing retribution as a Communist sympathizer, fled to Europe.[11]
Immediately after the purge, 39 members of the Kuomintang Central Committee in Wuhan publicly denounced Chiang as a traitor to Sun Yat-sen, including Sun's widow Soong Ching-ling. On 18 April 1927 Chiang Kai-shek formed a new Nationalist Government at Nanjing, rivaling the Communist-tolerant Nationalist Government in Wuhan controlled by Wang Jingwei. But the twin rival KMT governments, known as the Ninghan (Nanjing and Wuhan) Split (宁汉分裂), did not last long because the Wuhan Kuomintang reconciled with Chiang and began to purge Communists as well after Wang found out about Stalin's secret order to Borodin to organize CPC's efforts to overthrow the left wing KMT and take over the Wuhan government. Finally, the Beiyang Government's capital of Beijing was taken by the National Revolutionary Army in June 1928, leading to worldwide recognition of the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek. In Shanghai, the KMT city administration dismantled the Communist-organized Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, reorganizing a network of unions with allegiance to the Kuomintang, but under the control of gang leader Du Yuesheng.[12]
After the April 12 Incident, Chen Duxiu and his Soviet advisers, who had promoted cooperation with the KMT, were discredited and lost their leadership roles in the CPC. Chen was personally blamed, was forced to resign, and was replaced by Qu Qiubai, who did not change Chen's policies in any fundamental way. The CPC planned for worker uprisings and revolutions in the urban areas.[11] The first battles of the 10-year Chinese Civil War began with armed Communist insurrections in Changsha, Shantou, Nanchang and Guangzhou. During the Nanchang Uprising in August 1927, Communist soldiers under Zhu De were defeated and escaped from Kuomintang forces by withdrawing to the mountains of western Jiangxi. In September 1927, Mao Zedong led a small peasant army in the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan province. The uprising was defeated by Kuomintang forces and Mao's forces retreated to Jiangxi as well, forming the first elements of what would become the People's Liberation Army. By the time the CPC Central Committee was forced to flee Shanghai in 1933, Mao had established peasant-based soviets in Jiangxi and Hunan provinces, transforming the Communist Party's base of support from the urban proletariat to the countryside, where the People's War would be fought.
In May 1927, KMT troops outside of Shanghai also began to violently suppress Communists and suspected Communists in other areas of China, especially in areas formerly controlled by Wang Jingwei's regime in Wuhan. In the area around Changsha, more than ten thousand people were killed within twenty days. In the year after April 1927, over three hundred thousand people were killed across China in anti-Communist purges.[11]
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Part of the Cold War
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Primary participants |