Rise of China - The Generalissimo

1925.

Thirteen years after the abdication of China’s  last emperor, the country remains in turmoil.  

It is being torn apart by warring factions,  with around 1.5 million men under arms.

In the capital, Peking, millions  mourn the death of revolutionary  

leader Sun Yat-sen – who had seemed  to many to offer a brighter future.

But his plan to defeat the warlords,  

and unite the country under Kuomintang  rule, lives on in his successor:

A 37-year-old party official - Jiǎng Jièshí,  better known in the west, as Chiang Kai-shek.

As commander of the Kuomintang’s Whampoa  Military Academy, Chiang has earned  

a reputation as a charismatic,  effective, and ambitious leader.

He attended military school in Japan,  

where he first met Sun Yat-sen, and  joined the revolutionary cause in 1908.

At the time of Sun’s death, much of  China is dominated by warlords – an  

assortment of ambitious generals and regional  leaders who command their own private armies,  

and whose first loyalty is to themselves.

The Kuomintang - also referred to as  the Nationalists - control only the  

southern provinces of Guangxi and  Guangdong, and its capital Canton.

To strengthen its position, they have made  an uneasy alliance with the Communist Party,  

to form ‘the First United Front’.

This means they now receive  support from the Soviet Union.

But many Kuomintang members, including Chiang,  are distrustful of Soviet intentions. His own  

recent visit to Russia has convinced him  that Communism is not suitable for China.

Yet there is a widespread hunger for change in  China. The people are fed up with the chaos,  

the warlords, and foreign interference.

1925 sees a rise in labour and  anti-imperialist movements.

When the multi-national Shanghai  Police open fire on protesters,  

there are large-scale strikes in southern cities.

The ranks of both the Kuomintang and Chinese  Communist Party swell with new recruits.

But the suspicion between these  two unnatural allies lingers.

And in 1926, Chiang decides to strike first.

Alleging an imminent Communist plot, he launches  his own pre-emptive coup. He declares martial  

law in Canton, and has political rivals  and Soviet advisors arrested or expelled.

He also expels Communists from  the Whampao Military Academy,  

including a rising star of the Party,  28-year-old political commissar Zhou Enlai.

Chiang’s decisive action strengthens  

his grip on both the Kuomintang  military and Nationalist Party.

What’s more, the Soviets, desperate to  maintain any kind of influence in China,  

agree to continue their military support.

The First United Front is, just about, intact.

Chiang will now set out to fulfil Sun Yat-sen’s  dying aspiration: a ‘Northern Expedition’,  

to defeat China’s warlords, and unite  the country under Kuomintang rule.

The most powerful warlord in the north  is Zhang Zuolin. He controls the Beiyang  

government in Peking – which remains the  internationally recognised government of China.

In central China, the dominant figure  is Wu Peifu, the ‘Jade Marshal’.  

His ally, Sun Chuanfang, controls several eastern  provinces, and the cities of Nanking and Shanghai.

In the south, Chiang’s forces –known as  

the ‘National Revolutionary  Army’ – are 100,000 strong.

He knows that when he marches north,  his men will be heavily outnumbered.

But his troops are better trained,  

have some modern Soviet equipment,  plus their own warlord allies...

Li Zongren, Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan.

Chiang plans to take on the hostile  warlords with a methodical northern advance.

In the first months of the war, his  Northern Expedition makes rapid advances.

By April, the Kuomintang control  Southern China’s most important cities,  

including Wuhan, Shanghai, and Nanking.

First Wu Peifu, then Sun Chuanfang,  are driven from their strongholds.

Zhang Zuolin alone holds out in the north.

Many warlord troops switch sides,  

swelling Chiang National Revolutionary Army  to a gigantic force, some 700,000 strong.

Victory and a unified China seem within reach.

As National Revolutionary  Army troops advance on Peking,  

tensions between its Kuomintang  and Communist factions resurface.

Chiang Kai-shek is increasingly distrustful of his  

Soviet advisors, and concerned at  the Communists’ growing confidence.

His suspicions appear to be confirmed  as NRA troops approach Shanghai.

A few days before their arrival,  Zhou Enlai and other Communists  

use a workers’ uprising to  seize control of the city.

But Chiang has his own powerful  connections in Shanghai:

Du Yuesheng, aka “Big-Eared Du” – triad leader  

and kingpin of the Shanghai underworld,  and a personal ally of Chiang Kai-shek.

In the early hours of 12th April  1927, Du orders his Green Gang  

to attack the Communists and trade  unionists who’ve taken over the city.

Thousands of Shanghai workers  take to the streets in protest.

Chiang’s Kuomintang troops open fire on them.

Over the next days and weeks,  

some 12,000 Communists are killed  or disappeared in Shanghai alone.

The First United Front has  ended in blood and betrayal.

The ’Shanghai Massacre’ is  just the first of many purges,  

in which the Kuomintang hunts down  Communists in territory they control.

The Communists react by orchestrating  uprisings across the country:

Zhou Enlai, who is lucky to escape Shanghai alive,  

leads an armed uprising against  Kuomintang rule in Nanchang.

The following month, Mao Zedong leads the ‘Autumn  Harvest Uprising’ in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces.

In December, a third uprising  takes place in Canton.

All three are swiftly  crushed by Kuomintang forces.

But there is no doubt, that a brutal new front  has opened in China’s revolutionary struggles.

As the Communists fight for survival, Chiang’s  Northern Expedition resumes its advance.

He now targets the last hostile  warlord standing - Zhang Zuolin.

On 6th June 1928, in a moment of great symbolism,  

Kuomintang troops enter Peking,  the old imperial capital.

Zhang retreats across the  Great Wall into Manchuria,  

a region under heavy Japanese  political and economic influence.

There is also a large Japanese military  presence here - the Kwantung Army.

The Japanese have supported  Zhang for several years...  

but now decide he has outlived his usefulness.

As Zhang travels north by train, his carriage is  

destroyed by a massive bomb. It had  been planted by a Japanese officer.

The Japanese military hope for better results  from Zhang’s 27-year-old son, Zhang Xueliang.

But the ‘Young Marshal’, as he  becomes known, has his own ideas.

In July, Zhang junior opens  negotiations with the Kuomintang.

In return for pledging allegiance to Chiang,  

he will hold onto his father’s  old powerbase in northeast China.

Finally, after a decade of internal  struggle, China is unified – with a  

single flag, a single capital... and  a single leader - Chiang Kai-shek.

But it won’t be long before he  faces his first major revolt.

In 1929, Chiang proposes a major  reorganisation of the National  

Revolutionary Army. He wants to half its  size, from around 1.5 million men to 715,000,  

and split its troops into  65 divisions of 11,000 men.

His generals, many of whom had  previously served China’s warlords,  

correctly see this as an attempt  to undermine their power.

A group of them form an anti-Chiang coalition,  and plunge China back into civil war.

The Central Plains War, as it is known,  

pits Kuomintang forces against  their former warlord allies.

Around a million soldiers  take part in the fighting.

Chiang Kai-shek suffers a series of early  setbacks, but eventually regains control,  

thanks to support from Zhang, the Young Marshal.

Victory comes at huge human and economic cost.  And after a generation of revolution and war,  

Chiang Kai-shek has once more stamped  his military authority on the country.

Now he faces the next daunting challenge:  

to transform the Republic of China into  a united, prosperous, independent state.

Chiang establishes his one-party government in  Nanking, a former capital of the Ming dynasty.  

These years are known as the  Nanking Decade – a period of  

sustained Kuomintang governance...  across eastern China at least.

In fact, the country’s unity is paper-thin.

Only Nanking and its surrounding area  are under direct Kuomintang control.

Most of the country is still governed by warlords,  more or less loyal to Chiang’s government.

The Communists, meanwhile, are down but not out,  

and form pockets of resistance  throughout the country.

In power, Chiang Kai-shek, referred  to as the Commander-in-Chief,  

or ‘Generalissimo’, becomes  increasingly authoritarian.

To unite the country around a  home-grown alternative to Communism,  

he launches the ‘New Life Movement’,  reviving Confucian ideas to fit the times.

Chiang’s wife Soong Mei-ling -  US-educated, and from a prominent  

Chinese Christian family - plays a leading role. The impact of the New Life Movement is limited.  

But by the early ‘30s, parts of  China are rapidly modernising.

New laws promote gender equality, and protect  women’s rights in marriage and property ownership.

Education continues to spread.

Newspapers, magazines and journals  proliferate. New cinemas and theatres open.

Infrastructure projects help the  Chinese economy to industrialise.

And there is huge foreign  investment, especially from Japan...

Though there are complaints of widespread  corruption within Chiang’s inner circle.

And yet... 85% of China’s population are peasants.

Their lot has not improved since the time  of the Qing. They remain desperately poor,  

and benefit little from developments  in cities like Nanking and Shanghai.

Instead, many face a perfect storm of soil  exhaustion, erosion, and rising rents.

They are largely ignored by the Kuomintang  government; but not by the Communists,  

who are actively spreading their  message across the countryside.  

To add to the woes of the rural poor - in 1931,  

catastrophic flooding devastates  central and eastern China.

The scale of death and destruction  is almost unimaginable.

Estimates range from 1 to 4 million lives lost.

It’s one of the worst natural  disasters in human history.

While the Republic of China  struggles with its many challenges...

Foreign rivals look to take advantage.

For decades, Japan has been extending its  

territory and influence at  the expense of neighbours.

Now, against a backdrop of heightened  militarism and nationalism,  

some in Japan see China as the obvious  target for further imperial expansion.

Japan already has enormous influence  in northeast China, and owns railways,  

factories and mines in the region.

Now their sights are set on the conquest of all  Manchuria – rich in resources that Japan lacks.

On the night of 18th September  1931, outside the city of Mukden...  

an explosion destroys a section of the  Japanese-controlled South Manchurian Railway.

But it’s a false flag operation.

The bomb has been planted by rogue officers from  

the Japanese Kwantung Army – to provide  a pretext for the conquest of Manchuria.

Ignoring Chinese and international  protests, Japanese forces attack.

Within three months, their troops  control most of north-eastern China,  

driving back local Chinese forces  commanded by Zhang ‘the Young Marshal’.

All of China is outraged. But Chiang  Kai-shek will not be lured into a general  

war with Japan. "Internal pacification  before external resistance," he insists.

His strategy will be to trade space for  time, and he orders Zhang to retreat.

Japan creates its own puppet state  in northeast China, named Manchukuo.

On the throne, the Japanese place China’s  deposed Qing emperor, Puyi, now 26 years old.

As far as Chiang Kai-shek is concerned,  it is the Communists, not the Japanese,  

who pose the greatest threat to Kuomintang rule.

Just 10,000 Communist Party  members escaped the purges of 1927.

Now, they have regrouped  in the Chinese countryside.

Several Chinese Soviets – or regional  governments – have formed in remote,  

rural pockets across China. The most successful is the Jiangxi Soviet.

Its chairman.. is Mao Zedong.

The son of a wealthy farmer, Mao was a  founding member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Now he presides over the Jiangxi Soviet, where  the Communist leadership is based. It controls  

a total population of more than three million,  with its own bank, currency, and tax system.

But Mao is criticised by other  Party leaders for his ruthless  

purges of Communist forces, and loses influence.

Zhou Enlai takes over his role  in the military leadership.

The Jiangxi Soviet is the blueprint  for a Chinese Communist revolution.

For the Kuomintang government,  it is an existential threat.

Chiang Kai-shek plans a series of ‘encirclement  

campaigns’ to isolate and  eradicate the Communists.

His troops face determined resistance  from the Communist Red Army.

The first, second, third, and fourth  encirclement campaigns all fail.

The war between these two sides is brutal,  and leads to suffering on a vast scale.

Civilians, mostly peasants, find themselves  caught between two ruthless forces, who do  

not hesitate to carry out mass executions, and  torture and shoot anyone suspected of disloyalty.

Victims include Mao’s own wife, shot by the  Kuomintang for refusing to denounce her husband.

The death toll from this phase of  China’s civil war will never be known,  

but may be as high as half a million.

Finally, in September 1934, Chiang Kai-shek  musters nearly one million men to surround,  

blockade, and destroy the Jiangxi Soviet.

This time, the weakened Communists cannot hold  the line. They gradually lose ground – until  

around 100,000 soldiers and civilians  remain in a small area around Ruijin.

The Communist leadership takes the  fateful decision to abandon Jiangxi,  

and live to fight another day.

Many are killed trying to break  out of the Kuomintang trap.

The survivors embark on an epic, year-long  march, led by Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong.

They cross some of China’s most  forbidding terrain - battling  

enemy forces, hunger and exhaustion along the way.

Fewer than one in ten of the Jiangxi  communists complete the 6,000-mile  

march to Yan’an – where they meet up with  Communist comrades from around the country.

This astonishing feat becomes a founding legend  of the Chinese Communist Party: ‘The Long March’.

Mao’s leadership secures his place at  the top of the Party, at the expense  

of his Soviet-backed rivals. From now on, the  Party will follow Mao’s vision, not Moscow’s.

For the moment, Communist prospects  look bleak. They have been decimated  

and are on the run. But their fortunes  are about to take a dramatic turn.

December 1936. Chiang travels to Xi’an  in northern China to visit Zhang, ‘the  

Young Marshal’. His troops are leading the fight  against the Communists in their new northern base.

It’s eight years since Zhang’s  father had been assassinated by the  

Japanese. Three years later they’d  driven his army out of Manchuria.

He is infuriated by Chiang’s refusal to challenge  the Japanese. And he’s come up with a bold plan.

Zhang kidnaps Chiang Kai-shek, and  forces him to negotiate face-to-face  

with the Communists, represented by Zhou Enlai.

After two weeks of talks,  Chiang Kai-shek gives in.

Having promised to end the internal fighting,  and confront the Japanese, he is released.

As soon as Chiang’s safely back in Nanking,  he has Zhang placed under house arrest.

But on the crucial point - he keeps his word.

Chiang agrees to form an alliance with  

his Communist enemies - a Second  United Front – to take on Japan.

On the night of 7th July 1937, a small  detachment of Japanese soldiers demands  

to enter the walled town of Wanping, close  to Peking, to search for a missing soldier.

The Chinese garrison refuses. Tensions rise.

A shot rings out from a Chinese  position, then both sides open fire.

One of the bloodiest wars of  the 20th century has just begun.

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