Aroad Is Made Communism in Shanghai 1920-1927 Chinese Worlds
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ARoad is Made Communism in Shanghai 1920-1927 Chinese Worlds Chinese Worlds publishes high-quality scholarship, research monographs, and source collections on Chinese history and society from 1900 into the next century. "Worlds" signals the ethnic, cultural, and political multiformity and regional diversity of China, the cycles of unity and division through which China's modern history has passed, and recent research trends toward regional studies and local issues. It also signals that Chineseness is not contained within territorial borders overseas Chinese communities in all countries and regions are also "Chinese worlds". The editors see them as part of a political, economic, social, and cultural continuum that spans the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, South East Asia, and the world. The focus of Chinese Worlds is on modern politics and society and history. It includes both history in its broader sweep and specialist monographs on Chinese politics, anthropology, political economy, sociology, education, and the social science aspects of culture and religions. The Literary Field of New Fourth Army Twentieth-Century China Communist Resistance along the Edited by Michel Rockx Yangtze and the Huai, 1938-1941 Gregor Beman Chinese Business in Malaysia Accumulation, Ascendance, A Road is Made Accommodation Communism in Shanghai 1920-1927 Edmund Terence Gomez Steve Smith Internal and International Migration The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Chinese Perspectives Revolution 1919-1927 Edited by Frank N. Pieke and Rein Mallee Alexander Pantsov Village Inc. Chinatown, Europe Chinese Rural Society in the 1990s Identity of the European Chinese Edited by Flemming Christiansen and Towards the Beginning of the Zhang Junzuo Twenty-First Century Flemming Christiansen Chen Duxiu's Last Articles and Letters, 1937-1942 Birth Control in China Edited and translated by Gregor Benton 1949-1999 Population Policy and Demographic Encyclopedia ofthe Chinese Overseas Development Edited by Lynn Pan Thomas Scharping ARoad is Made Communism in Shanghai 1920-1927 S.A. Smith UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I PRESS HONOLULU © 2000 SA Smith Published in North America by University of Hawai'i Press 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822 First published in the United Kingdom by Curzon Press Richmond, Surrey England Printed in Great Britain Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, S. A. (Stephen Anthony), 1952- A road is made: Communism in Shanghai, 1920-1927 / Steve Smith. p. cm. - (Chinese worlds) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8248-2314-1 (alk. paper) 1. Communism-China-Shanghai. 2. Chung-kuo kung cho'n tang. 3. China-History-1912-1928. I. Title: Communism in Shanghai, 1920-1927. II. Title. III. Series. HX420.S485 S55 2000 324.251'132075'09042-dc21 99-048958 "Hope can neither be affirmed nor denied. Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there was no path - but when many people pass one way, a road is made." Lu Xun~ "My Old Home" (January 1921) Contents Acknowledgements ix Map XlI Introduction 1 1 The Formation of a Communist Party in Shanghai 9 2 The Communist Party in Shanghai, 1921-22 31 3 The CCP and the United Front in Shanghai, 1923-24 51 4 The Communists Perfect a Labour Movement Strategy 74 5 The Shanghai Communists and the May Thirtieth Movement 89 6 The Shanghai Communists and the United Front, 1925-26 108 7 The CCP and the Labour Movement in 1926 130 8 The First and Second Armed Uprisings 145 9 The Third Armed Uprising 168 10 The 12 April 1927 Coup 190 Conclusion 209 Abbreviations 227 Notes 228 Bibliography 284 Subject Index 301 Name Index 310 VII Acl,nowledgements I first began work on a study oflabour and nationalism in Shanghai longer ago than I care to remember in 1986. The book I then planned to write was designed to shift the focus away from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), by examining labour's relation to the nationalist movement from the turn of the century. However, since scholars in the PRC began to publish a vast amount of material relating to the early years of the CCP during the 1980s, I found myself collecting much more material on the history ofthe party than I needed for my book. The sudden opening ofthe Comintern archives to western scholars in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, made me reconsider my decision not to get involved in the history ofthe CCP, since my "other career" - as a historian oflabour in late-imperial and early Soviet Russia - seemed to qualify me to try to integrate the new material on Comintern policy in China - most of which was in Russian - with the mass of material on the CCP in Shanghai. A visit to Moscow to the former archive of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (RTsKhIDNI) confirmed that there was a indeed a huge amount of material relating to Comintern operations in China. Fortunately, I was spared the effort of wading through this by the discovery that a team of Russian and German scholars from the Far-:Eastern Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the East Asia Seminar of the Free University of Berlin, led, respectively, by Professors M.L. Titarenko and Mechthild Leutner, was already embarked on a massive project to publish all Comintern material relating to China. The first two volumes of their project, covering the years 1920 to 1927, appeared in 1994 and 1996 and greatly eased my work on this book. The result has been that I have ended up writing two books at once: the first is the book I always intended to write on labour and nationalism in Shanghai between 1900 and 1927, which is currently in the final stages of revision, and the second is the present volume which investigates the activities, ideas and internal life ofthe CCP in Shanghai during its formative years. In writing this book I have accumulated many debts and I intend simply to list the names ofmost ofthose who have helped me. It would be IX A Road is Made _ discourteous, however, ifI did not single out Greg Benton, formerly ofthe University of Leeds and now of the University of Cardiff, for giving me warm support and for reading this ms. with characteristic care and insight. In addition, I should like to thank Robert Bickers of the University of Bristol and Julia Strauss of the School of Oriental and Mrican Studies, University of London, who served as exemplary publisher's readers, offering astute criticisms and suggestions for improvements. My sometimes flagging enthusiasm for the project was rekindled by invitations to participate in two major conferences, both of which turned out to be unusually stimulating. The first was the Third Medlicott Symposium, which took place in July 1995 at the University of Exeter, which was devoted to the history of the Comintern. I would like to thank Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe, the organizers, for inviting me and Nina Fishman and Paul Wingrove for being stimulating companions. The second conference took place at the Free University of Berlin in October 1998 and was devoted to "New Research and New Perspectives on the Chinese Revolution in the 1920s". Again I would like warmly to thank the organizers, Professor Mechthild Leutner and Dr Tim Trampedach, and Konstantin She-velev and Alexander Pantsov for sharing with me their matchless knowledge of the Comintern. Other participants from whom I learnt a great deal were Christina Gilmartin, Chen Yung-fa, Yu Minling and Li Yuzhen. Professor AJ. Kartunova deserves a special mention for graciously lending me a chapter of her unpublished doctor's dissertation, as does Professor Joachim Kruger, who gave me a copy of a rare Chinese poster from his personal collection. Finally, I must thank Elizabeth Perry, then of the University of California at Berkeley, and Hans van de Ven of Cambridge University for generously lending me materials to which I would otherwise not have had access. It has been a pleasure to work at a number of libraries and archives in the course ofthis research and I would like to record my gratitude to staff at the library of Fudan University in Shanghai, the Shanghai Municipal Library, the Russian State Library in Moscow, the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the library of the University of California at Berkeley, the Public Record Office in London and, in particular, Cambridge University Library and SOAS library in London. My biggest debt, however, is to Paul Naish and Vanessa Coombe of the Interlibrary Loans department of the Albert Sloman Library, University ofEssex, who have been unfailingly efficient in tracking down requests for obscure items over many years. I should also like to thank the University of Essex, for granting me various terms of study leave during the writing of this book; the British Council, for giving me a six-month scholarship to Fudan University in 1986; and the Humanities Research Board ofthe British Academy for one term's replacement teaching costs in 1996-97. Thanks, finally, to Chris Ward for his practical help and, last but by no means least, to Phil Jakes, to whom this book is dedicated. x Headquarters of the o mile Nanshi pickets Shanghai in 1927 Introduction With a population ofthree million by 1930, Shanghai was the third largest city in Asia, having more than doubled in size since 1910.1 One of China's 'treaty ports', it was opened up to foreign trade as a result of the unequal treaties foisted on China after each of her defeats at the hands of foreign powers during the nineteenth century. The city was dominated by the International Settlement and the French Concession, both, in the words of John King Fairbank, 'traders' republics', each with its own administration, police force and judiciary.2 In addition, there were three districts under Chinese administration - Nandao, Zhabei and Pudong - which were the object of contention between rival warlord factions, especially in 1924 when war flared up between Jiangsu and Zhejiang militarists.3 Until 1949 the city was more important as a commercial than as an industrial centre.