The Northern Expedition ii THE NORTHERN EXPEDITION CHINA’S NATIONAL REVOLUTION OF 1926–1928 DONALD A. JORDAN The University Press of Hawaii Honolulu Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 In- ternational (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely download and share the work in print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require per- mission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Cre- ative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. Open Access ISBNs: 9780824880866 (PDF) 9780824880873 (EPUB) This version created: 17 May, 2019 Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works from University of Hawai‘i Press. Copyright © 1976 by The University Press of Hawaii All rights reserved. Contents Maps viii Preface ix Acknowledgments xiv Abbreviations xv PART 1. The Revolutionary Base 1 1. Building the Model 3 2. Human Resources 14 3. The KMT Military: Party Army, Confederation, or Hegemony? 25 4. Centralization of Canton’s Power 32 5. Breaches in the Revolutionary Base 40 6. Mending the United Front in Kwangtung 48 7. The Simmering Revolutionary Movement at Canton 58 8. The Promotion of the Northern Expedition 64 PART 2. The Military Conquest of Warlord China 75 9. The Launch into Hunan 77 10. The Expedition Moves Eastward: The Kiangsi Campaign 96 11. The Coastal Campaign or East Route 107 12. The Taking of Shanghai 121 13. The Party Divided 135 14. Taking the Expedition into North China 148 15. The September Government and the Northern Expedition 164 16. Launching the Last Phase of the Expedition 173 17. The Peking Campaign: Completion of the Military Unification 186 vi Contents PART 3. The Role of the Masses in the Expedition 195 Introduction 197 18. The Contribution of the Organized Masses in Canton 199 19. The Role of Organized Masses in the Military Campaign 220 20. Civilian Aid in the Push Down the Yangtze 235 21. The Proletariat in the Taking of Shanghai 242 22. The Organized Masses on the Home Front 249 23. Mass Movements in Warlord Territories: Vanguard of the NRA? 259 PART 4. Political Works in the Party’s National Revolutionary Army 267 24. Politics within the Military System 269 25. Joining the Army and the People 278 26. The NRA’s Relations with Civilians in KMT Territories 288 27. Problems Facing the Political Department 293 PART 5. Breaking Up the Warlord Clique: Diplomacy, Subversion, and Defection 305 28. Political Offensive against Warlords 307 29. The Winning Over of the Big Warlords: Feng and Yen 316 30. The Defection of Warlord Subordinates 323 31. Conclusion: Military or Political Victory? 337 Appendix 348 Notes 350 Bibliography 409 About the Author 421 vii Maps Routes of the Northern Expedition ii Kwangtung 4 Hunan 80 Hupeh 89 Kiangsi 97 Fukien 108 Chekiang 117 Lower Yangtze Region 122 Honan 150 Shantung 153 North China 180 viii Preface What was the Northern Expedition? Was it, as some acclaimed, the Great National Revolution? For some Marxists, the term “national” referred to a phase of necessary bourgeois devel- opment that would precede the more significant work of the Social Revolution. For Kuomintang members and others influ- enced by the West, nationhood was a state of community to- getherness that strengthened the modern world powers. The goals of the Northern Expedition of 1926–1928 are as encom- passing as was Chinese nationalism in the 1920s. The argu- ments favoring nationhood differed then widely according to in- dividual levels of education, “modernization,” and politicization. It may be easier to describe what it was against than what nationalism was for. Those promoting the expedition and the national movement were opposed to the status quo. Dismal decades of defeat as the Ch’ing regime fell apart had shattered the Chinese self-satisfaction. The failure of the revolutionaries after 1911 to reintegrate and reorder the Chinese state led to continuing disappointment and disillusionment. Both idealistic Chinese youth and their elders craved some improvement from the enervating disunity. The many military governors in their provinces marched their mercenaries and seemed more bent on grabbing from fellow Chinese than they were anxious over the greed of foreign imperialists. China’s “loss of face” in the world community was sensed mainly by those most aware of the outside world. Keeping fresh the disgrace of Japan’s gains from Yuan Shih-k’ai, the nationalists who commemorated Na- tional Humiliation Day were not the peasants hoeing in the field. By the launching of the expedition in 1926, the National Revo- lution was an inclusive multilevel movement. In order to achieve national reunification, the Northern Ex- pedition of necessity became a “many splendored thing,” gath- ering in as many dissident elements as possible. Judging the ix Preface success or tragedy of such a union was left to a later period. The only demand shared by all the participants was for a new, more integrated political system for China, one that would replace the existing, defenseless, kaleidoscopic patchwork of warlord sat- rapies. The young elite educated in modern ways who gathered in the treaty ports were among the most aware of nationalism. Al- though but a tiny part of China’s millions, they were articulate, enthusiastic, and idealistic—if rather inexperienced and imprac- tical. But in the search for new alternatives, even this elite el- ement lacked homogeneity, for some saw strength in national unity while others envisioned a social struggle among Chinese that would revitalize China. The symbol of their common desire for a stronger China and their divergence over means to that end was the United Front of the Kuomintang and Chinese Com- munist Party from 1923 to 1927. Also wanting a new chance for their plans were republicans, federalists, constitutionalists, and provincial autonomists. They, too, generally chafed under warlord rulers who were too strong for civilians to oust but too weak to resist the demands and bribes of foreign powers. Frustrated with his own impotence in Chinese politics, Sun Yat-sen had learned through bitter ex- perience and forced exile that he would have to attract allies of all stripes. Although a symbol of nationalism for many, Sun allied himself with Kwangtung militarist Ch’en Chiung-ming and made overtures to regional overlords, such as Chang Tso-lin. Desperate to find means to pull Chinese together in a common cause, Sun had espoused provincial autonomy in federalism in 1921, but rejected them as the tide of nationalism swelled. In 1926 Chiang Kai-shek and other patrons of the military cam- paign resurrected them once again. With his experience in the outside world, Sun sought patronage from the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and finally from the Soviet Union. Sun then accepted Russia’s offer of aid free of imperialistic demands, but did not exclude the possibility of a rapprochement with the others. The controversy as to whether Sun was a socialist, Com- munist, or a hybrid will be outside the scope of this study. Ad- herents of those ideological variants were gathered into the ranks of the national revolutionaries. The point to be introduced here is that the so-called National Revolution and its military phase, the Northern Expedition, cannot be labeled neatly as entirely nationalistic, socialistic, or opportunistic. Instead, the movement was a loose coalition of Chinese elites who were at x Preface least nationwide in their origins, if not nationalized according to Western specifications. They did share a righteous indig- nation over the treatment meted out to the disunited Chinese people by the foreign powers and their merchants. Only reunifi- cation could return to China the strength to determine her own destiny. Since it had become apparent that the armed forces of the warlords could only be overcome by military means, a new war would have to be waged to remove them as obstacles to re- unification. Those militarists who would recognize the authority of the Kuomintang in national affairs could be eased into the movement as representing the interest of the people in their provinces. The advantage of such an inclusive approach was its ability to quickly incorporate any who could contribute to the rapid re- unification of China. Its weakness was to be the lack of a dy- namic ideology that could keep the participants united and this led to misunderstanding and factionalism. Beyond the facade formed by these multifarious elites lay the vast masses of Chinese peasantry and the smaller clusterings of urban pro- letariats. How deeply did the desire for nationhood penetrate among them? Were the Chinese people as a whole responsive to the modern slogans of nationalism? The role of these peasants and workers received much publicity from Marxists and Trot- skyites, which was what initially attracted my attention to the expedition. My evaluation of their role in the National Revo- lution is the most revisionistic or iconoclastic aspect of this study. Differentiating the Kuomintang’s campaign of 1926–1928 from several prior abortive efforts by Sun Yat-sen was the more consolidated base in Kwangtung from which it was launched. Part 1 of this introductory survey of the expedition outlines the main features of the Revolutionary Base, where developed the Kuomintang’s Whampoa Academy and from where its Party Army spread Party rule in that key southern province. Although the Chinese Communists were part of the United Front, oper- ating first in Kwangtung and then in the opening phase of the expedition, this study will not feature their parallel development as a party in those years.