Chiang Kai-Shek Purges Communists
China 1927
Synopsis
In April 1927 Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists in China purged the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the city of Shanghai. After the Nationalist Party, or Guomindang (GMD), split upon the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, Chiang became the leader of its right-wing faction. In 1926 he launched the Northern Expedition against warlord rule in China. While initially the GMD and the communists had cooperated through their United Front, Chiang felt the communists had become too revolutionary. Therefore, as his Northern Expedition approached the city of Shanghai, he decided that, along with business interests, gangsters, and foreigners in the city, he would crack down on the communists and the labor unions controlled by the CCP. This action was part of a broader conflict in Chinese cities in April 1927 that pitted conservative political elements against radicals such as the communists. Chiang's decision led to a bloody purge of the CCP in Shanghai, in which several thousand people died. While this "cleansing of the party," as the nationalists called it, helped to solve the immediate question of whether the communists or the nationalists would control China, it also led to decades of civil war in the country and hundreds of thousands more deaths.
