11. The United Front and Northen Expedition

What were the common aims of the CCP and GMD that justified the United Front?

• to destroy the warlords

• expel foriegners from China

• to improve the lives of ordinary Chinese people

What was a major incident that incited the formation of the United Front?

• The 30 May Incidnt 1925

• A protest by Chinese workers in Shanghai was stopped when the British commander from the International Settleent shot into the crowd and killed 12 people

• This confirmed to the Nationalists and Communists that China’s internal and external enemies could only be removed by force

• Thfore in 1926, Chiang called on its members to join a battle to destroy the warlords, with his speech launching the Northen Expedition

What was the Northen Expedition?

• directed against the warlords in central, eastern, and northern China

• Its military strategy was to surround each individual warlords army, cut off its supply lines and steadily destroy it

What were key features of the NRA?

• The New Republican Army (NRA) was very successful in achieving its objectives.

• With the help of its Soviet military adviser, Galen, the NRA had been built into a far more effective force than anything controlled by the warlord. He taught the NRA the value of surrounding the enemy’s troops as a way of achieving victory.

• The troops were also taught to treat the local peasant populations with respect, being ordered to pay for food. This won them the support of the local populations, who were tired of bloody warlord rule

• Mao Zedong played an important role in winning peasant support for the United Front

What were the key success of the United Front?

• By the summer of 1927, the United Front had taken control of central China

• by 1928, with an army that numbered 250,000 men, Chiang took control of eastern China.

• The final stage came in April 1928, when Chiang drove the warlord Zhang Zuolin out of Beijing in the north. He then declared that the GMD was the legal government in China, and moved the capital city from Beijing in the north to Nanjing in the east.

What were the reasons for the United Front victory?

• the strength and tactics of the United Front army compared to the private armies of the warlords

• the role of the Communists in gaining the support of the peasants for the United Front

• deals made by Chiang with the warlords – Chiang bribed individual warlords and allowed them to keep their private armies if they submitted to the control of the GMD.

What were tensions between the United front once the main campaign was over?

• Chiang had become convinced that the United Front had succeeded in defeating the warlords and it had therefore served its purpose.

• Chiang had been suspicious of the Communists even before the Northern Expedition began. Chiang was from the rich classes in China, and the GMD relied on businessmen for financial support. They would never accept the ideology of communism and its aim to overthrow capitalism.

• The crisis between the GMD and CCP came in March 1927. The GMD were able to occupy Shanghai because the Communists had organised a general strike and left-wing uprisings that weakened the control of the city. The next month, Chiang arranged to destroy the Communists in Shanghai.

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