Lesson Information

Title:
Nationalists, Communists, and the Northern Expedition
Period:
1921–1927 CE
Previous:
New Culture and May Fourth Movements
Era:
1912 — Republic of China Era
Next:
The Nanjing Decade and State-Building

Table of Contents

  1. Lesson Orientation
  2. Learning Objectives
  3. From May Fourth to Organized Revolution
  4. Sun Yat-sen and Revolutionary Nationalism
  5. Reorganization of the Nationalist Party
  6. Founding of the Chinese Communist Party
  7. The Comintern and Revolutionary Strategy
  8. The Sun-Joffe Understanding
  9. The First United Front
  10. Communists Inside the Nationalist Party
  11. The First National Congress of the Kuomintang
  12. Building a Party-Led Revolutionary State
  13. Whampoa Military Academy
  14. Chiang Kai-shek and Whampoa
  15. Zhou Enlai and Political Work
  16. The National Revolutionary Army
  17. Sun Yat-sen's Death and the Leadership Question
  18. The May Thirtieth Movement
  19. Workers and Labor Politics
  20. The Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike
  21. Peasant Mobilization
  22. The Peasant Movement Training Institute
  23. Tensions Inside the United Front
  24. The Zhongshan Warship Incident
  25. Why Launch the Northern Expedition?
  26. The Expedition Begins
  27. Hunan, Hubei, and the Advance to Wuhan
  28. Jiangxi, Fujian, and the Expansion Eastward
  29. Military Advance and Mass Politics
  30. The Wuhan Nationalist Government
  31. Shanghai Workers and the Nationalist Advance
  32. Nanjing and the Expanding Nationalist Coalition
  33. Chiang Kai-shek's Rise Within the Nationalist Movement
  34. The April 12, 1927 Suppression in Shanghai
  35. Political Repression and the “White Terror”
  36. The Nanjing-Wuhan Split
  37. The Wuhan Government Breaks with the Communists
  38. Collapse of the First United Front
  39. The Beginning of a New Nationalist-Communist Conflict
  40. How Complete Was Nationalist Unification?
  41. How Do We Know?
  42. Think Like a Historian
  43. Historical Significance
  44. Key Takeaways
  45. Key Terms
  46. Check Your Understanding
  47. Continue the Story
  48. Further Study

Lesson Orientation

The May Fourth era transformed Chinese political thought, but ideas alone could not reunify a country divided among military governments and competing political centers.

During the early 1920s, two political organizations began building more disciplined revolutionary structures:

Their programs were different and would later become bitterly opposed.

Yet between 1923–1924 and 1927, Nationalists and Communists cooperated in what became known as the First United Front.

Soviet advisers and the Communist International helped shape the alliance, while Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Nationalist movement around stronger party institutions, political discipline, mass organization, and a revolutionary army.

The broad sequence is:

May Fourth radicalization → CCP founding → KMT reorganization → Soviet cooperation → First United Front → Whampoa → labor and peasant mobilization → Northern Expedition → Nationalist territorial gains → 1927 split

Learning Objectives

After completing this lesson, the learner should be able to:

From May Fourth to Organized Revolution

The May Fourth era expanded political participation and introduced new ideological possibilities.

Students, workers, merchants, intellectuals, and political activists had demonstrated that organized mass action could influence national politics.

But the central political problem remained unresolved:

How could China be reunited under a government strong enough to resist regional militarism and foreign pressure?

During the early 1920s, revolutionary leaders increasingly turned from loose political networks toward disciplined party organization, political education, mass mobilization, and military force.

Sun Yat-sen and Revolutionary Nationalism

Sun Yat-sen remained one of the most important symbols and organizers of revolutionary nationalism.

His earlier revolutionary organizations had helped challenge Qing rule, but the Republic created in 1912 had not developed into the unified constitutional state he had hoped to build.

Repeated failures of parliamentary politics, military fragmentation, and reliance on temporary alliances with regional commanders pushed Sun toward a more centralized party-building strategy.

He increasingly concluded that national reunification required:

Reorganization of the Nationalist Party

The Nationalist movement went through several organizational forms after the 1911 Revolution.

By the early 1920s, Sun and his associates sought to rebuild the Kuomintang as a more centralized revolutionary party.

Soviet advisers helped introduce organizational methods associated with disciplined party committees, hierarchical structure, political training, propaganda, and coordinated mass organizations.

The goal was not to convert the Kuomintang into a Communist party.

The goal was to create a Nationalist organization capable of surviving military opposition and directing a national revolution.

Founding of the Chinese Communist Party

Marxist study groups developed in several Chinese cities during the intellectual radicalization that followed May Fourth.

In 1921, representatives of several Communist groups convened the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.

The party was initially very small.

Its early members included intellectuals, organizers, students, and activists influenced by Marxism and the Russian Revolution.

The CCP sought to build a revolutionary movement based ultimately on class organization and Communist political theory.

Its small size made cooperation with larger political and social movements a major strategic question from the beginning.

Background reference: U.S. Office of the Historian — The Chinese Revolution of 1949 .

The Comintern and Revolutionary Strategy

The Communist International, commonly called the Comintern, sought to encourage revolutionary movements outside Soviet Russia.

Comintern representatives concluded that the small Chinese Communist movement could not immediately take national power on its own.

They also viewed Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist movement as an important anti-imperialist and national revolutionary force.

Soviet and Comintern strategy therefore encouraged cooperation between Communists and Nationalists.

This strategy was controversial inside the CCP because some Communists feared that cooperation with a broader nationalist party would weaken their independent political identity.

The Sun-Joffe Understanding

In 1923, Sun Yat-sen and Soviet representative Adolph Joffe issued a joint statement that helped establish the political basis for closer cooperation.

Soviet policy accepted that China's immediate revolution would not simply reproduce the political and economic order created in Russia.

Sun, in turn, gained access to advisers, organizational knowledge, financial assistance, and military support from the Soviet Union.

Cooperation rested on overlapping interests rather than identical political goals.

Both sides opposed foreign imperial privilege and wanted a stronger, reunified Chinese state, but Nationalists and Communists disagreed fundamentally about class politics, property, party authority, and the future social order.

The First United Front

The cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party became known as the First United Front.

The alliance developed during 1923 and was institutionalized more fully during the Nationalist reorganization of 1924.

It joined organizations that shared several immediate objectives:

The alliance did not erase the distinction between Nationalism and Communism.

The United Front was a strategic coalition between parties with overlapping short-term goals and increasingly conflicting long-term programs.

Communists Inside the Nationalist Party

Under the cooperative arrangement, Communist Party members could join the Kuomintang as individuals while retaining membership in the CCP.

This unusual structure allowed Communists to work inside Nationalist institutions, labor organizations, propaganda departments, and political training systems.

It also created persistent tension.

Nationalist critics feared that Communists were building an independent organization inside their party.

Communist critics feared that close cooperation would subordinate the CCP to a larger Nationalist movement.

These tensions existed from the beginning and intensified as both parties grew.

The First National Congress of the Kuomintang

In January 1924, the Kuomintang held its First National Congress in Guangzhou.

The congress formalized the reorganized party structure and incorporated the policy of cooperation with Soviet advisers and Chinese Communists.

Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People remained central to the Nationalist program:

The 1924 reorganization gave these principles a new institutional framework based on a disciplined revolutionary party rather than the looser parliamentary organization of the early republic.

A Cambridge chronology of Chinese political organizations identifies 1924 as the year of the formalized Nationalist-Communist united front, Kuomintang reorganization, and the founding of Whampoa Military Academy.

Scholarly reference: Cambridge University Press — chronology of Chinese political organizations, 1918–1951 .

Building a Party-Led Revolutionary State

The reorganized Nationalist movement differed from the parliamentary parties of the early Republic.

Its leaders increasingly argued that China first required revolutionary unification and political training before a fully constitutional democratic order could operate effectively.

This approach created the foundations of a party-state model in which political institutions, military organization, propaganda, education, and mass mobilization were directed through the ruling party.

The structure increased organizational capacity.

It also raised an enduring question:

Could a disciplined revolutionary party build a unified republic without becoming more powerful than the constitutional institutions it claimed eventually to establish?

Whampoa Military Academy

The reorganized Nationalist movement needed its own reliable military force.

In 1924, Sun Yat-sen established the Whampoa Military Academy near Guangzhou with important Soviet assistance.

The academy trained officers not only in military skills but also in political organization and revolutionary ideology.

It became one of the most important institutions in modern Chinese military history.

Cadets and officers trained at Whampoa later served across opposing political camps, but during the United Front years the institution helped create the officer corps of the National Revolutionary Army.

Scholarly reference: The Soldier Image and State-Building in Modern China — chapter on Whampoa Military Academy .

Chiang Kai-shek and Whampoa

Chiang Kai-shek became the first commandant of Whampoa Military Academy.

The position gave him direct relationships with young officers who would later form an important political and military network.

Chiang's earlier career had connected him to Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary movement, military politics, and contacts with Soviet advisers.

Whampoa gave him a new institutional base.

His power did not come from the academy alone, but Whampoa became one of the principal foundations of his later leadership within the Nationalist movement.

Institutional reference: Republic of China Military Academy — Whampoa history .

Zhou Enlai and Political Work

Zhou Enlai, a Communist organizer who later became one of the most important leaders of the People's Republic of China, worked in the political apparatus associated with Whampoa.

Political departments helped educate soldiers, spread revolutionary messages, maintain party discipline, and connect military activity with broader political goals.

The presence of both Nationalist and Communist political workers inside the revolutionary military system reflected the practical cooperation of the First United Front.

It also made the later political split especially consequential because the competing parties had developed overlapping networks inside the same institutions.

The National Revolutionary Army

The Nationalist movement gradually built armed forces that became known as the National Revolutionary Army (NRA).

The NRA differed from many regional armies in its explicit connection to a revolutionary political party and its use of political education.

Its forces included Whampoa-trained officers as well as units incorporated from allied or defeated regional armies.

This combination created both strength and weakness.

The Nationalist army could expand rapidly by absorbing existing forces, but incorporated commanders did not always become equally loyal to the central Nationalist leadership.

Sun Yat-sen's Death and the Leadership Question

Sun Yat-sen died in Beijing in March 1925.

His death removed the figure who had held unmatched symbolic authority across much of the Nationalist movement.

No single successor immediately inherited all of Sun's political authority.

Nationalist leadership increasingly involved competition among figures such as:

The leadership question interacted with the growing debate over Communist influence inside the United Front.

The May Thirtieth Movement

In 1925, labor disputes in foreign-owned industrial enterprises in Shanghai helped create a wider political crisis.

On May 30, demonstrations in the Shanghai International Settlement ended when police fired on protesters, killing and wounding demonstrators.

The incident triggered a much broader nationalist and labor movement.

Students, workers, merchants, political organizations, and other urban groups participated in strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts.

The movement increased the political importance of both Nationalist and Communist organizers and expanded anti-imperialist mass politics.

Scholarly reference: Modern Asian Studies — “Urban Mass Movement: The May Thirtieth Movement in Shanghai” .

Workers and Labor Politics

Industrial workers became increasingly important to revolutionary politics during the mid-1920s.

Communist organizers devoted substantial attention to trade unions, strikes, labor education, and worker organization.

Nationalist leaders also recognized that urban labor could strengthen the anti-imperialist and anti-warlord movement.

Cooperation was therefore possible, but tensions remained over:

The Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike

The anti-imperialist mobilization of 1925 extended into southern China and Hong Kong.

A prolonged strike and boycott involving workers from Hong Kong and Guangzhou became one of the largest labor mobilizations of the period.

Strike committees, labor organizations, Nationalist institutions, and Communist organizers all participated in the movement.

The strike strengthened the political position of the revolutionary government at Guangzhou while demonstrating the potential power of organized labor.

At the same time, extended labor militancy alarmed some merchants and conservative Nationalists, contributing to later political tensions inside the United Front.

Peasant Mobilization

Most Chinese people lived in rural communities, making peasant organization essential to any movement seeking national power.

During the United Front period, activists organized peasant associations, political education, rent and tax protests, and campaigns against local abuses.

Rural mobilization varied enormously by region.

Some peasant associations concentrated on practical grievances.

Others challenged landlords, local elites, militia leaders, or inherited systems of social authority more directly.

These movements expanded the social reach of revolutionary politics while also increasing conflict between radicals and property-owning groups within the Nationalist coalition.

The Peasant Movement Training Institute

The revolutionary movement in Guangzhou established institutions to train organizers for rural political work.

The Peasant Movement Training Institute educated activists in political organization, rural conditions, propaganda, and revolutionary strategy.

Nationalists and Communists both participated in the broader rural mobilization project during the United Front years.

Mao Zedong later became especially associated with the study and organization of peasant movements, although the larger rural organizing effort involved many different activists.

Tensions Inside the United Front

The United Front became stronger as a national movement while becoming more internally divided.

Several sources of tension intensified:

These were not minor disagreements.

They concerned the basic question of what the Chinese revolution was supposed to accomplish after military reunification.

The Zhongshan Warship Incident

In March 1926, Chiang Kai-shek moved against Communist and Soviet-linked influence in Guangzhou during a crisis commonly called the Zhongshan Warship Incident or Canton Coup.

Chiang imposed restrictions, detained some individuals, and strengthened his control over military institutions.

The precise circumstances surrounding the incident have been interpreted in different ways by historians, including disputes over whether Chiang faced a genuine plot or used an ambiguous situation to consolidate power.

What is clear is that the incident marked a major increase in Chiang's authority and demonstrated that the United Front was already under severe internal strain before the Northern Expedition began.

Why Launch the Northern Expedition?

The revolutionary government in Guangzhou did not intend to remain a regional southern regime.

Its central political goal was national reunification.

Nationalist leaders identified major northern and central military powers as obstacles to a unified revolutionary government.

The Northern Expedition therefore sought to:

The Expedition Begins

The Northern Expedition began in the summer of 1926.

Chiang Kai-shek served as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army.

The campaign initially targeted military forces associated with leaders including Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang.

Nationalist armies advanced rapidly from Guangdong into Hunan and toward the Yangtze region.

Contemporary American diplomatic records reported a rapid Cantonese advance toward Hankou and Wuchang during July and August 1926.

Primary-source reference: U.S. Office of the Historian — documents on the Nationalist advance into the Yangtze Valley, 1926 .

Hunan, Hubei, and the Advance to Wuhan

Nationalist forces gained major victories in Hunan and Hubei.

The cities of the Wuhan area — Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang — became especially important because they controlled major transportation, commercial, and political networks along the Yangtze.

The advance weakened Wu Peifu's military position and gave the Nationalist movement control over a major central Chinese urban region.

Mass political organizations expanded alongside the army.

Labor unions, peasant associations, student groups, and political propaganda helped turn military conquest into a wider revolutionary movement.

Jiangxi, Fujian, and the Expansion Eastward

The Nationalist advance also moved eastward against forces associated with Sun Chuanfang.

Campaigns in Jiangxi and neighboring regions expanded Nationalist control and placed increasing pressure on the lower Yangtze.

Some regional commanders resisted militarily.

Others negotiated, defected, or accepted incorporation into the Nationalist coalition.

This pattern meant that the Northern Expedition was not simply a sequence of battlefield victories. Nationalist expansion also depended on political bargaining and the absorption of existing military forces.

Military Advance and Mass Politics

The Northern Expedition combined military operations with organized political mobilization.

Political workers encouraged:

This gave the revolutionary movement a political reach that many regional armies lacked.

But mass mobilization also sharpened social conflict.

As labor unions and peasant associations became more assertive, conservative Nationalists and local elites increasingly feared that Communist-led social revolution was becoming stronger than Nationalist political control.

The Wuhan Nationalist Government

As Nationalist power expanded into central China, Wuhan became an important political center of the movement.

Nationalist leaders associated with the party's left wing, including Wang Jingwei, became influential there.

The Wuhan political center generally maintained closer cooperation with Communist and left-wing mass organizations than Chiang Kai-shek's emerging faction did.

The result was not yet two completely separate political movements.

It was an increasingly divided Nationalist coalition in which different leaders disagreed over Communist participation, mass politics, military authority, and relations with the Soviet Union.

Shanghai Workers and the Nationalist Advance

Shanghai contained China's largest industrial working population and one of its most important Communist organizing networks.

As Nationalist armies approached the lower Yangtze in 1927, Communist-led labor organizers helped coordinate strikes and armed worker actions against authorities associated with the existing military regime.

Workers attempted to seize political space before or during the arrival of Nationalist forces.

For Communists, labor mobilization demonstrated the revolutionary capacity of the urban working class.

For Chiang and many conservative Nationalists, independently armed labor organizations appeared increasingly dangerous to party and military control.

Nanjing and the Expanding Nationalist Coalition

Nationalist forces captured major cities along the lower Yangtze during 1927, including Nanjing and Shanghai.

The capture of Nanjing gave Nationalist leaders a strategically and symbolically important political center.

Contemporary diplomatic reporting from 1927 describes the rapid military expansion of Nationalist forces together with increasingly serious conflicts inside the Kuomintang over Communist influence.

Primary-source reference: U.S. Office of the Historian — China documents, 1927 .

Chiang Kai-shek's Rise Within the Nationalist Movement

Chiang's command of the National Revolutionary Army gave him growing influence as the Northern Expedition succeeded.

His authority rested on several overlapping foundations:

His rise did not eliminate rival Nationalist leaders.

It created a sharper struggle over who would control the revolutionary movement and what role Communists and mass organizations would have in the new political order.

The April 12, 1927 Suppression in Shanghai

On April 12, 1927, forces aligned with Chiang Kai-shek moved violently against Communist-led labor organizations and Communist activists in Shanghai.

The event is known by several names, including the April 12 Incident, Shanghai purge, and Shanghai Massacre.

Armed groups and Nationalist-aligned forces attacked labor organizations, arrested political opponents, and suppressed Communist influence in the city.

The precise number of people killed, arrested, or later executed is difficult to establish and varies across sources.

The political consequence is clearer:

Chiang's faction broke decisively with Communist-led mass organizations in Shanghai and moved toward creation of a separate Nationalist government at Nanjing.

Documentary context: U.S. Office of the Historian — “Continued civil war in China and elimination of Communists from power in the Nationalist regime” .

Political Repression and the “White Terror”

The suppression of Communist and left-wing organizations did not remain limited to one day in Shanghai.

Anti-Communist repression spread through areas controlled by Chiang-aligned Nationalist authorities and allied political forces.

Arrests, executions, union suppression, political intimidation, and attacks on left-wing organizations became part of a wider campaign often described as the White Terror.

The phrase is used broadly in historical writing and can refer to different waves of anti-Communist repression during the later 1920s.

Students should therefore distinguish the specific Shanghai events of April 1927 from the wider national pattern of repression that followed.

The Nanjing-Wuhan Split

The April repression did not immediately end all Nationalist-Communist cooperation everywhere.

A Nationalist government at Wuhan, associated with Wang Jingwei and the left wing of the Kuomintang, continued for a time to cooperate with Communists and Soviet advisers.

Chiang's supporters established a competing Nationalist center at Nanjing.

China therefore briefly contained:

The Nationalist revolution itself had become politically divided.

The Wuhan Government Breaks with the Communists

Cooperation between the Wuhan Nationalists and Communists deteriorated during the summer of 1927.

Nationalist leaders became increasingly alarmed by rural social conflict, independent Communist organization, Soviet influence, and the difficulty of maintaining party unity.

Wuhan leaders eventually moved to remove Communists from positions of influence and end the alliance.

Soviet adviser Mikhail Borodin departed China.

Contemporary American diplomatic reports from August 1927 described the weakening of Communist organization and Borodin's departure amid increasing conflict between Nationalist factions.

Primary-source reference: U.S. Office of the Historian — China political reports, 1927 .

Collapse of the First United Front

By the second half of 1927, the First United Front had effectively collapsed.

The Nationalist and Communist movements had grown stronger during their period of cooperation, but that very growth intensified their competition.

The alliance had helped create:

It also created overlapping institutions that became sites of direct conflict once the parties no longer accepted a shared strategy.

The Beginning of a New Nationalist-Communist Conflict

After the collapse of the United Front, Communists attempted armed uprisings and reorganized their strategy under increasingly difficult conditions.

Nationalist authorities treated Communist organizations as political and military enemies.

The resulting conflict developed into the prolonged struggle later called the Chinese Civil War.

The civil war did not unfold as one continuous conventional military campaign from 1927 onward.

It included:

Those developments belong primarily to later lessons.

How Complete Was Nationalist Unification?

The Northern Expedition dramatically weakened the old warlord political order.

But Nationalist military success did not immediately produce complete centralized control over every province.

The movement relied partly on agreements with regional commanders who accepted Nationalist authority while retaining substantial local military power.

Nationalist armies themselves contained forces of different origins and loyalties.

The revolutionary coalition also fractured politically in 1927.

National unification therefore remained a process rather than a single event.

The next phase of Republican Chinese history asks whether the Nationalist government at Nanjing could transform military and political victory into durable institutions, economic administration, infrastructure, and centralized state power.

How Do We Know?

The history of the First United Front and Northern Expedition is reconstructed from party documents, military records, Soviet and Comintern archives, diplomatic correspondence, newspapers, labor and peasant records, memoirs, propaganda, photographs, and later historical scholarship.

Nationalist Party Records

Kuomintang congress resolutions, party rules, speeches, military orders, and political-training materials document the transformation of the Nationalist movement into a more centralized revolutionary organization.

Communist Party Records

CCP congress materials, reports, correspondence, labor documents, and later party histories provide evidence about Communist strategy and internal debate.

Soviet and Comintern Sources

Soviet advisers and Comintern representatives produced reports describing organizational strategy, military assistance, political disagreements, and relations between the two parties.

Labor and Peasant Sources

Union records, strike notices, peasant-association documents, government reports, and newspapers help reconstruct mass political mobilization.

Foreign Diplomatic Records

American, British, Japanese, Soviet, and other diplomatic archives contain detailed reports on the Northern Expedition and the 1927 political crisis.

These reports must be used critically. Foreign diplomats often focused on treaty rights, commercial interests, foreign safety, and their own governments' strategic concerns.

Conflicting Narratives

Nationalist, Communist, Soviet, and foreign accounts of the 1927 split often assign responsibility differently.

Historians therefore compare multiple sources rather than accepting one party's retrospective account as a complete explanation.

Think Like a Historian

Consider the following question:

Was the First United Front a genuine alliance or only a temporary tactical arrangement?

Evidence supports both sides of the question.

It was a genuine alliance in important practical ways:

Yet the alliance was also deeply tactical:

The strongest interpretation is that it was both: a real cooperative revolutionary coalition and a temporary alliance between organizations whose long-term programs remained incompatible.

That combination helps explain both its extraordinary effectiveness and its violent collapse.

Historical Significance

The United Front and Northern Expedition transformed Republican Chinese politics.

Its historical significance includes:

Key Takeaways

  1. The early 1920s transformed revolutionary politics from intellectual activism into stronger party organization.
  2. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 and initially remained a small organization.
  3. Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Kuomintang with Soviet and Comintern assistance.
  4. The First United Front joined Nationalists and Communists around immediate goals of anti-imperialism and national reunification.
  5. Communists could join the Kuomintang individually while retaining separate CCP membership.
  6. The Kuomintang's 1924 congress formalized the reorganized party and United Front strategy.
  7. Whampoa Military Academy created a politically trained officer corps and strengthened Chiang Kai-shek's position.
  8. The National Revolutionary Army combined military organization with party-directed political work.
  9. Labor and peasant organizing expanded dramatically during the United Front period.
  10. The May Thirtieth Movement of 1925 strengthened nationalist and labor mobilization.
  11. The Northern Expedition began in 1926 and rapidly weakened several major warlord forces.
  12. Mass politics and military advance reinforced each other but also intensified social conflict within the revolutionary coalition.
  13. Chiang Kai-shek used his military position to become a dominant Nationalist leader.
  14. The April 12, 1927 suppression in Shanghai marked a decisive break between Chiang's faction and Communist-led labor organizations.
  15. The Wuhan Nationalist government continued cooperation briefly before also breaking with the Communists.
  16. The First United Front collapsed in 1927, opening a new era of Nationalist-Communist conflict.
  17. The Northern Expedition weakened the warlord order but did not immediately produce complete centralized control over China.

Key Terms

Kuomintang (KMT)
The Chinese Nationalist Party, reorganized under Sun Yat-sen during the early 1920s into a more centralized revolutionary organization.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
A Marxist political party founded in 1921 that later became the principal rival of the Kuomintang for national power.
Comintern
The Communist International, an organization based in Soviet Russia that supported revolutionary movements and encouraged early KMT-CCP cooperation.
Sun Yat-sen
Revolutionary nationalist leader who reorganized the Kuomintang, accepted Soviet assistance, and supported cooperation with Chinese Communists.
Adolph Joffe
A Soviet diplomat whose discussions with Sun Yat-sen helped establish the political framework for closer Soviet-Nationalist cooperation.
First United Front
The political alliance between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party during the 1920s, directed against warlordism and foreign imperial pressure.
Three Principles of the People
Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist political program centered on nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood.
Whampoa Military Academy
A revolutionary military academy established near Guangzhou in 1924 that trained officers for the National Revolutionary Army.
Chiang Kai-shek
Whampoa commandant and commander-in-chief of the Northern Expedition who became the dominant leader of the Nanjing Nationalist faction.
Zhou Enlai
A Communist organizer involved in political work connected to Whampoa who later became a leading figure in the CCP and People's Republic of China.
National Revolutionary Army (NRA)
The military force organized under Kuomintang leadership and used to conduct the Northern Expedition.
May Thirtieth Movement
A major anti-imperialist labor and nationalist movement triggered by police shootings of Chinese demonstrators in Shanghai on May 30, 1925.
Peasant Association
A rural political organization that mobilized farmers around local grievances, political education, and revolutionary activity.
Zhongshan Warship Incident
A March 1926 crisis in Guangzhou during which Chiang Kai-shek restricted Communist and Soviet-linked influence and strengthened his military authority.
Northern Expedition
The Nationalist military campaign launched in 1926 to defeat or incorporate regional military powers and extend Nationalist authority northward.
Wang Jingwei
A senior Nationalist leader associated with the party's left wing and the Wuhan Nationalist government in 1927.
April 12 Incident
The violent suppression of Communist-led labor and political organizations in Shanghai by forces aligned with Chiang Kai-shek in April 1927.
White Terror
A broad term for waves of anti-Communist repression, arrests, executions, and suppression associated with Nationalist authorities after the 1927 split.
Wuhan Government
The left-wing Nationalist political center in Wuhan that continued cooperation with Communists for a time after Chiang's Shanghai suppression.
Nanjing Government
The Nationalist political center established by Chiang-aligned forces in 1927 and developed into the principal Nationalist national government after 1928.

Check Your Understanding

Answer the following questions based on the concepts presented in the lesson. The questions emphasize historical understanding rather than simple memorization.

1. Why did Sun Yat-sen reorganize the Kuomintang during the early 1920s?


2. What was the basic political logic of the First United Front?


3. Why was Whampoa Military Academy important?


4. What did the May Thirtieth Movement demonstrate?


5. Why did peasant mobilization create tension inside the United Front?


6. What was a major purpose of the Northern Expedition?


7. Why did Chiang Kai-shek gain power during the Northern Expedition?


8. What was the political significance of the April 12, 1927 events in Shanghai?


9. Why should the 1927 Nationalist-Communist split not be reduced to one event in Shanghai?


10. Which interpretation best matches the lesson's treatment of the Northern Expedition?


Continue the Story

By the end of 1927, the revolutionary alliance that had made the early Northern Expedition possible had collapsed.

The Kuomintang was divided, but Chiang Kai-shek's Nanjing-centered movement was emerging as the strongest Nationalist political-military coalition.

Communist organizations had suffered severe repression and increasingly turned toward new forms of armed and rural revolutionary activity.

Regional military leaders still controlled significant territories.

The next historical problem was therefore not simply how to win territory.

It was how to govern it.

Further Study

The following scholarly and documentary resources provide additional evidence and interpretation for the Nationalist-Communist alliance, mass politics, and Northern Expedition.