by Philip Short
229. Wilbur and How, pp. 385–8 and 392–6.
230. Ibid., pp. 396–8; Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 576; Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, p. 361.
231. Nianpu, 1, pp. 187–9; Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 98. See also Schram, Mao's Road, 2, pp. 467–75 (March 16 1927).
232. Nianpu, 1, pp. 190–6; Schram, 2, pp. 485–503.
233. Nianpu, 1, pp. 181 and 192.
234. Isaacs, p. 165, and Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 587.
235. Isaacs, pp. 128 and 163; Chen Duxiu, in Evans and Block, p. 603; North, Robert C., and Eudin, Xenia J., M. N. Roy's Mission to China, University of California, Berkeley, 1963, p. 54.
236. On Wang's part, this was disingenuous to the extent that Chiang had already made clear to him, in private talks earlier that week, that he wanted Borodin removed and the communists expelled. On the other hand, Chiang appeared to accept Wang's counter-proposal that these issues be dealt with by a full CEC plenum, and on April 3 had issued a public statement explicitly pledging obedience to Wang's leadership (CHOC, 12, pp. 623–4).
237. North, Robert, Moscow and Chinese Communists, Stanford University Press, 1963, p. 96; North and Eudin, Roy's Mission to China, pp. 54–8.
CHAPTER 6 EVENTS LEADING TO THE HORSE DAY INCIDENT AND ITS BLOODY AFTERMATH
1. The Times, London, April 13 1927; Isaacs, Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, pp. 175–85. See also Clifford, Nicholas R., Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of the 1920s, Middlebury College Press, Hanover, 1991, pp. 242–75; and Martin, Brian G., The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1979–37, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1996, ch. 4, especially pp. 100–7.
2. NCH, April 16 1927, p. 103.
3. Or perhaps longer: Harold Isaacs viewed Bai Chongxi's failure to send troops to aid the Shanghai workers during the first insurrection on February 19 as a deliberate ploy by Chiang to weaken the workers’ movement in the city (p. 135). The Indian communist M. N. Roy, then in Canton, took a similar view (North and Eudin, Roy's Mission to China, p. 157).
4. If not earlier: the communist head of the General Labour Union in Ganzhou (Jiangxi), Chen Zanxian, was executed on March 6 on the orders of one of Chiang's subordinates (Nianpu, 1, p. 189). See Isaacs, pp. 143–4 and 152–3; Martin, pp. 93–5; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 625–34; Wilbur and How, Missionaries of Revolution, pp. 398 and 404–5.
5. Sokolsky, George E., ‘The Guomindang’, in China Yearbook, 1928, Tianjin Press, Tianjin, p. 1349.
6. The Times, London, March 25, 1927. At that time most foreigners in Shanghai made little distinction between the communists and the GMD: both were regarded as ‘Reds’, the difference being a matter of degree, and in March they were still allies against the northern warlords. Members of secret societies like Du Yuesheng's Green Gang, from which the ‘black-gowned gunmen’ were drawn, joined the insurrection alongside the workers. It was only when Chiang Kai-shek decided to move against the communists in April that the Green Gang – which wanted above all to retain its monopoly on labour recruitment and racketeering – threw in its lot with the Guomindang. See Steven A. Smith, A Road is Made: Communism in Shanghai, 1920–27, Curzon, 2000, pp. 179–87 & 191.
7. Strother, Rev. Edgar E., ‘A Bolshevized China – The World's Greatest Peril’, North China Daily News and Herald Press, Shanghai, 1927 (11th edn), pp. 4 and 14–15.
8. Sokolsky, p. 1349.
9. The Times, London, March 25 and 29, 1927; Wilbur and How, pp. 400–1.
10. North China Daily News, March 28 1927.
11. This is not to suggest an orchestrated campaign. The evidence indicates that the Chinese loan, the Powers’ authorisation of the Beijing raid, the restrictions on the Soviet consulate; and the Shanghai Municipal Council's decision to allow passage to Du Yuesheng's ‘armed labourers’ to reach their staging points, were all separate consequences of the situation that had been created by early April 1927 (see Clifford, pp. 255–9); Sokolsky, p. 1360; Isaacs, pp. 151–2; Wilbur and How, pp. 403–4; Martin, pp. 101-4; and The Times, London, April 7, 8 and 9, 1927.
12. Vishnyakova-Akimova, Dva goda v Kitae, p. 345. In Shanghai, the CCP District Committee, meeting on April 1, was told that Chiang Kai-shek had paid the Green Gang 600,000 Mexican dollars to make trouble for the labour movement in Jiangxi, and that similar moves were afoot in the city itself. But while its Secretary, Luo Yinong, spoke of an ever more serious conflict ‘between revolution and counter-revolution’ with Chiang at its centre, he appeared to believe that, for the time being, it could be contained at the political level without developing into armed confrontation (Xu Yufang and Bian Xianying, Shanghai gongren sand wuzhuang qiyi yanjiu, Zhishi chubanshe Shanghai, 1987, pp. 227–8; Smith, A Road is Made, p. 190). Subsequently the General Labour Union received warnings that gangsters were planning an attack on the pickets, but clashes with gangs were not unusual, and the GLU apparently did not believe they would be part of a broader clamp-down (Diyici guonei geming zhanzheng shiqi di gongren yundong, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1954, pp. 492–3); see also Chesneaux, Chinese Labour Movement, pp. 367–71. In Hankou, Borodin's main concern was not Chiang's intentions towards the communists, but the news that he planned to transfer his headquarters to Nanjing. On April 7, the GMD Political Council met in emergency session and resolved (too late for any action to be taken) that the Hankou government should move there first to forestall him. Events in Shanghai were not discussed (Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 632–3). It seems to have been a case of everybody looking the wrong way.
13. Martin, pp. 104–5; Clifford, p. 253.
14. Wilbur and How, pp. 806–9. See also Borodin's anxieties in late March (Ibid., p. 400).
15. North China Daily News, April 8 1927.
16. In Nanjing, for instance, Zhang Shushi, a communist member of the Jiangsu provincial GMD committee, did not realise that Chiang Kai-shek himself was behind the repression until he was arrested on April 9 and held overnight by GMD security officials (Wilbur, CHOC, 12, p. 633). According to Zhou Enlai, the Shanghai Party leaders first learned that Chiang was responsible for the killings at Jiujiang and Anqing (which occurred on March 17 and 23) only on April 14 (Zhou Enlai, SW1, pp. 18 and 411, n. 7), although how this can be reconciled with the Shanghai CCP committee meeting of April 1 (which Zhou himself attended), where they discussed Chiang's financing of Green Gang violence against the Left in Jiangxi, is unclear. Similarly, Roy spoke in mid-April of having ‘just received reports that Chiang Kai-shek has sent his agents to Sichuan’ (North and Eudin, p. 169), where fierce repression had begun at the end of March (Wilbur, pp. 626–7).
17. Pavel Mif, who became Comintern representative in China in 1930, wrote later: ‘The Shanghai comrades were hypnotised by the old line, and could not imagine a revolutionary government without the participation of the bourgeoisie’ (Kitaiskiya Revolutsiya, Moscow, 1932, p. 98). As Harold Isaacs noted, Mif tactfully omitted to mention that the ‘old line’ had been laid down by Stalin (p. 170).
18. Nianpu, 1, pp. 192–3, and Kuo, Thomas C., Ch'en Tu-hsiu (1879–1942) and the Chinese Communist Movement, Seton Hall University Press, South Orange, 1975, p. 161.
19. See North and Eudin, M. N. Roy's Mission to China, pp. 160–82. According to this source, Roy, Borodin, Chen Duxiu and ‘others’ spoke between April 13 and 15; on April 16, the CC passed a resolution based on Roy's speech. It was annulled, however, on April 18, and a new resolution passed on April 20.
20. No text of Borodin's speech is available, but its tenor is evident from Roy's rejoinder (North and Eudin, esp. pp. 160, 163 and 172). A few days later, Borodin told Guomindang leaders there was ‘no choice but to make a temporary, strategic retreat’ by damping down the revolutionary movement both among the peasants in Hubei and Hunan and among the workers in Wuhan (Li, Dun J., The Road to Communism: China since 1912, Van Norstrand, New York, 1969, pp. 89–91). For a retrospective account, see Fischer, Louis, The Soviets in World Affairs: A History of the Relations between the Sovi
et Union and the Rest of the World, Jonathan Cape, London, 1930, vol. 2, pp. 673–7.
21. North and Eudin, pp. 163–72.
22. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 46; Zhou Enlai, SW1, pp. 18–19; North and Eudin, pp. 63 and 170.
23. North and Euden, pp. 176–7; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, p. 639. The Wuhan government had decided on April 12 (before the news of Chiang's coup arrived) to press for a resumption of the Northern Expedition. This decision was publicly reiterated with much fanfare on April 19. If Roy's dating of the CPC CC resolutions is correct, it must have been confirmed by the Left-GMD leadership on April 17 (North and Eudin, p. 75).
24. The Nianpu (1, p. 193) states that Mao took part in a three-day meeting of the CPC Peasant Committee ‘in the second 10 days of April’, but otherwise lists no activities by him from April 13–17.
25. Accounts of these important but ultimately irrelevant negotiations may be found in Schram, Mao Tse-tung, pp. 99–102, Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 648–9; and Nianpu, 1, pp. 191–9. See also Schram, Mao's Road, 2, pp. 487–91 and 494–503. Three regular meetings, six enlarged meetings and four sub–committee meetings were held between April 2 and May 9 1927.
26. Snow, Red Star over China, p. 188; Nianpu, 1, pp. 197–8. In his report to the Fifth Congress, Chen criticised Mao and Li Lisan by name (Saich, Rise to Power, p. 241; see also pp. 243–51). For the background to Mao's draft resolution, see Carr, Edward Hallett, A History of Soviet Russia: Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–7929, vol. 3 pt 3, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 788.
27. Snow, p. 188.
28. History of the CCP, Chronology. Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao (Shenyang chubanshe, Shenyang, 1991, pp. 54–60) gives slightly different figures.
29. Nianpu, 1, p. 199. Conrad Brandt (Stalin's Failure in China, Harvard University Press, 1958, p. 128) identifies Qu Qiubai as Mao's successor. Peng Pai, who had joined Mao at the Fifth Congress in opposing Chen Duxiu's agrarian policy, also left the committee at this time (Nianpu, ibid., and Galbiati, Peng Pai and the Hailufeng Soviet, p. 258).
30. Schram, 2, pp. 504–17. For Mao's role in the association, see ibid., pp. 485–6.
31. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 630 and 636–8. Steven Smith estimates that up to 2,000 communists and worker militants were killed in Shanghai between April and December 1927 (A Road is Made, p. 204).
32. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 637 and 640–1; The Times, London, March 30 1927; and Kuo, p. 161.
33. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 641–3.
34. Ibid., pp. 651–3, and Zhang Guotao, Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, 1 pp. 627–32. Chiang's forces, under Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, separately resumed their Northern Expedition at about the same time. Each side announced that it would not attack the other while the conflict against the northerners was under way.
35. McDonald, Urban Origins, pp. 314–15 (also pp. 290–9 and 304); Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 638 and 653–4; Li Rui, Early Revolutionary Activities, pp. 313–17.
36. Xu Kexiang, ‘The Ma-jih [Horse Day] Incident’, in Dun Li, Road to Communism, pp. 91–5.
37. Liu Zhixun, ‘Ma ri shibian di huiyi’ [Recollections of the Horse Day Incident, in Diyici guonei geming zhanzheng shiqi di nongmin yundong, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1952, pp. 81–4 (partial translation in Li Rui, pp. 315–16).
38. Xu Kexiang, pp. 93–4. Xu himself, according to Zhang Guotao, had only about 1,000 rifles (1, p. 615). Liu Zhixun claimed that there was ‘a plan for a counter-attack’, but it was too vague to be of any practical use. ‘We knew the coup was coming … [but] the Communist Party of that time … had no experience in struggle … Thus when the coup broke, we were disorganised and confused, and all our plans failed’ (‘Ma ri shibian di huiyi’, p. 383; see also Zhonggong Hunan shengwei xuanchuanbu, Hunan geming lieshi zhuan, Tongsu duwu chubanshe, Changsha, 1952, p. 96).
39. Hunan geming lieshi zhuan, p. 96 (translated in McDonald, p. 315).
40. Xu Kexiang, p. 94.
41. McDonald, p. 316. Isaacs reports 20,000 dead ‘in the course of the next few months’ (pp. 235–6). Both figures are consistent with available primary accounts. Mao reports ‘well over 10,000’ deaths in Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi by June 13, with some supporting figures for individual counties (Schram, 2, p. 516). See also Minguo ribao, Hankou, June 12 1927 (quoted in Isaacs, pp. 225–6).
42. Liu Zhixun, ‘Ma ri shibian di huiyi’; Wilbur, pp. 656–7. The order to call off the attack was given by Li Weihan, who had succeeded Mao as Hunan Party Secretary in April 1923, and held the post until the end of May 1927 (Brandt, Conrad, Schwartz, Benjamin and Fairbank J. K., A Documentary History of Chinese Communism, Harvard University Press, 1952, pp. 112–13). See also Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 636.
43. Wilbur quotes a report in GMD archives as estimating that ‘four to five thousand persons were killed and many villages devastated’ by Xia's troops in Hubei (p. 654, n. 220). See also Isaacs, pp. 225–7. In Jiangxi, the death-toll was lower (Wilbur, pp. 660–1; see also Schram, 2, pp. 514–17).
44. Schram, 2, pp. 514–17 (June 13 1927).
45. McDonald, p. 316.
46. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 615. Wang Jingwei's adviser. T'ang Leang-li [Tang Liangli], also saw the Horse Day Incident as the moment of realisation ‘that the time had arrived for the Guomindang and the Communist Party to separate’ (The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1930, p. 279).
47. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, p. 655; North and Eudin, Roy's Mission to China, pp. 100–6 and 293–304; ZZWX, 3, pp. 138–41. See also Roy, M. N., Revolution and Counter-Revolution in China, Renaissance Publishers, Calcutta, 1946, p. 615.
48. ZZWX, 3, pp. 136–7.
49. North and Eudin, p. 104; Wilbur, p. 655.
50. North and Eudin, p. 103. Mao was then responsible for drafting most of the association's directives. How, and to whom, he sent it is unclear, since both the provincial peasants association and the provincial labour union had been suppressed.
51. Ibid., p. 104.
52. Ibid., pp. 314–17. The appeal was issued on June 3 1927.
53. Schram, 2, pp. 504–8 (May 30) and pp. 510–13 (June 7 1927); Nianpu, 1, pp. 201–5. Mao's appointment was announced on June 7.
54. Isaacs, pp. 190–6. Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, pp. 301–2. For Trotsky's side of the argument, see Evans and Block, Trotsky on China, pp. 443–61.
55. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 49; North, Robert. C., Moscow and Chinese Communists, Stanford University Press, 1963, pp. 100 and 104–6. The resolution the Comintern approved on May 30 is translated in Eudin and North, pp. 369–76 (see also 379–80).
56. Zhang Guotao, I, pp. 637–8; Evans and Block, p. 606. See also ‘Gao chuandang tongzhi shu’, Shanghai, 1929.
57. Evans and Block, p. 601.
58. Schram, 2, p. 426; Cai Hesen, Problemy Kitaia, 1, p. 39.
59. Wilbur, CHOC, 12 pp. 661–2; North and Eudin, pp. 110–18; T'ang Leang-li, pp. 280–3; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 638–46. Roy's attitude may be inferred from his speech to the Politburo on June 15 1927: ‘We must place the Guomindang in a position where it must of necessity give a direct answer. We must force it to give an explicit declaration before the masses as to whether it is prepared to lead the revolution forward or wants to betray it.’ (North and Eudin, p. 355).
60. North and Eudin, pp. 338–40.
61. The Central Committee stated: ‘There is a risk of immediate armed conflict with the enemy. This is not desirable for our Party’ (ZZWX, 3, p. 138).
62. After Mao's death, it was acknowledged that ‘although the Comintern had made a series of errors in its advice to the Chinese revolutionaries, this particular directive correctly addressed the crucial question of the time: how to save the revolution’ (Hu Sheng [editor], A Concise History of the Communist Party of China, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1994, p. 103).
63. From June 7, when Mao was first appointed Secretary of the Hunan Committee, to June 24, when the appointment was made for a second time, the CC's policy on ‘the H
unan problem’ was in flux (Nianpu, 1, pp. 203–4). Cai Hesen wrote later that the CC and the Comintern delegates (Borodin and Roy) set up a special commission to plan armed peasant uprisings in Hunan, and that ‘a large group of army comrades was sent to Hunan’ for this purpose (Problemy Kitaia, 1, p. 44). Mao addressed this group in Wuhan in the second ten days of June (Nianpu, 1, pp. 203–4). Zhou Enlai, as director of the CC Military Committee, submitted to the Politburo Standing Committee on June 17 ‘a plan for dealing with the [consequences of] the massacre in Hunan’, and Qu Qiubai later confirmed that the CC that month took a ‘final decision’ for an offensive in Hunan (Qu, ‘The Past and Future of the Chinese Communist Party’, in Chinese Studies in History, 1971, 5, 1, pp. 37–8). When Mao travelled to Hunan a week later, he briefed Party cadres there on the commission's plan (Nianpu, ibid.).
64. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 664–5 and p. 668; Vishnyakova-Akimova, p. 362.
65. Cai Hesen, Problemy Kitaia, pp. 56–7. See also Qu Qiubai, pp. 41–2.
66. North and Eudin, pp. 361–9; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 665–7. Chen Duxiu claimed later that he twice proposed (apparently in June) that the CCP leave the united front, but that the rest of the Politburo, with the exception of the Youth League leader, Ren Bishi, were against it (Evans and Block, p. 604). Zhang Guotao also claimed to have proposed a break in mid-June, but found the rest of the leadership cautious (1, p. 647).
67. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, p. 667.
68. Nianpu, 1, pp. 203–4; Snow, p. 189. Tang Shengzhi had issued a statement on June 29, supporting Xu Kexiang (North and Eudin, pp. 120–1), which meant that the planned uprising would be opposed by the GMD-Left's military forces. Borodin had therefore ordered the plan aborted.
69. Nianpu, 1, p. 204; Schram, 3, pp. 5–12.
70. According to the Nianpu, Mao and Cai discussed these issues at length in the first ten days of July; afterwards Cai wrote to the Politburo, accusing it of paying insufficient attention to military planning (1, p. 205).
71. Pantsov, Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, pp. 152–3; Pravda, July 10 & 16 1927; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 50; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 669–71; and Pantsov and Levine, p. 187.
