Chiang Kai-Shek and the Communists in China – Marie Louise Berneri (1942)

From ‘War Commentary: For Anarchism’, March 1942, London, UK

Have those who now extol Chiang Kai-Shek as a great democrat looked at his record? Have they forgotten that his merciless slaughter of the revolutionary Chinese workers had earned for him the title of “Butcher of the Chinese Revolution”? This article gives a short account of his career.

Our new ally Chiang Kai-Shek is now boosted by the Press as a great statesman, a great general and a great democrat. He appears in the news as the man who not only defended his country’s independence but who is working for that of India. Very little is said however about Chiang Kai-Shek’s record and about his regime. People seem to have forgotten that not very long ago Chiang Kai-Shek was called “the butcher of the Chinese Revolution,” a title which naturally does not prevent him from becoming the ally of ‘interventionist’ Churchill, of red-tsar Stalin and strike-breaker Roosevelt, but which prevents all true revolutionaries from feeling any sympathy for the man and his regime.

The relations of Chiang with the Chinese Communist Party show some light on his reactionary character and It may be worthwhile to look back on this page of history which both democrats and communists have an interest in forgetting.

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The Communist Party started to play a role in Chinese politics in 1923 when Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the Chinese revolution, accepted the help of Moscow in order to strengthen the position of the Kuomintang which was set to achieve Nationalism (freedom from foreign imperialist powers), Democracy (equal political status for all if not equal power), and Socialism (national control of major industries).

Sun Yat Sen’s programme was petit-bourgeois as compared with that of the Bolshevik party in Russia. But the Comintern was at that time in favour of ‘united front tactics’ and an alliance was concluded between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party and Sun Yat Sen received two Russian advisers. This alliance caused the right wing of the Kuomintang to leave the Party and while Sun Yat Sen was trying to bring them back he fell ill and died in Pekin in 1925. After his death the government — always under the influence of the communists — moved further to the left and was able to increase its influence.

But the collaboration between the Kuomintang and the Communists was not to last long. In May 1925 a general strike took place in Shanghai in answer to the fire which the military cordon at the International settlement had opened against striking and demonstrating textile workers. The movement immediately spread all over China and to such an extent that the Chinese industrialists frightened by its revolutionary character made a compromise with the administration of the International settlement.

Suddenly, on 20th March 1926, Chiang Kai-Shek, the military commander of Canton, organised a putsch against his own government. He dispersed the workers’ militia and arrested communists, trade unionists and members of the Kuomintang. The leader of Chinese democracy used, in order to gain power, similar methods to those used by Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and all modern dictators!

After the Shanghai events, instead of breaking with Chiang Kai-Shek, the Communists tried to compromise with him. The agreement they reached was very unfavourable to the Communist Party while Chiang was recognized as head of the Canton Government. Conflicts soon arose and while Stalin and his representative in China, Borodin, hoped for a continuance of the compromise Chiang Kai-Shek prepared himself to crush the Communist forces. In Shanghai he gave orders to the workers to deliver up their arms to the army. The Communist Party did not revolt against this but advised its members to hide the arms instead of giving them up.

Chiang Kai-Shek took advantage of his adversaries’ lack of decision and ordered the arrest of the Shanghai Committee and of all known communists. The Communist Party decided at last, to resist but it was too late. The workers disarmed, demoralised and lacking organisation were defeated and mercilessly slaughtered. Similar massacres followed in Canton and Hong Kong and in all revolutionary districts. After a few months the defeat of the Communists in China was completed and Chiang had won the title of “butcher of the revolution.”

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After these events the attitude of the Communists towards the Kuomintang had to be completely reversed. In 1927 the policy of collaboration was abandoned and the war against both the left and the right of the Kuomintang started under the slogan of the Soviet regime. The attempt to create soviets in the big towns failed as in the terrible disaster of Canton in December 1927. But in the Southern districts peasant soviets were formed from which partisans were recruited for the Red Armies which were to fight Chiang Kai-Shek’s armies for the next ten years. Chiang Kai-Shek organised four campaigns of extermination against them without succeeding in annihilating them in spite of the fact that he concentrated all his strength against the Red armies, thereby allowing the Japanese to conquer Manchukuo. He was able however thanks to the great superiority of his forces, to weaken considerably the Red armies in the South.

Partly because of these defeats, partly for political and strategical reasons (the Chinese Red Armies would become an advance guard of the Russian Red Army), Stalin gave the order to the Communist forces in the South to reform themselves In North China. The Red Army left the South East and proceeded to the North West, avoiding Central China where the Kuomintang forces were massed. After having covered 10,000 kilometres and in spite of tremendous difficulties the Red Army reached Shensi, the new Soviet base. But out of 90,000 men only 20,000 were left.

When it reached Shensi the Chinese Red Army was in a better position to follow Stalin’s instructions but it had lost all its social character. This did not matter however as far as Moscow was concerned, the new “party” line consisted not in bringing about the world revolution but in defending democracy by fighting fascism. The Chinese Communist Party received therefore the order to win the Chinese government to a policy of military struggle against Japan.

The Comintern did not of course rely on the Chinese masses to fight against fascism. If it had been faithful to its revolutionary ideals it would have contrived to deliver the Chinese people from ‘Butcher Chiang Kai-Shek’ and have helped them to achieve a revolution which would have given the Chinese people something to fight for against Japanese aggression.

These are not Moscow methods however. The Communist Party did not try to get the support of the people but of Chiang Kai-Shek who had persecuted them for so many years.

In 1936 the Communist International worked for the alliance of the communist party with the bourgeois governments of all European countries. This succeeded in France and Spain but in China the communists were faced with a bourgeois government which refused to become their ally. Chinese Communists failed to seduce Chiang Kai-Shek, they had therefore to resort to violence and they did so successfully. In December 1936 the communists kidnapped him and “imposed” an alliance!

When in 1936 Chiang launched a new campaign on Communist forces in North West China, Chang Hsue-Liang was at the head of the forces. But his army was soon infiltrated by Communist propaganda and he himself was convinced that the Communists did not want social revolution but an alliance of all the Chinese in order to fight Japan. He soon became the ally of the Communists and when Chiang visited him at his headquarters he detained his generalissimo and obliged him to promise that he would declare war on Japan. Chiang Kai-Shek was probably driven to promise and he was then released. So that the generalissimo’s honour should not be tarnished the rebel general was put in prison, condemned and liberated the next day. That is how the Communists secured Chiang Kai-Shek’s alliance.

Chiang Kai-Shek soon adopted a hostile attitude towards Japan and Japanese agents were arrested. The Red Army was not suppressed but received on the contrary 500,000 dollars grant. The Communists on the other hand made some concessions as well. The Red Army became the 8th Army and abandoned all revolutionary activities. Chiang Kai-Shek had adopted the Comintern foreign policy against Japan while the Communists adopted the Kuomintang bourgeois programme. It was a return to the 1923 policy but with a difference. The Kuomintang had moved very much to the right since then.

At the beginning of 1937 the Communist Party addressed a message to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang accepting in advance all the conditions it might think necessary to the formation of a united front.

On the 22nd of September 1937 the Communist Party published a manifesto in Nanking showing clearly that they were prepared to make any compromise. The manifesto emphasized the four following points:–

1. Realising that the Three People’s Principles of Sun Yat Sen are indispensable to the reorganisation of the country, the Chinese Communist Party undertakes to concentrate all its strength to the realisation of those principles.

2. The Chinese Communist Party has decided to abandon all activities having for aim the overthrow of the Kuomintang Government by force, as well as its policy of sovietisation of China, the propaganda of Communist ideas and expropriation of the land by force.

3. The Chinese Communist Party has decided to dissolve the Government of Soviet China and to support a democratic government so as to allow the unification of the administrative authority in the whole country.

4. The Chinese Communist Party has decided to suppress the title and insignia of the Red army and to regroup its forces under the name of revolutionary national army which will be under the command of the Commission of Military Affairs of the national government. The revolutionary army is prepared to go to the front under the orders of the Commission in order to fulfill its duty towards national defence.

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There is little information about the relation between the Communist party and Chiang Kai-Shek during the past few years. But it is reasonable to suppose that during the first years of the war, when Russia and Japan concluded a non-aggression pact and newspapers reported that Stalin had kissed the Japanese ambassador on both cheeks declaring “We are both Asiatics” the Chinese Communists did not prove to be so hot in defending democracy. Now that Stalin has joined the crusade the Chinese Communists will no doubt find themselves wholeheartedly at the side of Chiang Kai-Shek in asking the maximum sacrifice from the Chinese masses.

The history of Chiang Kai-Shek’s career is therefore merely one of sordid intrigue and counter-intrigue with the Chinese Bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the Chinese section of the Comintern on the other. The most consistent feature of his regime has been his determined suppression and massacring of the Chinese revolutionary Workers. His reputation as a liberator has about as much claim to be true as Hitler’s or Mussolini’s, and to represent him as a “democrat” is simply fantastic. The support which the Left in this country has almost universally accorded to him is a disservice to truth, and as such, can only do harm to the workers’ cause, both in China itself, and in the rest of the world.

M.L.B