Chinese nationalism and the Northern Expedition
In retrospect, the Washington Conference's relative indifference to the demands of Chinese nationalism can be seen as its chief failing, for its achievements relied on China remaining a passive arena for Great Power economic activity.
The problem was that the Chinese were not willing to play this quiescent role. China, like Japan, was influenced by the internationalist, democratic and socialist ideas that arose at the end of the First World War. Within the former, however, they had an even more profound effect, for they helped to turn what had initially been a largely intellectual nationalist cause into a mass movement. The main spark came in May 1919, when the hopes among students that Wilsonian ideas of selfdetermination would be applied to China were dashed by the decision under the Versailles Treaty to transfer the Jiaozhou lease to Japan. This insult to Chinese prestige led to anti-Japanese demonstrations by students in Beijing and Shanghai which soon developed into a nationwide protest involving strikes by industrial workers and a boycott of Japanese goods. This campaign, dubbed the May Fourth Movement, can now be seen to be a seminal event in Chinese history, for it showed that the Chinese were willing to take coherent political action against the imperialists. In the short term, however, while it had a profound influence on political thought, it had little impact on international politics, for in the turmoil of the warlord years there was no central force capable of tapping its potential. What China needed if it was to turn its nationalism into an effective weapon against imperialism was a modern political and military organization and greater ideological coherence. The construction of both was, however, to require cooperation from another state — the Soviet Union.The Bolsheviks, who were notable by their absence from the Washington Conference, had decided by the early 1920s that the Comintern should become active in the colonized parts of the world.
The aim, however, was not to createproletarian revolutions in the colonized countries, for they clearly lacked the economic conditions for such ventures, but primarily to support nationalist parties in order to undermine Western imperialism. However, at the same time the Comintern sought to encourage the growth of indigenous communist movements in an effort to assist the mobilization of the masses and to prepare for the future. As a result, the Comintern’s interest in Asia, added to Lenin's musings on the nature of imperialism, had a profound effect, for, by stressing that socialism and nationalism were fighting against the same common enemy, Lenin helped to radicalize a new generation of Asian nationalists. Moreover, Marxism-Leninism appealed to figures such as the young Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Ho Chi Minh, because it made clear why traditional society had failed to resist foreign encroachment and provided a blueprint for future modernization and social equality. The virulently nationalist Asian Marxist hybrid that was to thwart the superpowers in the Cold War thus had its origins in this era.
China in the early 1920s appeared to Moscow to be a viable field for Comintern activities and, in particular, the Guomindang (GMD) party created by the veteran nationalist Sun Yatsen, which espoused anti-imperial ideas mixed with a vaguely socialist domestic agenda, emerged as an attractive potential partner. In January 1923 a Comintern agent, Alfred Joffe, met Sun in Shanghai where they agreed on a framework for Soviet support for the GMD. This included the promise of advisers, arms and the establishment of a ‘United Front’ between the GMD and the infant Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which had only been established in 1921. The following autumn the first Comintern advisers arrived at Sun’s political base in Guangzhou in southern China.
Guomindang (GMD)
The Chinese Nationalist party founded in 1913 by Sun Yatsen. Under the control of Jiang Jieshi, it came to power in China in 1928 and initiated a modernization programme before leading the country into war against Japan in 1937.
It lost control over mainland China in 1949 as a result of the communist victory in the civil war. From 1949 it controlled Taiwan, overseeing the island's ‘economic miracle’, until its electoral defeat in 2000.Over the next three years Soviet assistance helped to turn the GMD into a formidable political and military machine. As early as 1925, shortly after Sun’s death, the GMD, taking advantage of Britain’s heavy-handed treatment of a Chinese demonstration in Shanghai, organized a sixteen-month strike that paralysed British trade in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. At the same time its armed forces expanded its area of direct control over Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. Its very success, however, raised questions about its future direction. Should the GMD seek to spread the nationalist cause merely through political actions such as strikes and boycotts or should it unite China militarily under its own rule? The answer was provided by Sun’s successor as the dominant figure within the party, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek), who in July 1926 launched the Northern Expedition, a military offensive to unify the country.
The Northern Expedition was an event of great significance for, as well as leading to Chinese unification under the GMD, it forced the Great Powers to review their policies towards China. Britain and the United States after careful deliberation came to the view that they should reconcile themselves to the rise of Chinese nationalism, on the grounds that concessions over its territorial privileges now could safeguard their positions in the Chinese market later. This approach meant that once tensions dissipated, particularly after Jiang abruptly broke with the Comintern in April 1927 and purged the GMD of Soviet and CCP influence, they were well placed to enter into a new relationship with nationalist China. Thus, from 1928, when Jiang set up his Nationalist government in Nanjing, both
of these Powers proved willing to enter into negotiations about returning tariff autonomy to China and getting rid of extra-territoriality. Japan, however, took a different view, for although willing to make concessions about its commercial interests, it could not accede to China's demands for the return of all territories that had been leased to foreign powers. The sticking point was the Kwantung lease in South Manchuria that Japan had gained in 1905 as one of the fruits of the Russo-Japanese War. For economic, military and political reasons, Japan could not afford to make concessions about this leased territory or about its ownership of the South Manchurian Railway (SMR). Equally, the Nanjing government could not compromise its ‘rights recovery' policy by opting not to raise the issue of the future of the Kwantung lease. Japan and China were therefore on a collision course.