Foreign encroachments on Chinese integrity
provoked the strongest reaction among the young
students and intellectuals. Peking University
became the centre of the intellectual ferment and
participated in what became known as the New
Culture Movement. Japan’s Twenty-one Demands
in January 1915 took advantage of the preoccupa-
tion of the European powers with winning the war
in Europe to demand of the Chinese government
its practical subordination to Japan. In China they
were met with a storm of protest. An even greater
outburst of indignation greeted the decisions of the
Paris Peace Conference in 1919. China was an ally,
yet Japan had been accorded the right to take over
Germany’s extensive concessions in the province of
Shantung, and the warlord government in Peking,
representing China, had accepted this transfer
of what was after all still Chinese territory.
The fourth of May 1919 is an important date
in the history of modern China. It was later seen
as marking the moment when China reasserted its
national identity once more in angry response to
imperialism. Some 3,000 students in Peking
University launched a national protest movement
which took its name from that date. The govern-
ment had arrested some students and the protest
was directed equally against the government and
national humiliation. In the burst of publications
that followed, the May the Fourth movement had
a powerful effect on stimulating the young intel-
lectuals to reject the social and political traditions
of old China, including the Confucian ideals of
duty and filial obedience and the subordination
of women. A boycott of Japanese goods, in turn,
led to the organisation of Chinese labour in the
ports. But the intellectual revolution also had a
divisive effect as the mass of the countryside and
the peasantry was virtually untouched by the fever
for change.
In 1923 Sun Yat-sen was looking for ways to
strengthen his enfeebled Kuomintang Party,
which was nominally ruling Canton but in reality
was dependent on the local warlord. He turned
for help to the tiny Communist Party, numbering
less than a thousand members. The Comintern
welcomed any opportunity to strike a blow against
Western imperialism and agents were sent from
Moscow. The cooperation of Sun Yat-sen and his
Russian advisers soon bore fruit. Sun Yat-sen
adapted his principles to the new situation and the
Comintern ordered the Chinese communists not
to form an alliance but to subordinate their inter-
ests and fuse with the Kuomintang. The commu-
nists, now forming the left wing of the Kuo-
mintang, never lost their sense of identity. The
party, with the help of Russian advice, was reor-
ganised, and communist influence among Chinese
labour working for Western interests rapidly grew;
strikes were fomented and supported. In the
countryside, too, the Kuomintang made headway
among the peasants in encouraging the seizure of
landlord’s land.
The right wing of the Kuomintang controlled
the national revolutionary army it was organising.
The task was assigned to one of Sun Yat-sen’s
loyal young followers, Chiang Kai-shek. In 1923
Chiang Kai-shek went to Moscow to study the
new Soviet Red Army. On his return he was placed
in charge of training the officers of the Kuomin-
tang’s revolutionary army. In 1925 Sun Yat-sen
died. There was no obvious successor. For a time
the party continued under a collective leadership
amid increasing strains between the left and the
right. But Chiang Kai-shek soon made clear his
opposition to the left of the Kuomintang. Chiang
Kai-shek turned against the socialist plans of his
communist allies. He also vied for the assistance of
the propertied and for help from the West. Mean-
while the communists in following Moscow’s
orders fared disastrously. In April 1927 the
nationalists and their supporters crushed organ-
ised workers in Shanghai and shot protesters. In
the countryside peasant risings were bloodily put
down. By the end of that year the break between
the communists and nationalists was complete.
Driven out of the towns, the communists estab-
lished base areas in remote regions. Mao Zedong,
then in his thirties, created the most important in
Jiangxi. Here the Red Army was trained by Zhou
Enlai and taught to help and not plunder the peas-
ants. Other significant reforms ended the sale of
girls into forced marriages, while the peasants’
greatest need was land reform. After five years,
surrounded by Chiang’s forces, the base became
untenable. Daringly at night on 16 October 1934,
leaving behind a rearguard and the sick and
1
CHINA IN DISINTEGRATION, 1900–29 77
