A report on Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei

From 1926 to 1928, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek successfully led the Northern Expedition against regional warlords and unified the fragmented nation.

While exiled in Japan in 1914, Sun established the Chinese Revolutionary Party on 8 July 1914, but many of his old revolutionary comrades, including Huang Xing, Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin and Chen Jiongming, refused to join him or support his efforts in inciting armed uprising against Yuan.

The Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927, the April 12 Purge or the April 12 Incident as it is commonly known in China, was the violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organizations and leftist elements in Shanghai by forces supporting General Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT).

The purge led to an open split between left and right wing factions in the KMT, with Chiang Kai-shek establishing himself as the leader of the right wing faction based in Nanjing, in opposition to the original left-wing KMT government based in Wuhan led by Wang Jingwei.

Internal conflicts between left- and right-wing leaders of the KMT with regards to the CCP problem continued right up to the launch of the Northern Expedition.

In 1926, the Northern Expedition reached the Wuhan area and it was decided to merge Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang into one city in order to make a new capital for Nationalist China.

In March 1927, Mao Zedong appeared at the Third Plenum of the KMT Central Executive Committee in Wuhan, which sought to strip General Chiang of his power by appointing Wang Jingwei leader.

The split was partially motivated by the purge of the Communists within the party, which marked the end of the First United Front, and Chiang Kai-shek briefly stepped down as the commander of the National Revolutionary Army.

He did not live to see his party unify the country under his successor, Chiang Kai-shek, in the Northern Expedition.

Other Whampoa leaders include Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin as political instructors.

The Central Plains War was a series of military campaigns in 1929 and 1930 that constituted a Chinese civil war between the Nationalist Kuomintang government in Nanjing led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and several regional military commanders and warlords that were former allies of Chiang.

After the Northern Expedition ended in 1928, Yan Xishan, Feng Yuxiang, Li Zongren and Zhang Fakui broke off relations with Chiang shortly after a demilitarization conference in 1929, and together they formed an anti-Chiang coalition to openly challenge the legitimacy of the Nanjing government.

Compared to other senior party officials like Hu Hanmin and Wang Jingwei, the political status of Chiang Kai-shek in the Kuomintang (KMT) was lower in the beginning.

For the purpose of unifying China and defeating the regional warlords, the Kuomintang (KMT, alternatively known as the Chinese Nationalist Party) in Guangzhou launched the Northern Expedition from 1926 to 1928 with limited assistance from the Soviet Union.

Later in the same year, Zhang decided to declare his allegiance to the Nationalist government in Nanjing under Chiang Kai-shek, and consequently, China was nominally reunified under one government.

After 1940, the Japanese encountered tremendous difficulties in administering and garrisoning the seized territories, and tried to solve their occupation problems by implementing a strategy of creating friendly puppet governments favourable to Japanese interests in the territories conquered, most prominently the Wang Jingwei Government headed by former KMT premier Wang Jingwei.

They were nominally reunified in 1928 by the Nanjing-based government led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, which after the Northern Expedition governed the country as a one-party state under the Kuomintang, and was subsequently given international recognition as the legitimate representative of China.

Leftists within the KMT still allied to the CCP, led by Wang Jingwei, had established a rival Nationalist Government in Wuhan two months earlier, but soon joined Chiang in Nanjing in August 1927.

Following Sun's death, Borodin assisted in the planning of the Northern Expedition, and later became an integral backer of the KMT leftist government in Wuhan.

Under Borodin's tutelage, both parties were reorganised on the Leninist principle of democratic centralism, and training institutes for mass organisation were established, such as the Peasant Training Institute, where the young Mao Zedong served, and the Whampoa Military Academy, which trained officers for the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek.

Borodin and the communists gave their backing to the left-wing KMT government in Wuhan led by Wang Jingwei and Eugene Chen against Chiang's rival Nanjing government.

In order to resist the domination of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin, Yan allied himself with the forces of Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, during the Nationalists' Northern Expedition.

His allies included the northern warlord Feng Yuxiang, the Guangxi Clique led by Li Zongren, and the left-leaning Kuomintang faction led by Wang Jingwei.

The Canton Coup of 20 March 1926, also known as the Zhongshan Incident or the March 20th Incident, was a purge of Communist elements of the Nationalist army in Guangzhou (then romanized as "Canton") undertaken by Chiang Kai-shek.

The incident solidified Chiang's power immediately before the successful Northern Expedition, turning him into the paramount leader of the country.

There were plans for a northern offensive against the warlords, but leadership remained divided—principally between the right-wing Chiang and the left-wing Wang Jingwei.