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Period: to
Warlord Era
The handful of major warlords commanded sizeable regions, populations, and deposits of resources. With such resources at dispoal, a warlord could create a mini-state generally independent from the rest of China. -
The Guomindang and the First United Front
Germany offered advisors to help the Guomindang improve its governing ability, as well as military equipment and financial support. One of the immediate outcomes of the First United Fronts was the estamblishment of the Whampoa Military Academy. Sun Yat-sen became the first Guomindang and agreed to team up with the CCP to eliminate all of warlordism in China. -
Founding of Chinese Communist Party - Long Term
Main goal was unifying the nation, addressing the exploration of rural Chinese by landlords, eradicating foreign imperialism in China, and preparing the way for a socialist revolution. -
Northern Expedition
Involved three thrusts against the warlords of southeasern China. experienced CCP labor and peasant organizers were sent ahead to arrange strikes and sabotage to weaken the warlords before the Guomjndang army even arrived. By 1927, the Northern Expedition had overrun warlord opposition in seven provinces. -
Shanghai Purge
Chaing Kai-shek decided to break with the Communists, whom he decided was a threat to China's tradition and ecomemy. Soldiers attacked Communist members. Hundreds of CCP activists and sympathizers were killed and protests brutally put down. In the several months the Guomindang hunted down communists all over China. Mao Zedong mentoned in his Repord on the Peasant Movement in Hunan saying, "A revolution is an uprising, an act of violence whereby one class overthrows the power of another" (Mao). -
Jangxi Soviet
Guomindang armies attempted to overpower te largest of the new CCP refuges, the Jiangxi Soviet. It started out in 1928 as a hideout for Mao and his small group of CCP followers had grown into a sizable Communist enclave. They used guerrilla warfare tactics in battle. -
The Long March - Long Term
80,000 CCP personnel broke out of Guomindang stranglehold. Over the next fourteen months, the Communists doggedly marched west and north. CCP leaders fiercely debated the causes of their defeat in Jiangxi and how to carry on their fight after the Soviet Union's withdrawl of support. Mao led the Long March. -
Xi'an Incident and the Second United Front
To onfront the Communists, Chiang assigned General Zhang Xueliang, the Manchurian warlord, to move his troops to Xi'an and destroy the Yan'an Soviet. With the CCP finally destroyed the Chiang believed, a fully unified nation could concentrate its forced against the Japanese. Zhang Xueliang sized the leader of the Guomindang and placed him under house arrest and his generals issued a nationwide call for a United Front to ally the Guomindang, CCP, and Warlords against the Japanese. -
Pearl Harbor
The Chinese were tying up 2/5 of Japan's armed forces, preventing them from waging war elesewhere. Weastern allies began to oextend massive loans to the Gumondang government. The Allied powers vowed to eventually defeat Japan and restore to China all occupied land. They also pledged not to re-establish their own imperial control in China.
