Reasons for the Failure of the First United Front in 1928

397 Words1 Page

Reasons for the Failure of the First United Front in 1928

The promises of First United Front in 1923 did not bring about a

long-term cooperation. By 1927, the incompatibility between the two

parties began to show, culminating in a series of persecution carried

out by the Nationalist Party against the CCP. The following were the

reasons.

One reason for the collapse was the death of Sun Yat-sen. In 1923,

Sun, who led the Nationalist Party, wanted the United Front. Sun

believed that the Nationalists needed the communists, in particular

the military support which the Soviet Union was willing to give. For

this reason, he was willing to see that his Principle of Livelihood

did not contradict that of Socialism. However, his death in 1925

caused the Nationalists to divide. Eventually, Chiang Kai-Shek came

into power and he was very suspicious of the communists. He disliked

communism as a result of his experience in Moscow. This partly

explains why the United Front ended.

A second reason was because Chiang Kai-shek’s distrusted of the

communists. He had reasons to feel so as the CCP was organizing the

workers into unions all over central and southern China at the same

time when Chiang was reunifying China. In Shanghai, February 1927, the

CCP organized general strike to demonstrate how they could bring

China’s largest city into a standstill. Both the Nationalists and the

CCP were setting out to control Shanghai as they understood that it

would mean a definite political success for the party. Furthermore,

the CCP had found an ally in the Nationalist Party, as leftist Wang

Jinwei began to set up its own government with the support of the

communists. All these developments shocked and aroused the suspicion

of Chiang who eventually decided to act against the CCP and the union

leaders.

Another reason was that Chiang were being pressurized by the business

community to stop the CCP from taking power. The support base of

Chiang the landlords, wealthy businessmen, bankers and industrialists

in Shanghai.

Open Document