Section 3

Nationalists and Communists

Cooperating to drive the imperialists from China, the Nationalists and Communists then fought one another fiercely for the right to rule China.

Section 3

• The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was organized in Shanghai by a group of young radicals and several faculty members from Beijing University in 1921.

• The CCP and the Nationalist Party, led by Sun Yat-sen, put aside their mutual distrust and worked together to expel imperialists from China.

Nationalists and Communists (cont.)

Section 3

• The two parties formed a revolutionary army and took control of all of China south of the Chang Jiang.

• General Chiang Kai-shek succeeded Sun Yat-sen as leader of the Nationalist Party in 1925.

• Chiang turned against the Communists and killed thousands of them in what became known as the Shanghai Massacre.

Nationalists and Communists (cont.)

Figure 3

Section 3

• In 1928 Chiang formed a new Chinese republic at Nanjing and spent the next three years trying to unify China.

• Mao Zedong believed that a Chinese Revolution could be successful with the support of the peasants in the rural areas. Mao used guerrilla tactics to combat the Nationalists.

Nationalists and Communists (cont.)

Section 3

• Mao’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began the Long March to the only Communist base in northwest China. Only 9,000 of the 90,000 who left the base at Jiangxi survived the journey, and many believed the threat of Communism was over.

Nationalists and Communists (cont.)

Section 3

The New China

Chiang Kai-shek was committed to building a new China with a republican government.

Section 3

• China was weakened economically, politically, and socially by civil war.

• The cultural and economic gap was widening between the Westernized middle class, who supported Chiang, and poverty-stricken peasants in the countryside.

The New China (cont.)

Section 3

• Chiang and his wife set up a “New Life Movement” to promote traditional Confucian social ethics and reject what they saw as the excessive individualism and material greed of Western capitalist values.

The New China (cont.)

Section 3

• Chiang’s successes:

– Massive road-building and railroad projects

– Built new Chinese-owned factories

– Established a national bank

– Improved the education system

– Westerners ended their leases and returned the customs service to China.

The New China (cont.)

Section 3

• Chiang’s failures:

– Land reform program had little effect

– No programs focused on a redistribution of wealth.

– The poor did not experience any improvements under Chiang’s rule.

– Government did not respect free expression and suppressed all opposition.

The New China (cont.)

THE END of 18-2