China In Revolution

Abstract

THE year 1923 had been one of growing anarchy in China, though the main divisions of military power remained unchanged. In the central provinces, Wu Pei-fu was the dominant war-lord, and exerted an intermittent, but over-riding, authority over the Peking government, which continued in name, though only in name, to speak for a united China. In the north Chang Tso-lin was the quasi-autonomous vassal of Japan. In the south, Canton was the centre of a separate territorial unit, within which a precarious struggle for supremacy was waged between Sun Yat-sen’s party, the Kuomintang, and a succession of independent military leaders. Throughout this year, which was the year of Joffe’s mission to the Far East,1 Soviet policy in China was still faltering and undefined. In Peking Joffe’s efforts ended in deadlock; and, when in February 1923 Wu Pei-fu reacted to the growing menace of the trade union movement in China by shooting down a body of striking workers on the Peking-Hangkow railway, this was felt as a serious set-back to the cause of revolution in China, and induced a mood of pessimism in communist circles, both in China and in Moscow.2 Later in the year, Joffe’s soundings in Japan suggested the hope that the Soviet Government might one day be in a position to turn Chang Tso-lin’s flank by a direct agreement with his principals on the regime in Manchuria.