A Theory of Great Men
Emperor Genka (元化) at his Enthronement Ceremony
The Phoenix and The Dragon
For Japan, the years between the 1928 election and Emperor Taisho's death in 1932 were notable for their continuation of many pre-existing tendencies of the preceding years, if with an increasingly harsh edge. As Crown Prince Yasuhito came into his own, his radical position, far-distant from the political mainstream, became an ever more worrying element in governmental decision-making. Under Taisho, the Chrysanthemum Throne had been as close to a non-entity as could be imagined, the powerful but reserved Meiji giving way to mentally challenged, sickly and eventually incapacitated Taisho, but Yasuhito promised to be an entirely different beast from either his father or grandfather. Assured of his family's divine inheritance and unwilling to allow himself to be sidelined by weak and feckless politicians, Yasuhito found himself enamored by reports of integralist ideologies and the central role which they attributed to the ruler. This, combined with his close relationship to the Imperial Japanese Army, presented sufficient of a threat to the political establishment that both of the two major parties, the Rikken Seiyukai and Rikken Minseito, were able to agree on limiting imperial power as far as possible before the future emperor could enact his ambitious plans.
However, while various politicians in either party were open to placing constraints on imperial power, the same could not be said of Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonbee, who viewed any such efforts as an affront to the imperial house and an assault upon the very fabric of what made them Japanese. A man of the elder generation and in many ways a conservative by nature, Yamamoto had grown up under the auspices of Emperor Meiji and the Genro, particularly looking up to the sole surviving Genro Prince Kinmochi Saionji, the most liberal of all the Genro and a man utterly detested by the military for his efforts to diminish their political powers at every step, and as such he maintained a feeling of awe and majesty towards the imperial office which he, amongst many others, felt was lacking in the current political leadership who pushed ever onward towards greater westernization and democratization while abandoning the traditions and practices which made Japan great. Thus, while Yamamoto retained his leadership of parliament and over Rikken Minseito, no such efforts to formally limit imperial power found themselves proposed.
However, while political matters remained relatively stable under the guidance and leadership of Prime Minister Yamamoto, this period was to see considerable growth in the radical influences in the military. The appointment and leadership of Hajime Sugiyama as Minister of War had left the radical Kokunhosha and their affiliates in the Army under the leadership of Araki Sadao rather peeved, allowing the moderate faction of the military to stand tall for the time being. However, the quest for an increasingly independent and activist army remained strong, seeking to exert power where it could beneath the notice of Yamamoto and the navy, particularly under the joint influence of Yasuhito and Araki Sadao. The key focal points of these efforts were to prove the various Japanese colonies, particularly in Chosun, Kwangtung and Taiwan, where the large military garrisons and distance from the home islands allowed the extremists to act more independently, undermining the moderates in the process while strengthening Yasuhito's base of power.
These efforts were to lead to considerable tensions and clashes between factions of the military, particularly in the Kwangtung Garrison which saw a near-constant reshuffling of the military leadership while the soldiery themselves remained relatively constant and ever further distanced from the ideological struggles at the top, increasingly finding the ideology espoused by Kita Ikki and Nippon Kyosanto, of a powerful and militant but equal Japan, of great interest. Within a four-year span, the Kwangtung Garrison saw nearly a dozen different commanders, some of which repeated tenures, such as the moderate Hishikari Takashi and the radical Honjo Shigeru, while others barely set foot inside the garrison headquarters before being replaced, as happened with Kawashima Yoshiyuki who was replaced two days after arriving in Kwangtung. A similar level of rotation would occur in Okinawa and Taiwan, but in Chosun proper, the conflict flickered out relatively swiftly when the powerful long-time Governor General Saito Makoto secured the appointment of the conscientious moderate General Muto Nobuyoshi as commander of the Japanese Imperial Army in Chosun.
There was no end in sight for this conflict when 1932 rolled around and Yasuhito's youngest brother, Prince Takahito, entered the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. The Imperial Japanese Army Academy was not only the alma mater of Takahito's brothers and many of his uncles, it was also the preeminent military academy of the army, an indication that Yasuhito hoped for his favorite brother to follow him in supporting the radical militarist and integralist ideology with which he hoped to govern, rather than the feeble democratic tendencies of the navy which he feared their middle brother Nobuhito might have been influenced by. Two years prior, Yasuhito had secured his position as heir to the throne by marrying into the senior-most cadet branch of the Imperial family, the Fushimi-no-miya - marrying the daughter of Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu, Princess Atsuko, while betrothing his brother Takahito to Tokugawa Kikuko, a paternal granddaughter of the last Tukogawa Shogun and a maternal granddaughter of the Arisugawa-no-miya collateral branch of the Imperial Family. Princess Kikuko, as she was to be known after the pair's marriage in 1934, was a beautiful but frightfully modern woman who not only held strong political opinions but also engaged in considerable philanthropic efforts, particularly on the topic of cancer which had killed her mother. The pair of Princess Kikuko and Takahito were to hit it off well with each other, enjoying a strong rapport and willingness to work together (23).
Emperor Taisho would breathe his last on the 18th of March 1932 at the age of 52, paving the way for his son and heir Yasuhito to receive the succession. This marked the end of the Taisho Era and the beginning of the Genka (元化) Era, translating roughly as Restoration to the Origin, and was followed two months later by the various ascension ceremonies, involving Genka's enthronement and handing over of the Three Sacred Treasures which made up the Japanese Imperial Regalia. Genka's ascension was to have immediate consequences in both foreign and domestic affairs. In his initial meetings with Chinese diplomats, Genka proved himself as jingoistic as many had feared, demanding that the diplomats do full obeisance, as though they were his subjects, and loudly questioned the growing hostility of the Chinese towards Japanese investors and entrepreneurs in China, specifically citing attacks on Japanese tax farmers in the south of China, and wondering whether or not the Fengtian government had restored order to China as they claimed. Deeply offended, this marked the beginning of a gradual decline in Sino-Japanese foreign relations which were further worsened by various incidents between Japanese and Chinese soldiers along the Kwangtung and Chosun borders to North-Eastern China.
On the domestic plane, Genka proved a vocal supporter of militarist and authoritarian ideologues, promoting such figures to a variety of positions in the Imperial Household when his efforts to put them into positions of ministerial power floundered in the face of Prime Minister Yamamoto's opposition. Notably, Genka proved exceedingly reluctant to clash openly with the great elder statesman, an attitude matched by Yamamoto, whose continued reverence of the Imperial House left him unwilling to go against direct imperial directives, with the result that the political status quo was ostensibly maintained. However, beneath the surface, tensions rose at an ever increasing pace, particularly within the political establishment. Loyalty to the Emperor became a defining issue of this growing split as those who, while either agreeing or disagreeing with the Imperial position, maintained their support for the Chrysanthemum Throne regardless of the situation clashed with those who felt that the development of a proper democratic society under civilian rule was the single most important issue, even if it broke with the capricious wishes and demands of the new young emperor.
As ruler, Genka invited men like Araki Sadao, Masaki Jinzaburo, Tojo Hideki, Yanagawa Heisuke and Obata Hideyoshi to meet with him and each other to discuss matters military and political, with much cursing of the Navy, which Genka maintained an ever greater dislike of as their alliance with the civilian parties grew more entrenched. In a bid to challenge the unity of the civilian leadership, Genka began personally sponsoring the development of a political party to overturn the dominance of the political elites. This was what led to the formation of the Kokumin Domei, the National Citizens' Alliance, incorporating the Kokunhosha and various far-right organizations and parties under the ostensible leadership of the civilian Hiranuma Kiichiro, Nakano Seigo, Okawa Sumei and Kazami Akira - although in reality the party was led by a civilian-military council answering directly to Emperor Genka. This party, with the overt backing of Emperor Genka, was able to swiftly build a sizable following, particularly in the rural populace of southern Japan, particularly Kyushu and Shikoku, on a platform of Japanese Integralism and State Shintoism which demanded that the Emperor take on ruling powers from the weak, disorganised and westernised political elites in order to bring Japan into a new golden age.
However, even as Emperor Genka was pressing forward in a bid to strengthen the Imperial Family and the Chrysanthemum Throne, his younger brother Takahito was experiencing an entirely new world of exciting ideas and ideologies. At the heart of the matter lay the gradually growing support for Kita Ikki's Communist ideology within cadet circles at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy over the half-decade preceding Takahito's arrival at the Academy. While the Academy's professors largely fell into one of the various ultra-right-wing camps of the military, the student body had largely become enamoured with Japanese Communism, which maintained much of the bombastic militarism and national pride which characterised the right-wing, but merged it with a clear call for revolutionary action for the betterment of all the oppressed peoples of Japan, Asia and the World.
Takahito thus entered into what might well have been an exceedingly hostile environment had it not been for the guidance of his Dorm Intendant, Lieutenant Isobe Asaichi. Isobe had been one of the early supporters of Kita's Communism, emerging as a cadet leader prior to his graduation in 1928 and becoming one of the most prominent young Communist officers in the ranks. Notably, the military leadership largely failed to control or combat the spread of communist affiliations amongst the cadets and young officers, many of the upper-level officers not even believing Communism to be an ideology military men would be willing to associate themselves with. Under Isobe's guidance, Takahito was introduced to an entirely new understanding of the world, securing the writings of Kita Ikki, Trotsky, Bukharin, Yamakawa and Fukumoto from his fellow cadets, as magazines, leaflets and books made the rounds within the various cadet dorms. Deeply moved and inspired by what he read, Takahito found himself swiftly brought into Communist circles during his first two years as a cadet, slowly growing into a leader amongst the cadets and young officers while proving that he held an adept mind for military affairs as much as communist ideology by scoring well on his various exams.
Unknowing of the changing ideological following within the Academy, Emperor Genka reacted with great happiness to reports of his brother's popularity and actively set out plans to bring Takahito into his inner circle - inviting him to meetings of the Kokumin Domei leadership and allowed him to read correspondence with Genka's supporters in the military. While Takahito remained close with his brother, he grew increasingly troubled by the plans his brother expounded upon at length and the worryingly sanguine attitudes held by many of his brother's supporters towards those who opposed them (24).
The year and a half leading up to Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonbee's retirement in late 1935 was to prove of considerable importance to the development of Japan, and particularly Japanese Communism. With the Trotskyite Affair, the budding alliance between Nippon Kyosanto and the Soviet Communist Party through the Third International collapsed suddenly. The first half of the 1930s had seen Nippon Kyosanto go through a series of tumultuous crises and conflicts which were to leave the party greatly changed as the 1936 elections came under way. At the heart of the issue lay Kita Ikki's idolisation of Trotsky and the resultant use of Trotskyite ideology as a key building block for the Kyosanto party platform. It had not been long since the party merged, and while Yamakawa Hitoshi as leader of the party had gotten used to the peculiarities of his chief ideologue, Fukumoto Kazou and Nosaka Sanzo were not as forgiving.
Fukumoto had spent a good deal of time in Moscow in the years prior to Trotsky's entry into the Soviet government, and had been deeply influenced by the Muscovite emphasis on collective decision-making, acceptance towards differences within leftist ideology and incorporation of the best parts of disparate leftist ideologies to produce a common platform. As such, he found the idea of handing over ideological concerns to someone like Kita, whose ideological beliefs broke harshly against orthodox Marxism as practiced by Nosaka and many other thinkers in the party or other more unorthodox supporters, rather than developing the ideological basis of the party collectively a major issue and consistently spoke up about the matter. Kita's militarism in particular struck Fukumoto and his supporters as deeply troubling and led to constant clashes between the two at party meetings, with Fukumoto becoming an increasingly ardent anti-Trotskyite, most significantly demonstrated when he spoke out against entering the Third International in several Central Committee meetings on the topic. While Yamakawa was able to maintain the peace within the party until 1934, the tumultuous occurrences in Russia in that year were to cause considerable troubles as the ardent idolisation of Trotsky on the part of many in the party suddenly found itself marred by the great man's trial and execution.
The arrival of Trotskyite exiles was to be a mixed blessing in this regard, as they on one hand turned a previously manageable internal struggle into a major crisis for the party. The Red Émigrés brought with them immense capabilities, know-how and experience in everything from military command and managing great bureaucracies to talented industrial developers and great communist ideologues, but by accepting the Red émigrés Nippon Kyosanto would be breaking openly with the Soviet Communists. Disagreement over what path to take, and fraying personal relationships, were to lead to crisis in the party as Fukumoto and Nosaka directly demanded that the party align firmly with the Soviet line and drive the Trotskyites out in October of 1934. This was vocally opposed by Kita Ikki, who accused the pair of being little better than Russian stooges, completely subservient to foreign ideologues, a claim which was soon pointed out as being rather hypocritical by Fukumoto considering Kita's ardent support of the Trotskyite cause up to recently.
Back and forth the party's central committee went, with Yamakawa stuck firmly in the middle as exacerbated mediator between the two groups. Ultimately, Yamakawa was able to force them to order and, after ordering the remainder of the meeting's minutes be conducted under the party's secrecy protocols, proposed a solution which left neither side particularly happy but resolved the tensions for the time being. According to Yamakawa, it would be best for Nippon Kyosanto to learn all that they could from the exiles before deciding what to do further, which was why they soon engulfed the new arrivals in a horde of aides, service staff and more who not only served the émigrés on hand and foot, but also extracted all the knowledge they could from the Russians. In this way the party was able to amass a considerable repository of knowledge on how to best govern a revolutionary state, the major pitfalls experienced by the Trotskyite leadership and the main challenges that they must resolve to avoid factional infighting as had eventually come to engulf the Soviet state.
However, this overly friendly treatment was to stoke the ambitions of some of these émigrés, even as some of their compatriots left for other states where they might find themselves welcomed - Mexico, the Central American Republic, France, Germany and Italy proving the most favored places for this group secondary to settle in. Mikhail Kalinin had largely been relegated to the role of non-entity for much of the past decade, as Trotsky first used him as a ceremonial president of the Yekaterinburg Reds and later as little better than a yes-man in Moscow, but as one of the senior-most Trotskyites to make it out of Russia he was swift to exploit the opportunity to push for greater influence for himself. In this matter, his greatest rival would prove to be the cold-hearted if competent Lazar Kaganovich, who had held the most prominence of the survivors while Trotsky remained alive. The clash between these two, however, would gradually turn against Kaganovich, who eventually picked up stakes and departed for Mexico while leaving his protégé Nikita Khrushchev behind to represent his interests in Japan. Having secured power over the Red émigrés in Japan, Kalinin now made moves which he hoped would allow him to seat himself as the uncrowned lord of Nippon Kyosanto - whose leadership had already proven themselves utterly subservient to him and his fellow Trotskyites.
Thus, in March of 1935 Kalinin began issuing ever greater demands of his hosts, claiming the right to sit in on their Central Committee meetings and jockeying for power and authority. This was to prove the final straw for Yamakawa and the rest of the leadership, even Kita giving in after witnessing Kalinin's arrogance, and led to them finally moving to assert their dominance over the émigré population. Kalinin disappeared a week after this decision was taken, only for him to turn up on the doorstep of the Vladivostok GPU offices courtesy of Nippon Kyosanto, an act which was to lay to rest much of the tension between the two Communist parties. This was followed by a sharp reduction in support for the various émigrés, as those with useful knowledge or international networks were allowed to remain as guests of the party while the rest saw their support cut entirely and were threatened with Kalinin's fate, Kalinin having been sentenced to a decade of hard labor after a swift trial. This resulted in yet another wave of emigrations, as those discarded by Nippon Kyosanto were forced to leave the country, following their fellows to other countries sympathetic to their cause. Thus, by the time Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonbee resigned in late 1935, Nippon Kyosanto stood ready to deal with whatever may come next (25).
China was to see a staggered development over the course of the last years of the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, as in the north the Fengtian government dramatically brought the region under firm government control in a bare handful of years, while in the south a series of constant clashes occurred as government power gradually asserted itself, often in the form of non-state actors to begin with, but with increasingly forceful government authority as time went on. As the mop-up campaign for the Jiangning Rebellion was petering out, a drought in north-western China firmly drew the attention of the Fengtian government. While the region was relatively sparsely populated compared to the coastal provinces, there were nevertheless somewhere approaching fifty million people facing starvation conditions if no action was taken.
Viewing this as an opportunity to secure their control over the region, Zhang Zuolin appointed his son, Zhang Xueliang, to oversee relief efforts alongside the long-time Fengtian courtier Wang Yongjiang who had catapulted Manchuria from an unimportant frontier region into the most prosperous part of China in less than a decade. They began a highly rationalized campaign, using veteran Fengtian soldiers on anti-banditry campaigns in conjunction with an ambitious relief effort using jury-rigged repairs to the Great Canal to ship foodstuff from the prosperous Yangtze Valley north to the hardest hit areas along the upper Yellow River. This colossal feat of logistics, which was responsible for limiting deaths to the tens of thousands rather than tens of millions as had originally been feared, was to inspire great loyalty in the region for the Fengtian regime in general and Zhang Xueliang in particular while ingraining in the young marshal an awe of the infrastructural feats of his forebearers, and making him a constant supporter of grand infrastructural works, most prominently an ambitious plan to rebuild the Grand Canal as a modern industrial-scale infrastructure project capable of competing with any of the feats of industry undertaken by the Western powers.
This Grand Canal project was to become part of a much grander endeavor, as the Fengtian government adopted a scheme meant to modernise the ancient heartland of China, the Central Plains. In a vast triangle stretching from Shanghai in the south to Xi'an in the west and Beijing in the north, the Fengtian government decided to begin a major program of economic development, modernisation and industrialisation. To head this programme, Zuolin appointed Wu Peifu while charging Liang Shuming, who had already begun a private campaign of Rural Reconstruction, with leading rural development in this Central Plains Triangle, and appointed the noted scholar Hu Shih, who had previously proved influential in the May 12th Movement, to lead the cultural elements of the plan while Pan Fu, a talented administrator and financial mind with close ties to Zhang Xueliang, was given charge of managing the programme's urban projects. This plan was an immense investment by the Fengtian government, and was to consume a great deal of Fengtian resources for the majority of the 1930s, but in the process the region would undergo an unprecedented modernisation and industrialisation, with the cities of the Wei River and Lower Yellow River blooming into major hubs of industrial activity, outstripping all other regions of China with the possible exception of Manchuria in the process.
Zuolin remained an active political power, but increasingly relied on his brilliant son Xueliang whose handling of Manchurian affairs had proven incredibly successful. A man from a poor background and without much in the way of a formal education, Zuolin had ensured that his son had all the preparation and knowledge he would need to support him as the Fengtian government increasingly turned away from military affairs and towards matters of governance. As for Zhang Xueliang, he was a bit of an odd character. Thrown into a position of leadership at an incredibly young age, he had demonstrated a surprising degree of mental acuity and flexibility, able to learn statecraft, economics and administration alongside martial sciences and much else while still maintaining a startlingly complicated social life. A man of considerable charisma, Xueliang had befriended people as vastly different as Wu Peifu and Zhang Zongchang, engaging in scholarly discussions with the former while enjoying wild drug-fuelled parties with the latter, although he was able to break free of an opium addiction with the aid of the Australian journalist William Henry Donald in 1929 in an astonishing display of willpower. His love life was not one bit less complicated, having married the beautiful, talented and gracious Yu Fengzhi at the age of 15, in 1916, before falling for his private secretary, Zhao Yidi, in 1928 who came to live alongside Fengzhi as Xueliang's mistress, living effectively in what many westerners would have considered bigamy.
As his government duties increased, Xueliang would increasingly abandoned his wild youth and stopped participating in the grand parties held by Zhang Zongchang. Following the resolution of the North-West China Drought, Xueliang saw himself increasingly drawn into national political endeavors with his appointment to Foreign Minister in 1931. Having greatly improved his English through the aid of his mistress Zhao Yidi, who spoke fluent English and had previously tutored in the language, he was able to embark on a series of international visits to Japan and the United States, where he briefly attended one of Huey Long's anti-Klan rallies and met with the man, before continuing on to Europe. While in Europe, following meetings with the heads of government in Portugal, Spain, France, Britain and Germany, he made a number of important acquaintances, including Friedrich Ebert, Winston Churchill, Léon Blum and King Alfonso of Spain. For the next two years he worked on increasing foreign investment and improving foreign relations, before he was given charge of restoring order to South China, where events were becoming increasingly volatile (26).
Southern China had never fully been under the control of the Fengtian government, but the Jiangning Rebellion and its aftermath had significantly improved government authority in coastal regions and the major cities of the south, while the countryside had largely remained ungoverned and ungovernable, with village communes following Jiaxing Communism proliferating within this anarchic situation. This weak governmental authority forced the Fengtian government to rely on local actors to implement policy and exercise government authority, often meeting with considerable opposition from rural villages under Jiaxing Communist influence. As anti-Communist sentiments grew hotter in governing circles, particularly after the violent collapse of relations between the Jiaxing and Shanghai Communists in 1929, calls to restore order and civil government in the south grew increasingly loud.
It was around this time that Zhang Zuolin's long-time advisor Yang Yuting and his new compatriot, the banker H.H. Kung, brother-in-law to the disgraced Chiang Kai-shek, began to advocate in favor of turning over governance in the southern interior to local circuit and county officials while tax collection could be handed over to private actors for the best possible profit-to-investment ratio. As this programme was slowly implemented beginning in 1930 with considerable success financially, but to calamitous impact upon the government's popularity and support in the south-western provinces, where tax farmers were unleashed with reckless abandon. The lax governmental control of the south meant that this effort at tax farming, which under the best of circumstances would likely have been mired in controversy, was an immense source of corruption. Yang Yuting, who took charge of this tax collection policy in the south, was quick to sell taxing rights to just about anyone willing to pay - resulting in a swarm of bad actors buying up most of these rights. Japanese fortune hunters, Hong Kong Tongs, former warlord and bandit groups, American adventurers and a wide variety of other unsavory groups individual spent handsomely on the program, and soon began to do everything in their power to extract what wealth they could from the countryside. While the initial tax collection efforts remained relatively peaceful, it was not long before abuse and violence came to predominate. As private tax farmers, often acting as little better than bandit lords, engaged in the plundering of taxes and more, the villagers began to band together to resist the tax farmers.
Finally, in June of 1931, matters reached a boiling point when a group of notorious Japanese tax farmers swept through a county in northern Guangxi Province, only to find themselves met at the gates of a village by armed villagers and threats of violence should they continue. Angered, the tax farmers retreated for a couple days in order to hire gangs of ex-bandits and purchase arms from some local arms depots, which constituted part a network of armouries across the south containing the massive number of arms confiscated in the aftermath of the Jiangning Rebellion, before returning with incredible violence. The village was stormed, the guards murdered out of hand while the rest of the populace was given over to what was effectively a sack, women were raped, men and children beaten into submission or butchered while anything worth the slightest bit of money was plundered. After a night and day of horrors, the village was left a burning ruin and the survivors of its traumatized populace sent fleeing for safety to the neighboring villages. Word of these horrors spread with incredible haste, soon reaching the Jiaxing leadership who mustered up a force of local militias, armed with weapons hidden away during the confiscations, and laid in ambush of the marauding tax force. Finally, three days later the tax force fell into ambush and was killed, almost to the last man, while the riches and arms they had with them were spirited away by the Communists.
When word reached Beijing that a tax farming company had been ambushed and butchered, word of the preceding events remaining local and the attackers assumed to be simple bandits, the Japanese embassy was swift to issue protests and demand action be taken to provide restitution for the lost Japanese lives. Yang Yuting, ever a pro-Japanese advocate, was swift to approve of the matter, permitting the dispatch of a local military company to hunt down the bandits, which failed to find the bandits and met with considerable hostility from the local populace, and Japanese investigators who soon began claiming that the entire matter was due to the presence of Communist rebels rather than ordinary bandits. As word that a tax farming company had been butchered spread amongst their compatriots, the tax farmers grew increasingly fearful and hostile towards the population they were fleecing.
Companies became increasingly armed, drawing heavily on local armories for cheap state-approved arms, yet another initiative on the part of Yang to improve the effectiveness of his policy. As the year continued, villages and tax farmers grew increasingly heavily armed and their clashes more violent. Village communes in the region started cooperating, finding that the Jiaxing Communists were amongst those best suited for such efforts of coordination. Iterant Communist teachers, wandering from village to village and spending a week or so in any one place to teach the local children and adults basic literacy, agricultural studies and communist ideology proved particularly influential, with men such as Mao Zedong, Cai Hesen and He Shuheng rising to widespread fame in the region on this basis while men like Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai and He Long worked hard to develop village defense forces and, under Zhou Enlai, a rapid response force to deal with crises. As 1931 came to an end, and 1932 dawned, spillover from the conflict in Indochina also served to galvanize the peasant movement in the south, resulting in a series of open clashes with tax farmers, the largest of which saw a tax collection force of nearly 200 surrounded and killed by local self-defense forces and the heavily armed rapid response force in late February 1932 (27).
The outbreak of open resistance to the government, as the February attacks were to be acknowledged, led Yang Yuting to ask for, and receive access to, significant military resources to snuff out what he characterised as banditry to Zhang Zuolin. Having received permission, Yang ordered the military in Southern China to dispatch pacification forces to bring an end to the region's intransigence. It was at this point the factionalism within the Army in Southern China came into play, for there were there were two major military leaders in the region competing with each other for Fengtian favor, on one hand there was the uncouth and infamous Dogmeat General Zhang Zongchang of Shanghai fame and a close associate of Zhang Xueliang, while on the other was Chu Yupu, a one-time subordinate of Zhang Zongchang's who had since swapped allegiances, first to the services of the Zhili Clique, before following Wu Peifu into the Fengtian Clique, which Zhang Zongchang had joined in turn soon after, a fact which Zhang Zongcheng had never forgiven.
Yang Yuting's promised campaign stood as a chance for Chu Yupu to secure the personal prestige and glory he had been seeking to make him Zhang Zongchang's equal, while the latter hoped to use the task as a way to finally crush his turncoat former subordinate in Guangzhou. Ultimately, it came to down to speed - for Chu Yupu was able to dispatch his lieutenant Liu Zhennian and a considerable supporting force to deal with the bandits before Zongchang could even select a subordinate for the duty. Liu Zhennian proved himself an imminently corrupt figure with little in the way of moral compunctions about the actions of the Tax Farmers, as long as he got his cut of their proceeds. The result was to turn 1932 into one of the bloodiest years in the recent history of southern China, which, considering the anarchy of the Warlord Era, was quite the feat. Tax farmers began the widespread use of torture and punitive punishments for failure to pay, up to and including a variety of mutilations. However, when the village communes sought to fight back they would find themselves the target of vicious reprisals by government soldiery, many of whom themselves began to serve as enforcers for tax farmers while off duty, and increasingly also while on duty. With little interest in the details of how the private tax farmers went about their business, Yang Yuting remained quiet even as the tax farmers began fabricating an ever increasing wealth of taxes and tariffs, in effect beginning a campaign of vicious government-backed banditry across the region, which took on an ever more rapacious scale.
As conditions turned increasingly intolerable, the scattered armed resistance turned into an organised guerilla war as Communist-led units launched attacks on government institutions at local, county, circuit and even on rare occasions provincial levels, increasingly mirroring their fellows in Indochina. Village leaders were by and large part of the resistance, but above this level the officials proved highly corrupt and more often than complicit in the government's actions, making them preferred targets for retaliation. Government offices were stormed, with particularly odious local leaders and landlords murdered after extrajudicial trials, when they weren't just killed out of hand by the enraged mobs. The network of local armouries in the region soon became targets as well, with a daring raid led by Zhang Guotao in August of 1932 on one such armory securing nearly 30,000 rifles and ammunition to spare, with similar raids occurring in September and November, such that by the end of the year the resistance had turned into an out-and-out insurgency against Liu Zhennian and the Tax Farmers.
The sudden influx of a massive number of Indochinese rebels, fleeing across the border from a French troop surge, was to truly transform the conflict in South-West China from one on the margins of Fengtian planning and consciousness into the single greatest challenge to the government's authority since the Jiangning Rebellion. With the influx of Vietnamese veterans, the Jiaxing Communists were able to truly go on the offensive, resulting in a series of raids and attacks culminating in the capture of Anshun, a major town of Guizhou near the provincial capital of Guiyang wherefrom Liu Zhennian was conducting his campaign, by rebel forces in January of 1933. Counter attacks by Liu Zhennian during the course of January and February floundered with great losses on both sides.
At the same time Zhang Zongchang, having learned of the situation in the region and viewing it as an opportunity to attack his rival, brought the matter to the attention of Zhang Xueliang who had recently returned from the United States Presidential Inauguration. Just days later Zhang Zongchang became the target of a brother of one of the many women he had more or less forced to grace his harem, who put three bullets in the general, from which Zongchang would barely survive with a devastated health and an out-of-control opium addiction which left him effectively unfit for service - leading to his retirement from service with great distinction at the respectable age of 51. Nevertheless, the fuse had been set and Xueliang soon began to tear through the course of events in Southern China with growing horrified rage.
Finally, on the 2nd of March he brought the entire matter before his father, demanding to know how matters had gotten so out of hand and accusing Yang Yuting of being a Japanese spy aiming to undermine the Fengtian regime in preparation for an invasion, it hardly being a secret that the new Japanese Emperor Genka loathed the ambiguous semi-alliance between Japan and China, and longed for an opportunity to create a pan-Asian Japanese Empire. Surprised at the scale of the disaster which his son was informing him of, which matched little with the highly optimistic, often exceedingly distorted, reports which Yang had been providing, Zhang Zuolin soon ordered Yang to attend him. After arriving Yang was met with open acrimony and demands for answers, none of which served to satisfy an increasingly enraged Zhang Zuolin, who finally pulled his service pistol, which he always carried with him, and shot his long-time advisor dead. Yang's death would be reported as an aneurism and Xueliang was soon appointed to clean up Yang's mess. Whether or not Yang had been a Japanese spy would remain a mystery to Zhang Zuolin, who moved from a Japan-skeptic position into outright hostility towards China's neighbor to the east (28).
Zhang Xueliang faced an immense challenge on arrival in Shanghai, wherefrom he would direct the campaign for the most part. Turning to the capable General Han Fuju and the implacable General Ma Zhanshan, amongst many others, Xueliang initiated a complete restructuring of affairs in southern China, placing the trusted long-time Fengtian stalwart Tang Yulin in Chu Yupu's post, appointing Ma Zhanshan to maintaining order along the upper Yangtze and placing Han Fuju in place of Liu Zhennian - who was brought up on a variety of charges and executed as a signal on the part of Xueliang that incompetence and profiteering on such a scale would no longer be tolerated. As to the actual oversight and leadership of the pacification campaign, Xueliang demanded that the talented and popular Sun Chuanfang of Siberian Campaign fame be given the command.
With his duties now reduced to oversight of the campaign and grand strategic concerns, the young Marshal was able to turn his attentions to restoring order to the region as a whole. The private tax farming scheme cooked up by Yang Yuting was scrapped in its entirety despite numerous protests, including from Japanese officials in Shanghai who were outraged when Xueliang refused to meet them for weeks on end and presumptuously dismissed them after a barely 15 minute meeting. During this time, Xueliang really dedicated himself to getting to know Southern China properly, which was what eventually brought him to the door of the Soong family, the one-time first family of the Kuomintang. Here Xueliang made the acquaintance of Soong Meiling, Chiang Kai-Shek's one-time betrothed, and her clever and talented siblings. Over the course of 1933, Xueliang became particularly close with Soong Meiling and her brother Soong Ziwen, using them as an invaluable resource to better understand the situation in the south while seeking to engage in an affair with Meiling, a situation which horrified her mother, who insisted on a good Christian marriage for her daughter, not the polygamous heathenry which Xueliang was ultimately proposing, nearly leading to Meiling's dispatch to America and resulting in Xueliang's banishment from the Soong home.
Nevertheless, Xueliang would build a close friendship with Soong Xiwen, who he turned to for aid in resolving the economic challenges behind the crisis in the South-West, developing a stronger taxation system and engaging in negotiations with the various foreign powers based out of Shanghai in a bid to improve tariff rates and other aspects of trade relations, Xueliang ultimately appointing Xiwen as Deputy Foreign Minister. In the meantime, the relationship with Soong Meiling deepened further, although Meiling remained strongly opposed to anything which would break with Christian morality, their relationship remaining immensely ambiguous. Meiling was already well aware of the tale of Xueliang's aforementioned mistress and former secretary Zhao Yidi, the daughter of a prominent government minister who had run away from her family to live with the young Marshal to the shame of her family. Nevertheless, they continually exchanged tokens of appreciation and engaged in an impressive letter exchange in which Xueliang at times asked for advice on various governmental matters.
In South-West China, the appointment of Sun Chuanfang signalled a major shift in directions for the campaign. As private tax farmers were forced from the region, many villages matched the effort, welcoming the arrival of the famous general and his men as keepers of the peace, which turned to jubilation when word that the hated Yang Yuting had died and been replaced by the vastly more popular Zhang Xueliang. However, there remained many village communes who were hostile to the arrival of outsiders, and the network of village communes established by the Jiaxing Communists remained armed and ready to respond to attacks. As these shifts on the Fengtian side occurred over the course of the first six months of 1933, the Jiaxing Communists were rapidly strengthening their positions and even engaging in active attacks on government positions.
In Yunnan, the movement was able to secure a strong following in the provincial capital of Yunnan-Fu when the famous revolutionary Chen Jiongming led what was effectively a coup against the local governor and ex-warlord Tang Jiyao using Vietnamese mercenaries, happy to aid in removing a man who had cooperated with French colonial officials in Indochina to smuggle drugs and arms into China. With the aid of Chen Jiongming, the Jiaxing Communists now had a governmental platform from which to work, leading them to quickly stream into government offices across the province while radicalizing and drastically expanding the provincial guard in preparation for what they were certain was a devastating government assault.
That assault came in August, when Ma Zhanshan advanced up the Yangtze with his men, cutting any chance of the rebels passing into the north-west, before Tang Yulin began to press westward from Guangdong and Han Fuji sought to purge Guizhou of rebel forces. The first two efforts met with little resistance, but in Guizhou the fighting proved bitter and intense, as guerilla fighting dominated the province. Nevertheless, Anshun was soon retaken and the Communists were pushed into the south-western parts of the province before long. By the end of September the government was ready for the second phase of the campaign, with Sun Chuanfang seeking to contain the rebels to Yunnan alone. Tang Yulin continued westward at a slow pace while securing control of all border crossings into Indochina within Guangxi while Ma Zhanshan pushed southward from the Yangtze, following the road through Chongqing and Zhaotong towards Yunnan-Fu in the process running into significant but diffuse resistance. Entire villages were searched with the discovery of weapons and other illicit goods such as Jiaxing Communist writings punished with sentences of hard labor on the Central Plains infrastructure projects, and resistance punished with death.
The advent of winter in late 1933 brought the campaign to a standstill, as behind the lines Zhang Xueliang and Soong Xiwen worked to restore trust and rebuild the retaken regions. In Spring of 1934, the campaign restarted, with the last of Guangxi retaken even as northern Yunnan was slowly returned to government control. Increasingly pressured, the Jiaxing Communists debated how to proceed, whether to clash directly with the advancing armies or retreat. Finally, in May of 1934 the Communists and Chen Jiongming decided to withdraw from Yunnan-Fu, pulling ever further southward towards the Indochinese border which remained under the control of their allies in Tonkin - if only barely. Finally, at an emergency congress of the Jiaxing Communists on the 22nd of May 1934 the party determined that they would need to go into exile for the time being in order to save their movement and preserve its goals for the future of China's peoples, leading a major exodus southward, numbering nearly a million men, women and children in all, into Indochina where the previous French supremacy was once again crumbling in the face of a resurgent Tonkin resistance (29).
Footnotes:
(23) I really cannot overstate the important role played by Admiral Yamamoto Gonbee in keeping a lid on the bitter conflicts swirling beneath the surface. The idea of openly challenging Imperial authority is a novel one, and immensely dangerous because it could very easily spin out of control and bring the fervent pro-Imperial populace out in force against the political elites. Bear in mind that the political establishment mostly represent a relatively small urban populace, mostly western educated, middle-to-upper class, while the Imperial Family can call upon an endless ocean of stolid peasant partisans willing to sacrifice everything for their Emperor.
The political struggles within the army also remain relatively low-key compared to OTL for the time being, with the moderates mostly winning out. It is worth noting this is not the Control Faction (Tosei) of OTL, but rather a collection of moderates who are a lot less militaristic in outlook. They look towards cooperation with the civilian government and are willing to bring the military into line, cutting down abuses and the excessive independence exercised by many military commands. Finally, we also see some shifts in the Imperial family, as Takahito marries his OTL sister-in-law (by his third brother Nobuhito) while Yasuhito marries a much more prestigious partner, and Yasuhito finds himself inspired by the Integralist ideologies. Worth noting that he is mostly working off of relatively simple reports on European affairs which basically summarize Integralism as a powerful leadership (monarchical in Yasuhito's view, since he is most interested in the Spanish branch of Integralism), corporatist structures and authoritarian government with a good dose of militarism on top, rather than a detailed reading of the various documents and writings of European ideologues. This is not some orthodox integralism which he is sponsoring, but he is rather using some of the ideology's basic ideas as building blocks to construct his own version of the ideology with a much more Japanese flavor.
(24) Genka, as Yasuhito is known as Emperor, is a young and activist monarch who holds more than a little disdain towards the weakness of his father - who he believes allowed the deterioration of Imperial authority from the grand heights of his grandfather, although how much actual authority Meiji actually wielded is a bit hard to determine. He is ambitious and hardworking, but holds great disdain for the civilian democratic government as a hold, even if he is more than a little intimidated and overawed by Prime Minister Yamamoto. His decision to create a more formal political party to strengthen his grip on power comes as a result of him learning of the Union de la Droite in France and the way in which they gradually strengthened their political position until they were able to exploit the political chaos of 1932 and 1933 to enter into the mainstream. At the same time, however, we see that the Imperial Family begins to find itself influenced by this growing politicisation of the Imperial House, with Takahito gradually falling into Communist circles even as he becomes privy to inside information as part of Genka's inner circle. How Takahito responds to this tension will be a key decision for him at some point in the future.
(25) Here we see the continued development of Japanese Communism, as Kita Ikki's program clashes with more moderate/orthodox members of the party while Yamakawa Hitoshi maintains the peace as far as he is able. The arrival of the Trotskyites ends up causing trouble, but also proves invaluable for the vast amount of experience the party is able to extract from the émigrés. The Trotskyites ultimately end up getting played like a fiddle, with the Japanese learning all they wished to know in return for a decent but manageable investment of time, manpower and resources. Ultimately, they decide to act when Kalinin becomes too haughty and crack down on their guests, only keeping those they want to retain and getting rid of those that won't aid their cause. It is worth mentioning here that Khrushchev is amongst those retained in Japan, and he increasingly comes to serve as a key link for the Mexico-bound Kaganovich.
(26) It is worth mentioning that the OTL Chinese Famine of 1928-30 killed between 10 and 30 million people, so this is an incredible achievement which truly wins the hearts and minds of the vast majority of northern China. This section also helps to flesh out Zhang Xueliang a bit - the stuff about him personally is actually OTL including the wife and mistress/concubine (from my reading all three seem to have been living together pretty harmoniously after an initial period of conflict between husband and wife at the start. The ambitious North China development programme is an effort by the Fengtian government to counter the predominantly southern-oriented economic, social and political development which has previously characterised Chinese affairs in the 20th century.
The rebuilding of the Grand Canal is a massive long-term project, but while some areas of the Canal have been totally abandoned there are plenty which just need some maintenance work and modernisation efforts to get running properly. It will probably take until at least the early or mid 40s for the project to near completion, considering the incredible amount of rebuilding, dredging of rivers and canals, construction of new spurs of the Canal to take into account shifts in the various rivers and the like, but when it is done it will connect the entirety of the Central Plains, turning it into a single massive industrial and agricultural breadbasket which will fuel the economic development of China to new heights. The Fengtian Clique have already demonstrated a talent for industrial development in Manchuria, and they are now beginning to extend that to their North Chinese heartland. This is done not only due to the weaker grip the Fengtian grip has on the south, but also due to a variety of cultural and social biases between north and south which play into all of this, the Zhangs are fiercely northern in outlook and have come to view southerners with more than a little wariness and distrust.
(27) I know that I have gotten into some of this already, but I feel that it is probably necessary to give a somewhat more detailed description of these events before things really kick off in the next section. One of the key conflicts IOTL late in Zhang Zuolin's life was between Zhang Xueliang and Yang Yuting over the response to the Japanese. While ITTL, the Japanese are far less openly hostile, they are still viewed with a great deal of negative sentiment by many, while others - like Yang - view them as the best allies to work with for the time being as China modernises. I am probably being a bit unfair towards Yang in all of this, but I don't think this is an unfathomable path for events to take in the south. It is important to take note of the fact that this is happening in the south-western rural interior, which is extremely difficult for governments to actually deal with. Hell, to this day the PRC struggles to control the region, so when someone like Yang Yuting proposes to just hand over the hard work of collecting taxes in the region to private actors, Zhang Zuolin is open to the suggestion and foists it off on Yang. IOTL Zhang Zuolin, while supporting the development of an impressive industrial development for the first half of the 1920s, was very willing to mess with currency devaluation and creative tax strategies when the state ran into a cash crunch. In this case, while the state is doing quite well, the inability collect money from the far reaches of the Fengtian domains greatly annoy Zhang Zuolin, so when he hears of a proposal that would resolve the issue and bring in immediate money to help finance the ambitious Central Plains plans, he jumps at the suggestion with troubling consequences.
(28) So, I am realising as I write this section that I am in trouble. This was originally meant to be a quick two-section update, but it is rapidly ballooning out and I still haven't actually gotten to Xueliang's time in the south yet. This section sees a number of important developments, but the most important are probably the crossing of the Vietnamese into South China - escalating the conflict and providing a large supply of recruits and advisors, Yang's mishandling of affairs and subsequent death, leading to a significant cooling of relations between China and Japan, and finally the assassination attempt on Zhang Zongchang which ends up removing one of the major Fengtian leaders from the south. Bear in mind that Liu Zhennian was dispatched by Chu Yupu, who ends up losing a great deal of prestige from the entire matter, and with Zhang Zongchang and Yang Yuting amongst others gone there is an increasingly troubling lack of trustworthy Fengtian leaders.
(29) I am stopping there because otherwise this will just keep ballooning out. There are two parts to this section, Xueliang's increasingly close relationship with the Shanghai Elite, most prominently the Soong clan, and the gradual suppression of the South-West Chinese unrest. The approach taken by the Chinese leadership in this campaign is one of troop saturation, with each of the mentioned armies numbering almost 100,000 men, so some 300,000 in all with further reinforcements and irregulars, and a reluctant but constant retreat on the part of the Communists and their growing following. There is resistance, but the quality of arms and professionalism of the two forces are simply not comparable, Xueliang brings a good portion of his Northeastern veterans with him to aid in bolstering the southern armies, and draws on the most modern arms available in China while the rebels have what they were able to scrounge up. Also worth mentioning that by the latter half of 1933, the Jiaxing Communists have lost the backing of their Indochinese allies, who have returned to Indochina once more to continue the revolt there, resulting in a precipitous loss of veteran soldiery and resources.
Summary:
The Soviet Republic solidifies its role as a revolutionary government even as Trotsky extends his power across the state apparatus.
Trotsky reaches for the stars, only to fall short. A great man falls and his movement fall with him.
In the Don Republic, miscalculation and hubris see a failed invasion of Georgia result in major political consequences at home.
In Japan gathering storm clouds signal troubles in the future under a new and young Emperor, while in China the Fengtian government slowly extends its grip on power to the entirety of the Middle Kingdom.
End Note:
This legit took around three hours to edit
Anyway, I really hope that you enjoyed all the different little tales packed into this half of the update. There is quite a bit of groundwork being set down in this one which should have consequences in some of the updates to follow.
I think that the title of the update ended up being quite fitting, everything taken into consideration - I was playing around with a couple trying to find a theme which would tie things together. This update is about what exactly the Great Man Theory implies. It sees the rise and fall of a great man to his own hubris in the form of Trotsky. It asks whether someone can be forced to be a Great Man in the form of Wrangel, it asks whether Great Men can be women or children - and perhaps what a lack of Great Men might result in. It gets into the question of whether Great also means Terrible and whether a Great Movement can be greater than a Great Man.
A thousand thanks to
@Ombra for helping pick up the slack last week, giving some added insight into the lives of a few of the figures I hadn't gotten into proper detail with yet.
Starting up at a new place of work has been interesting, but has reduced how much energy and time I have to think and write on the TL, so while I am still working on writing out new updates the pace has slowed quite a bit. Luckily I have a pretty deep backlog to draw on (working on update 38 at the moment), so it shouldn't have any noticeable impact on the pace of updates or the content, at least for a couple months - and by then I am hopeful that I will have acclimated to the situation and that my pace will have picked up.
I would really love to hear more from people - what do you think of the developments? Opinions on developments in the Don/Georgia/Soviet Republic/Japan/China? Thoughts on future developments? To be honest, I sort of miss the more extended discussions that I had with readers when I was originally writing on the TL.
