If Chiang Kai-shek conducted an all-out purge of the CCP in spring 1926

If Chiang Kai-shek conducted an all-out purge of the CCP in spring 1926


  • Total voters
    14

raharris1973

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If Chiang Kai-shek conducted an all-out purge of the CCP in spring 1926, instead of the limited purge of March 1926, where he reduced Communist & KMT rivals power, what would the results have been. As it happened, Chiang's March 1926 limited purge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_Coup) enabled him to strengthen his own power, while still retaining the support of the Soviet Union and CCP against his warlord enemies.

Soviet support for his government ended only after the April 1927 Shanghai massacre. Despite Soviet support for Chiang during the Sino-Japanese War, note that the Soviets did *not* support him between the Shanghai massacre of 1927 and the creation of the 2nd United Front in 1936.

If Chiang made the "clean break" with the communists a year earlier, in Guangzhou, prior to the northern expedition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Expedition) what consequences might have occurred for Chiang and the Chinese Nationalist Party, bad or good?
 

raharris1973

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The responses thus far are interesting.

Highest # of votes (3), goes to the CCP getting more battered down than OTL.

However, there are two votes for the CCP thriving in other cities beyond KMT control. That I am not so sure of. Sure, there were Communist organizations present in other cities like Shanghai and Beijing, but they always seemed most able to operate in KMT held areas during the United Front and seemed to crest with the success of the KMT Army. In warlord controlled cities, they don't seem to have been able to do much more than small-scale underground activity.

There's two votes for the purge backfiring and Chiang losing.

And, there are votes for the KMT, even with an early end to the United Front and Soviet largesse, still managing to get north to the Yangtze cities eventually.

There were also two votes for the KMT being able to get alternate suppliers from the Soviets.

The Japanese, British and Americans at the time were tending to invest more of their attention to the warlords of the Fengtien and Zhili cliques [Zhang Zuolin, Wu Peifu, Sun Chuanfang]. They are probably out of play as benefactors to the Canton KMT government. On the other hand, with an anti-communist purge accomplished, perhaps the KMT regime gets a second, more favorable look from those powers.

Other than episodic arms deals based on changes in the market and politics from a variety of sources, maybe Mussolini could get interested in investing a little in the KMT regime. So Italy. After that, maybe Germany. Although I think in OTL the German aid and advice only came with the start of the Nazi regime, not with the Weimar Republic's Reichswehr.
 

raharris1973

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Another knock-on consequence of a slower, less extensive "Northern Expedition" is the Japanese may feel less insecure about their interests in Shandong and Manchuria (under the care of the "Dogmeat Warlord" and Zhang Zuolin respectively), possibly significantly delaying or preventing their move to outright aggression against China. Anti-Japanese boycotts might not become too significant a thing in this ATL.
 
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