page_title: Shanghai massacre
section_title: Aftermath and significance
hierarchical_section_title: Shanghai massacre / Aftermath and significance
caption_attribution_description: English: 1927.4.18 Nanking Nationalist Government was established, head of government was Chiang Kaishek.
context_page_description: The Shanghai massacre of April 12, 1927, known commonly in China as the April 12 Purge or April 12 Incident, was the violent suppression of Communist Party of China organizations in Shanghai by the military forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang. Following the incident, conservative KMT elements carried out a full-scale purge of Communists in all areas under their control, and even more violent suppression occurred in Guangzhou and Changsha. The purge led to an open split between left and right wing factions in the KMT, with Chiang Kai-shek establishing himself as the leader of the right wing faction based in Nanjing, in opposition to the original left-wing KMT government based in Wuhan led by Wang Jingwei.
  By 15 July 1927, the Wuhan regime had also expelled the Communists in its ranks, effectively ending the KMT's four-year alliance with the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Party. For the remainder of 1927, the CPC launched several uprisings in an attempt to regain their previous power, marking the beginning of the Chinese Civil War.
context_section_description: For the Kuomintang, 39 members of the Kuomintang Central Committee in Wuhan publicly denounced Chiang Kai-shek as a traitor to Sun Yat-sen, including Sun's widow Soong Ching-ling immediately after the purge. However, Chiang was defiant, forming a new Nationalist Government at Nanjing to rival the Communist-tolerant Nationalist Government in Wuhan controlled by Wang Jingwei on April 18. The purges garnered the Nanjing government the support of much of the NRA, the Chinese merchant class, and foreign businesses, bolstering its economic and military position.
  The twin rival KMT governments, known as the Ninghan (Nanjing and Wuhan) Split (Chinese: 宁汉分裂), did not last long. In May 1927 Communists and peasant leaders in the Wuhan area were repeatedly attacked by Nationalist generals. On June 1, Stalin sent a telegram to the Communists in Wuhan, calling for mobilisation of an army of workers and peasants. This alarmed Wang Jingwei, who decided to break with the Communists and come to terms with Chiang Kai-shek.
  More than 10,000 communists in Canton, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Changsha were arrested and executed within 20 days. The Soviet Union officially terminated its cooperation with the KMT while Wang, fearing retribution as a Communist sympathizer, fled to Europe. The Wuhan Nationalist government soon disintegrated, leaving Chiang as the sole legitimate leader of the Kuomintang. In the years after April 1927, 300,000 people were  killed across China in three years of warfare against the Communists as many She people and Hakka people had their whole families killed including infants and women sold to prostitution.
  On the Communists' side, Chen Duxiu and his Soviet advisers, who had promoted cooperation with the KMT, were discredited and lost their leadership roles in the CPC. Chen was personally blamed, forced to resign and replaced by Qu Qiubai, who did not change Chen's policies in any fundamental way. The CPC planned for worker uprisings and revolutions in the urban areas.
  The first battles of the ten-year Chinese Civil War began with armed Communist insurrections in Changsha, Shantou, Nanchang and Guangzhou. During the Nanchang Uprising in August Communist troops under Zhu De were defeated but escaped from Kuomintang forces by withdrawing to the mountains of western Jiangxi. In September Mao Zedong led a small peasant army in what has come to be called the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan province. It was defeated by Kuomintang forces and the survivors retreated to Jiangxi as well, forming the first elements of what would become the People's Liberation Army. By the time the CPC Central Committee was forced to flee Shanghai in 1933, Mao had established peasant-based soviets in Jiangxi and Hunan provinces, transforming the Communist Party's base of support from the urban proletariat to the countryside, where the People's War would be fought.
  In June 1928 the National Revolutionary Army captured the Beiyang Government's capital of Beijing, leading to the nominal unification of China and worldwide recognition of the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek as the legal government of the Republic.
caption: Nanking Nationalist Government was established in 4.18, head of government was Chiang Kai-shek.
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