Shanghai Coup and the Nanjing National Government
Also called: April 12 Incident, Shanghai Massacre of 1927, Nanjing National Government
On 12 April 1927, in the middle of the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek violently purged Communists and labour organizations in Shanghai, and on 18 April set up a National Government in Nanjing. The First United Front was broken.
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As the Northern Expedition advanced, tension grew inside the Nationalist Party between a right wing wary of the rising Communists and labour and peasant movements, and the left wing and Communists based in Wuhan. On 12 April, shortly after Shanghai’s workers had risen in arms to welcome the National Revolutionary Army, Chiang Kai-shek used the city’s Green Gang and his troops to disarm the workers’ pickets and arrest and execute Communists and labour activists en masse (the April 12 Incident).
Chiang set up a separate National Government in Nanjing on 18 April, and in July the left-wing Nationalists in Wuhan also broke with the Communists. The Communists struck back with the Nanchang Uprising on 1 August and the Autumn Harvest Uprising, but failed, and Mao Zedong retreated to the Jinggang Mountains to build a rural base. Thus began a ten-year civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists.