By the time Chiang's army reached Changsha in early August, it had been bolstered by defecting troops of Guizhou warlords and it overran the tricities of Wuhan after which the nationalists shifted the seat of its government from Canton to the Wuchan cities. The KMT forces, however, faced much stiffer resistance from the warlords of Jiangxi but the area too was subdued by mid-November albeit after heavy fighting and at a cost of 15,000 KMT casualties (Ibid. p. 330). The NRA offensive up the east coast also went well and by mid-December, 1926, its troops had entered the Fujian capital of Fuzhou. Nationalist armies captured the industrial cities of Shanghai and Nanjing in March of 1927. By then, the deep-seated rivalry within the Communist and conservative forces within KMT had erupted and the General Labor Union in Shanghai, Influenced by Conservative Nationalist leaders and Chinese business leaders in Shanghai, Chiang, started a brutal crackdown on Communists in mid-April marked by widespread arrests and summary executions. Similar suppressions were carried out in Guangzhou, Nanjing, Nanchang, Fuzhou, and other cities controlled by Chiang loyalist forces. The KMT conservatives then established a rival Nationalist government in Nanjing. The Communist Party of China (CCP) revolted and initiated several uprisings such as the attempted the "Autumn Harvest" uprising in several central provinces in October of 1927 the December revolt in Guangzhou. These revolts failed and the Communists were brutally suppressed. By end of December, 1927 most CCP members had either been killed or had defected while the few remaining retreated to the mountains of Central China. The KMT, purged of the Communists, became a much more Conservative party and resumed its "Northern Expedition" in the spring of 1928 with a reorganized National Revolutionary Army and finally captured Beijing in early June, 1928. All the major warlords had now been defeated by the Nationalists and the event marked the end of the Northern Expedition. ("The Northern Expedition" 2007)

Reasons for Chiang Kai-shek's Success in the Northern Expedition

There were several reasons for Chiang kai-shek's success in the Northern...

Perhaps, the most important was that he had won over the loyalty of a substantial number of cadets he personally trained as head of the Whampoa Academy. Most of the cadets became the core of a new KMT army and became Chiang's most loyal supporters.
Chiang also had the knack of cultivating personal relationships with people in important positions which he shrewdly used to his benefit. For example, Chiang developed close personal relations with top generals of the various NRA armies not considered his own, such as Chen Mingshu of the 4th Army who played a leading role in the occupation of Wuhan. (Van, 2003, p. 124) Even his marriages served to further his political ambitions: Chiang married Soong Mei-ling in 1927 whose older sister was the widow of Sun Yat-sen. Chiang could thus claim for himself the legacy of a highly revered figure in Chinese history.

His ability to raise financial resources was another key element in his success. Chiang had cultivated relations with rich bankers and businessmen and was never shy of using extortionist methods to secure vast amounts of money, if need be. (Ibid., p. 125)