Northern Expedition a Military Campaign

Northern Expedition a military campaign launched by the Kuamintang (KMT) in July 1926 to defeat the warlords controlling northern China, is considered to be an important event in modern Chinese history as it served to unify the country after decades of instability and fragmentation. It also helped Chiang Kai-shek, the commander of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) who led the campaign, to emerge as a strong national leader. In this paper, besides describing the background and events of the Northern Expedition, I shall discuss the role played by Chiang Kai-shek in the campaign and the reasons for his success.

After the failure of the Republican Revolution of 1911 to consolidate and the death of Yuan Shikai, the first President of the Republic in 1916, China had gradually fallen prey to 'warlordism' with several centers of power in the country. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Kuamintang (KMT) also set up a 'revolutionary government' in 1917 in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (Canton) to compete with the warlords who controlled most of northern China. Chiang Kai-shek, who had participated in the Republican Revolution alongside Sun Yat-sen and other Chinese nationalists, was appointed military chief by Sun in his revolutionary government in 1923 ("Chiang Kai-shek" 2007). Chiang's most notable achievement at the time was the establishment of a military academy at Whampoa with Soviet aid in which he personally trained nearly 2,000 cadets.

In order to achieve unity in China, Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen were conviced that the warlords had to be defeated. They, therefore, made plans for a decisive military campaign -- the Northern Expedition-- against the warlords in the north but before the plan could be put into practice, Sun died suddenly in June 1925. In a scramble for succession, Wang Jingwei took over the leadership of KMT, allowed greater Soviet influence in the government and sidelined Chiang from positions of power (Van, 2003, p. 98).

Chiang Kai-shek, however, was by no means finished. He was still commander of the Canton garrison and on the lookout to get back into prominence. He soon got his chance when, for reasons still unclear, a gunboat, commanded by a Communist officer, suddenly appeared before dawn off Whampoa Island on March 20, 1926. Using the incident as an excuse, Chiang placed Canton under martial law, arrested several Soviet advisors in the city and closed down Communist newspapers. In the crisis that followed, Wang Jingwei resigned and went into exile; Chiang took over as the head of the Military Affairs Council (MAC) and the commander of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA). He asked Comintern and the Soviets to support a northern military campaign, besides putting up a number of demands that would tone down the Communists' influence in KMT affairs. The Soviets agreed to Chiang's demands as Stalin was engaged in a critical domestic power struggle and could not afford a blow to his prestige that a complete eviction of Soviet advisors from China would signal (Spence, 1999, p. 326).

The Northern Expedition & Chiang Kai-shek's Role in the Campaign

Chiang was now in a position to press for immediately starting the Northern Expedition against the warlords in the north and was able to cobble together a combined NRA force of 100,000 troops, comprised of 7 different armies (Van, 2003, p. 105). As Commander-in-Chief of the NRA, Chiang Kai-shek drew up a strategy that called for three armed thrusts: the first along the Xiang River, to the key Hunan city of Changsha; the second up the Gan River into Jiangxi; and another push along the east coast into Fujian. The plan also called for Communist and KMT party members to move ahead of the troops, organizing local peasants or urban workers to disrupt hostile forces. (Spence, 1999, p. 327)

The Northern Expedition formally started on July 9, 1926 when the NRA set off from Guangdong for the North. The initial stages of the campaign went according to plan as new found allies of the Nationalists -- the Hunan forces of Tang Shengzi -- captured the city of Changsha on July 11. 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)