April 12 Incident

Shanghai massacre of 1927
Part of the Chinese Civil War
Date April 12, 1927 Location Shanghai, Republic of China Result Beginning of the Chinese Civil War
Belligerents
Kuomintang (KMT) & the Green Gang and other Shanghai gangs	Communist Party of China (CPC) & Shanghai labor union militias
Commanders and leaders
Bai Chongxi, KMT commander Du Yuesheng, Green Gang leader	Chen Duxiu, CPC general secretary Zhou Enlai
Strength
approx. 5,000 soldiers of the 2nd Division of the 26th Army & members of various gangs	thousands of workers
Casualties and losses
minimal	300–400 killed, 5,000 missing

The Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927, sometimes called the April 12 Incident, was the violent suppression of Communist Party organizations in Shanghai by the military forces of Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT). Following the incident, conservative KMT elements carried out a full-scale purge of Communists in all areas under their control, and even more violent suppressions occurred in cities such as Guangzhou and Changsha. The purge led to an open split between KMT left and right wings, with Chiang Kai-shek establishing himself as the leader of the right wing at Nanjing in opposition to the original left-wing KMT government led by Wang Jingwei in Wuhan.

By July 15, 1927 the Wuhan regime had also expelled the Communists in its ranks, effectively ending the KMT's four-year alliance with Soviet Russia and its cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party. During the remainder of 1927 the Communists launched several revolts in an attempt to win back power, marking the beginning of the Chinese Civil War. With the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising (December 11–13, 1927) the Chinese Communist Party's eclipse was complete; it was two decades before they were able to launch another major urban offensive. The incident was a key moment in the complex sequence of events that set the stage for the first ten years of the Nationalist government.

Depending on writers' political views, the incident is also sometimes referred to as the "April 12 Purge" (四·一二清黨), "Shanghai Massacre", the "April 12 Counter-revolutionary Coup" (四·一二反革命政變), or the "April 12 Tragedy" (四·一二慘案).

The roots of the April 12 Incident go back to the Kuomintang's alliance with the Soviet Union, formally initiated by KMT's founder Sun Yat-sen after discussions with Soviet diplomat Adolph Joffe in January 1923. This alliance included both financial and military aid and a small but important group of Soviet political and military advisors, headed by Michael Borodin. The Soviet Union's conditions for alliance and aid included cooperation with the small Chinese Communist Party. Sun agreed to let the Communists join the KMT as individuals, but ruled out an alliance with them or their participation as an organized bloc; in addition, once in the KMT he demanded that the Communists support KMT's party ideology and observe party discipline. Following their admission, Communist activities within the KMT, often covert, soon attracted opposition to this policy among prominent KMT members. Internal conflicts between left- and right-wing leaders of the KMT with regards to the CCP problem continued right up to the launch of the Northern Expedition.

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