Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T02:24:48.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Role of Hu Hanmin in the “First United Front”: 1922–27

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

For both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Guomindang (GMD), the experience of their political association from 1922 to 1927 had a profound effect on the later course of their development. This period has come to be known as the First United Front, though in fact this term cannot be used without initial reservation, since only the CCP spoke of a united front between it and the GMD. For the latter party, with its well-established revolutionary history, the term “admission of the communists” (rong gong) was invariably used to denote the opening up of GMD membership to members of a smaller and definitely junior political movement. The adoption of the communist designation in later years by many students of the period reflects in part the attention given by western scholarship to the development of the CCP during the critical years of the 1920s. However, even if the term “united front” is retained for convenience as a general rubric for the 1922–27 period, it is important that the Guomindang be subjected to careful scrutiny in its own right, so that the GMD-CCP relationship may be understood more fully. This is to be stressed, since the categories often applied to the GMD, such as “left” and “right,” while of value in some instances, on the whole blur or distort the wide range of opinion within that party on the question of communist involvement in it. Until the purge of the CCP took place in 1927, GMD attitudes towards the communists were characterized by much fluidity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Hu Hanmin, 's political writings are discussed in the author's doctoral dissertation, “Socialism, Marxism and Communism in the thought of Hu Hanmin” (University of London, 1978).Google Scholar The main events of Hu's life are recounted in Boorman, Howard and Clark, Richard C. (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Vol. II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).Google ScholarKennedy, Melville T. Jr. “Hu Han-min: his career and thought,” in Chün-tu, Hsüeh (ed.), Revolutionary Leaders of Modern China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 271–94Google Scholar, gives a short account of Hu's life and examines some of Hu's expositions of Sun Yatsenism. Excerpts from three of Hu's later works have been translated by the author: Marxism, the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union: three critiques by Hu Hanmin,” in Chinese Studies in History, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Winter 19801981), pp. 4775.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Bing, Dov, “Sneevliet and the early years of the CCP,” The China Quarterly (CQ), No. 48 (12 1971), pp. 677–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. pp. 677–79. For further background on Sun's reception of Maring see Wilbur, C. Martin, Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), pp. 118–21.Google Scholar

3. Bing, , “Sneevliet and the early years,” pp. 683–84.Google Scholar See also “Documents on the Comintern and the Chinese revolution,” with an introduction by Isaacs, Harold R., CQ, No. 45 (03 1971)Google Scholar, s. I, “Notes on a conversation with H. Sneevliet: the Chinese question, 1920–1923,” pp. 100–109, in particular pp. 103–104, for Maring's understatement of CCP opposition to his proposal. Bing's assertion that a Hangzhou plenum took place has been disputed by Muntjewerf, A. C., “Was there a Sneevlietian strategy?,” CQ, No. 53 (03 1973), pp. 159–68.Google Scholar See also Bing's reply, CQ, No. 54 (June 1973), pp. 345–54.

4. Glunin, V. I., “Komintern i stanovlenie kommunisticheskogo dvizheniia v Kitae” (“The Comintern and the establishment of the communist movement in China”), in Delyusin, L. P. et al. (eds.), Komintern i Vostok (The Comintern and the East) (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 242–99; 252.Google Scholar Chen's letter is dated 6 April 1922. This valuable book, and the equally important memoirs of A. I. Cherepanov (cited below), were first drawn to my attention by Professor Stuart R. Schram.

5. Bing, , “Sneevliet and the early years,” pp. 687–89.Google Scholar

6. Tu-hsiu, Ch'en, “A letter to all comrades of the party,” in Chinese Studies in History, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Spring 1970), pp. 224–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 226–27. See also Kuo-t'ao, Chang, The rise of the Communist Party, 1921–1927 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1971), p. 253.Google Scholar

7. Ch'en, , “A letter,” p. 226.Google Scholar

8. Dalin, S. A., Kitaiskie Memuary: 1921–1927 (Chinese Memoirs: 1921–1927) (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), pp. 108130Google Scholar, for Data's meetings with Sun.

9. Guofu nianpu (Chronological Biography of Sun Yatsen) (Taibei, 1965), Vol. II, p. 853.Google Scholar It states here that Sun “approved” (xu) Maring's proposal. There is no suggestion made that Sun was the originator of the plan for individual CCP membership in the GMD.

10. Ibid., pp. 853–54.

11. Yongjing, Jiang, Hu Hanmin xiansheng nianpu (Chronological Biography of Hu Hanmin) (hereafter Jiang, NP) (Taibei, 1978), p. 263.Google Scholar

12. Wilbur, C. Martin and How, Julie L., Documents on Communism, Nationalism, and Soviet Advisers in China, 1920–1927 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956)Google Scholar, Doc. 1, “A brief history of the Chinese Communist Party,” pp. 41–78. The author of this may have been Voitinsky, working from materials supplied by Li Dazhao (pp. 38–40; 490, footnotes).

13. Ibid., pp. 61–62. Wang actually opposed the admission of the communists at this time.

14. Jiang, , NP, p. 274.Google Scholar In Jiang's words, Hu was chosen because of his “deep familiarity with party history.”

15. Geming wenxian (Documents on the Revolution), Vol. 8 (Taibei, 1955), pp. 1044–49.Google Scholar The manifesto is translated in Shieh, Milton J. T. (ed.), The Kuomintang: Selected Historical Documents, 1894–1969 (New York: St. John's University Press, 1970), pp. 6570.Google Scholar

16. Geming wenxian, Vol. 8, pp. 1049–52.Google Scholar Arts. 4–6, 10 and 17 specify the powers of the Zongli.

17. Hu's interest in questions of party organization probably makes him the principal author of the 1923 constitution.

18. Hu Hanmin, , “Geming yu fangeming zui xianzhu di yimu” (“Revolution and counter-revolution's most notable episode”), in Xiangxiang, Wu (ed.), Zhongguo xiandai shi congkan (Collected Materials on the History of Modern China), Vol. III (Taibei, 1961), pp. 393402; 394–95.Google Scholar This speech was given in 1929. See Wilbur, , Sun Yatsen, pp. 135–40Google Scholar, for Joffe's meetings with Sun, and the text of the agreement, in which Joffe promised Sun the assistance of the Soviet Union, while declaring that neither communism nor the Soviet system was appropriate to China at that time.

19. The failure of the 1912 reorganization, which turned the Guomindang into a massbased open party, was a constant theme in Hu's political writings.

20. Hu, , “Geming yu fangeming,” p. 395.Google Scholar

21. Guofu nianpu, Vol. II, p. 963.Google Scholar

22. These disagreements over land policy indicate with exceptional clarity the fundamental dividing line between the GMD and the communists. Only with the publication of important Soviet materials, in particular A. I. Cherepanov, Zapiski Voennogo Sovethika v Kitae (Notes of a Military Adviser in China) (Moscow: Nauka, 1st ed., 1964), have these discussions received the discussion they merit. They are treated in detail in Holubnychy, Lydia, Michael Borodin and the Chinese Revolution, 1923–1925, (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms Edition, 1979), pp. 293304.Google Scholar

23. Cherepanov, , Zapiski, pp. 3840.Google Scholar Cherepanov makes extensive use of reports by Borodin.

24. Ibid., p. 43.

25. Li Yunnan, , Cong rong gong dao qing dang (From the Admission of the Communists to the Purification of the Party) (Taibei, 1973), p. 265Google Scholar; Jiang, , NP, p. 295.Google Scholar

26. Kartunova, A. I., “Komintern i nekotorye voprosy reorganizatsii gomin'dana”Google Scholar (The Comintern and several questions of the Guomindang reorganization”), in Delyusin, Komintern i Vostok, pp. 300–312; 310.

27. Cherepanov, , Zapiski, pp. 5758.Google Scholar

28. Ibid. pp. 68–69.

29. Ibid. pp. 50–51.

30. Ibid. p. 50.

31. Kartunova, , “Komintern,” p. 310.Google Scholar

32. Li Shi, , “Guomindang qing dang yiqian di zuopai zuzhi” (The organization of the left wing in the Guomindang before the party purification”), in Xiandai shiliao (Materials on Contemporary History) (Shanghai, 1934), Vol. I, pp. 8690; 87.Google Scholar

33. Wilbur, , Sun Yat-sen, pp. 180–82.Google Scholar

34. For the manifesto see Geming wenxian, Vol. 8, pp. 1125–36Google Scholar, transl. in Shieh, Kuomintang: Documents, pp. 75–85. For the constitution see Geming wenxian, Vol. 8, pp. 1136–48.Google Scholar

35. Geming wenxian, Vol. 8, pp. 1138–39.Google Scholar S. 4, Arts. 19, 20 and 23 specify these powers.

36. This point is emphasized in Shirley, James R., “Control of the Kuomintang after Sun Yat-sen's death,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXV, No. 1 (11 1965), pp. 6982; 7173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. Minutes of the National Congress of the Kuomintang of China (Washington, D.C.: Center for Chinese Research Materials, 1971), pp. 4143 (Session 12, 28 January 1924).Google Scholar

38. Ibid. p. 43. Hu was chairman of this session.

39. Ibid. pp. 21–22 (Session 6, 22 January 1924).

40. This political characterization was kindly suggested by Professor Stuart R. Schram.

41. Jiang, , NP, p. 303.Google Scholar Little is said here about the proceedings of the Shanghai Executive Bureau.

42. Interview with Huang Jilu, Taibei, 9 July 1975. Huang was a delegate to the First Congress, where he supported the anti-CCP motion. He later became a close friend of Hu's. In the interview Huang emphasized that the lack of interest in Mao at that time was due to Mao's very junior position.

43. Mao's participation hi United Front work is discussed in Schram, Stuart R., Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 76.Google Scholar One of Mao's rivals in the CCP, Li Lisan, later derided him as “Hu Hanmin's secretary” (Schram, , Mao, p. 78).Google Scholar

44. Hu Hanmin, , “Zhongguo Guomindang piping zhi piping” (A criticism of criticisms of the Guomindang”), in Geming wenxian, Vol. 9, (Taibei, 1955), pp. 1255–71.Google Scholar

45. Ibid. pp. 1256–58.

46. Ibid. pp. 1265–66.

47. Ibid. p. 1269.

48. Chang, , Communist Party, pp. 344–45.Google Scholar

49. Huang Jilu interview. Huang stressed the word “limitations” (in English).

50. Hu, , “Geming yu fangeming,” p. 395.Google Scholar

51. Wilbur, , Sun Yat-sen, pp. 237–39.Google Scholar

52. Jiang, , NP, p. 307Google Scholar; Wilbur, , Sun Yat-sen, pp. 246–48.Google Scholar

53. Jiang, , NP, pp. 307308.Google Scholar

54. Li Yunhan, , Cong rong gong, pp. 327–28.Google Scholar

55. Jiang, , NP, pp. 305306.Google Scholar

56. Hanmin, Hu, “Minzu guoji yu disan guoji” (“The Nationalist International and the Third International”), in Manjun, Wu (ed.), Hu Hanmin xuanji (Selected Works of Hu Hanmin) (Taibei, 1959), pp. 7683; 7678.Google Scholar

57. Ibid. p. 78.

58. Jiang, , NP, p. 308.Google Scholar

59. For background to the Merchants' Corps see Wilbur, , Sun Yat-sen, pp. 245–52.Google Scholar

60. Guofu nianpu, Vol. II, p. 1071.Google Scholar

61. Sicheng, Mao (comp.), Minguo shiwunian yiqian zhi Jiang Jieshi xiansheng (Jiang Jieshi before the Year 1926) (Hong Kong, 1965; 1st ed., 1936), pp. 312–13 (9 10 1924).Google Scholar

62. Guofu quanji (The Complete Works of Sun Yatsen), Vol. III, (Taibei, 1973), p. 962.Google Scholar

63. Wilbur, and How, , Documents on CommunismGoogle Scholar, Doc. 11, “Borodin's report on the Revolutionary Committee,” p. 171.

64. Li Zongren said that although Hu was “truly a man of principle” whom the party respected highly, he would have been best suited to be an “administrator in a peaceful imperial dynasty.” See Tong, Te-kong and Li Tsung-jen, , The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jen (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), p. 236.Google Scholar Huang Jilu said that “politically speaking, Hu may have been a little too bookish.” See Jilu, Huang, “Hu xiansheng yu Xishan huiyi” (Hu Hanmin and the Western Hills Conference), in Zhuanji wenxue (Biographical Literature), No. 169 (Vol. 28, No. 6, 06 1976), pp. 1820; 20.Google Scholar

65. Cited by Jiang, , NP, pp. 309310.Google Scholar

66. This will be discussed below.

67. Shirley, , “Control of the Kuomintang,” pp. 7781.Google Scholar

68. Weilian, Wang, “Diyi ren guofu zhuxi di renxuan” (“The selection of the first Chairman of the National Government”), in Xiandai shiliao, Vol. I, pp. 25; 4.Google Scholar

69. Chang, , Communist Party, pp. 455–57.Google Scholar

70. Ibid. pp. 457–58.

71. Selected Documents and Addresses by Hu Han-min, Minister of Foreign Affairs (Canton: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China, 1925), pp. 13.Google Scholar This was published in English.

72. Zhonghua minguo shishi jiyao (chugao); minguo shisinian (1925), (Historical Chronicle of the Republic of China (First Draft); The Year 1925) (Taibei, 1975)Google Scholar, Pt. 2 (July–December), pp. 195–96.

73. Hu Hanmin, , “Geming guocheng zhong zhi jijian shishi” (“Some matters of fact in the history of the revolution”), in Sanminzhuyi yuekan (Three Principles of the People Monthly), Vol. II, No. 6 (15 12 1933), pp. 88126; 90. Hu states that the committee was formed on Borodin's suggestion.Google Scholar

74. Ibid. p. 101. See also Lu, Zou, Huigu lu (Reminiscences; Nanjing, 1947), p. 174.Google Scholar

75. Various works have retailed the rumour that Hu was implicated in, or even responsible for, Liao's death. Hu's purported involvement has been furthered by the mistaken notion that Hu Isheng, his cousin, was his brother. This strengthens the guilt by association interpretation.

76. Hu, , “Geming guocheng,” pp. 99100Google Scholar Jiang noted on 1 September that Hu was “to go abroad.” See Mao, , Minguo shiwunian Jiang Jieshi, p. 497.Google Scholar

77. Zhonghua minguo shishi (1925), Pt. 2, p. 338.Google Scholar

78. Ibid. p. 340. Wang's letter is also to be found in Jiang, NP, pp. 351–52.

79. Jiang, , NP, p. 352, footnote 43.Google Scholar

80. Pravda, 20 10 1925, p. 3.Google Scholar See also Hezhong, Zhu, “Yu Hu Hanmin xiansheng you E bage yue zhi huixiang” (“Recollections of six months' travel in Russia with Hu Hanmin”), in Wu, , Zhongguo xiandai shi, Vol. III, pp. 375–92; 378.Google Scholar

81. Reznikov, A. B., “O vostochnoi politike kominterna” (“The eastern policies of the Comintern”), in Ul'ianovskii, R. A. (ed.), Komintern i Vostok: Kritika Kritiki (The Comintern and the East: A Critique of a Critique) (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), pp. 2495; 84.Google Scholar

82. Pravda, 20 10 1925, p. 3.Google Scholar

83. Jiang, , NP, p. 357.Google Scholar

84. Pravda, 7 11 1925, p. 8.Google Scholar

85. Ibid. 19 November 1925, p. 5. The full Chinese text, “Su E shiyue geming di ganriang,” is to be found in Hanmin, Hu, Hu Hanmin Xiansheng zai E yanjiang lu (Lectures Given by Hu Hanmin in Russia) (Guangzhou, 3rd ed., 1927), pp. 124.Google Scholar This is the text used in the present article.

86. Hu, , “Su E shiyue geming,” pp. 15.Google Scholar

87. Ibid. pp. 5–12.

88. Ibid. pp. 10–11.

89. Kennedy, , “Hu Han-min: his career and thought,” in Hsüeh, Revolutionary Leaders, p. 287.Google Scholar For the third point see Hu, , “Su E shiyue geming,” pp. 1218Google Scholar; for the fourth point, ibid. pp. 18–23.

90. Hu, , “Su E shiyue geming,” p. 22.Google Scholar

91. Hanmin, Hu, “Guomindang di zhenjie,”Google Scholar is the second item in Hu, , Hu Hanmin xiansheng zai E yanjiang lu (pp. 2533).Google Scholar Only the Chinese text of this article was available to the author.

92. Ibid. p. 25.

93. Ibid. p. 26.

94. Ibid. pp. 28–29.

95. Pravda, 13 11 1925, p. 5.Google Scholar

96. Ibid.22 November 1925, p. 3.

97. Ibid. 1 January 1926, p. 6.

98. For the Western Hills Conference see Yunhan, Li, Cong rang gong, pp. 413–26.Google Scholar

99. Huang Jilu interview.

100. Jiang, , NP, p. 359.Google Scholar

101. Ibid. p. 364.

102. Zhongguo Guomindang dierci quanguo daibiao dahui huiyi jilu (Record of the Second Congress of the Guomindang) (Guangzhou, 1926), pp. 145–46.Google Scholar Three ballots were invalid, while the candidates present at the congress did not vote for themselves. According to Zhang Guotao, Hu received 249 votes, but this figure was reduced by one by Wu Yuzhang, the secretary-general of the congress, with the agreement of Wang Jingwei, so that Wang, Tan, Hu and Jiang would be tied in votes. See Chang, , Communist Party, 482Google Scholar; 708, n. 14.

103. Ibid. pp. 221–22.

104. Carr, Edward Hallet, Socialism in One Country, 1924–1926, Vol. III, Pt. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1964), p. 763.Google Scholar

105. Pravda, 16 02 1926, p. 5.Google Scholar

106. Carr, , Socialism in One Country, Vol. III, Pt. 2, pp. 952–56.Google Scholar

107. Inprecor (International Press Correspondence), Vol. 6, No. 17 (special number), 4 03 1926, p. 253.Google Scholar

108. Ibid. p. 256.

109. Pravda, 18 02 1926, p. 2.Google Scholar

110. Inprecor, 4 03 1926, p. 256.Google Scholar

111. For Jiang's comment see Schram, , Mao Tse-tung, p. 92.Google Scholar

112. Reznikov, , “O vostochnoi politike kominterna,” p. 85.Google Scholar

113. Hu, “Minzu guoji yu disan guoji,” in Wu, Hu Hanmin xuanji, pp. 78–81.

114. Zhu, , “Yu Hu Hanmin you E,” pp. 383–84Google Scholar, also mentions this exchange between Hu and Zinoviev.

115. Pravda, 14 03 1926, p. 2.Google Scholar

116. Jiang, , NP, p. 375.Google Scholar

117. For the March 20 Incident see Tien-wei, Wu, “Chiang Kai-shek's March Twentieth coup d'etat of 1926,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXVII, No. 3 (05 1968), pp. 585602.Google Scholar

118. Ibid. pp. 591–92.

119. Ibid. p. 592.

120. Mao, , Minguo shiwunian Jiang Jieshi, p. 661Google Scholar (30 April, 1926); p. 665 (10 May 1926).

121. Ibid. p. 661 (1 May 1926); p. 665 (7 May 1926).

122. Wilbur, and How, , Documents on Communism, Doc. 25, “Seifulin's report on the situation at Canton,” pp. 266–70.Google Scholar

123. Chang, , Communist Party, p. 506.Google Scholar

124. Jiang, , NP, p. 376.Google Scholar

125. Ibid. p. 376, footnote 14.

126. Zhongguo wu da weiren shouzha (Letters of Five Eminent Chinese Personages) (Shanghai, 1939), p. 340.Google Scholar

127. Jiang, , NP, pp. 376–77.Google Scholar

128. Wilbur, and How, , Documents on Communism, pp. 266–67.Google Scholar

129. Chang, , Communist Party, p. 506.Google Scholar

130. Wilbur, and How, , Documents on Communism, p. 267.Google Scholar

131. Chang, , Communist Party, pp. 502503.Google Scholar

132. Ibid. p. 503.

133. Jiang, , NP, pp. 377–78.Google Scholar

134. Hu discusses his translation of Beer in “Sanminzhuyi di lishiguan” (“The conception of history in the Three Principles of the People”), in Wu, , Hu Hanmin xuanji, p. 209.Google Scholar

135. Jitao, Dai and Hanmin, Hu (trans.), Zibenlun jieshuo (An Introduction to “Capital”) (Shanghai, 1927).Google Scholar Hu's preface is dated 18 January 1927.

136. Ibid. Hu preface, p. 8.

137. Huang Jilu interview. Huang said that Hu carried on “underground activities,” and that Hu used him as an envoy to other anti-communist party members.

138. Jiang, , NP, p. 385.Google Scholar

139. Zhongguo wu da weiren shouzha, p. 334.Google Scholar

140. Jiang, , NP, p. 386.Google Scholar

141. Hanmin, Hu, “Zhongyao di liangge piping” (“Two important criticisms”), in Hanmin, Hu, Sanminzhuyizhe zhi shiming (The Historic Mission of the Followers of the Principles of the People) (Shanghai, 1927), pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

142. Hu, , “Minzu guoji yu disan guoji,” p. 78.Google Scholar

143. Hu, Sanminzhuyizhe zhi shiming, passim.