Nanchang Uprising

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The Nanchang Uprising (traditional Chinese: 南昌起義; simplified Chinese: 南昌起义; pinyin: Nánchāng Qǐyì) (August 1, 1927) was the first major Kuomintang-Communist engagement of the Chinese Civil War, in order to counter the anti-communist purges by right-wing elements in the Kuomintang.

Contents 1 Historical Context 2 Order of Battle - Left-KMT Forces 3 Action at Nanchang 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Historical Context

The Kuomintang (hereafter KMT, or in English the Nationalist Party of China) had based its new (and hopeful) national government at Hankow. Song Qingling (Soong Ching-ling, AKA Madame Sun Yat-sen), Sun Fo, Wang Jingwei and Eugene Chen were among its leaders. In the aftermath of the April purges, the Hankow govt became known as the Left KMT. Further Leftists in the field established a ‘Revolutionary Committee’ at Nanchang to plan the spark that was expected to ignite a wide-spread peasant uprising: a mutiny, insurrection and seizure of the city. Zhou Enlai and Li Lisan were political leaders, with Zhu De, Ye Ting, Liu Bocheng and He Long heading the military. Deng Yenda and Zhang Fakui (who later crushed the uprising) were among the political leaders.^[1]

[edit] Order of Battle - Left-KMT Forces

The Communist-led or -affiliated force at its peak during the Nanchang Uprising totaled over 20,000, though some of them did not join the battle until a day later. The entire communist force was organized into the 2nd Front Army, and over half of it was the force under He Long's command. He Long was also named as the Commander-in-Chief of the 2nd Front Army, and Ye Ting as the deputy commander-in-Chief and acting front line commander-in-chief. Communist representative was Zhou Enlai, chief of staff was Liu Bocheng, and director of Political Directorate of the 2nd Front Army: Guo Moruo. The following is the order of battle for the communist forces:

• 9th Army commanded by Zhou Enlai, with Zhu De as the deputy commander was and Zhu Kejing (朱克靖) as the communist representative.
• 11th Army commanded by Ye Ting, with Cai Tingkai as the deputy commander and Nie Rongzhen as the communist representative.
  • 10th Division commanded by Cai Tingkai
  • 24th Division
  • 25th Division commanded by Zhou Shidi (周士第)
• 20th Army commanded by He Long and Liao Qianwu (廖乾吾) as the communist representative
  • 1st Division
  • 2nd Division
  • 3rd Division commanded by Zhou Yiqun (周逸群)

[edit] Action at Nanchang

The rebellion was first planned to take place during the night of July 30. But due to complications with Zhang Guotao the rebellion was postponed.

On the morning of August 1 at exactly 2am, Zhou Enlai, He Long, Nie Rongzhen, Ye Ting, Ye Jianying, Lin Biao, Zhu De, Chen Yi and Liu Bocheng led their troops and attacked the city of Nanchang from different directions.

Four hours later, the Communist-led KMT troops had taken over the entire city of Nanchang. They were able to capture 5,000 small arms, and around 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition from the defenders of the city. Around noon, the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Nationalist Party (中國國民黨革命委員會) was established.

They escaped a presumable siege by oncoming Right-KMT forces by withdrawing four days later up the Ganjiang River into southern Jiangxi. Revisionist historical researcher Zhang Rong (Jung Chang) claims that the operation was supervised by Soviet military advisors, whose goal was to get the purloined troops to a port in order to supply them with arms. The insurrectionists' retreat was epic in scale but ended in disaster.

• For that story, see the article Little Long March.

August 1 was retroactively taken to be the day of the founding of the People's Liberation Army, being the first armed action against the Rightist Kuomintang.

[edit] References

• Jung Chang and Jon Halliday,

Mao: The Unknown Story (London, 2005); Jonathan Cape, ISBN 0-679-42271-4

• Nanchang Mutiny http://www.republicanchina.org/NanchangMutiny-v0.pdf

[edit] External links

• http://81.china1840-1949.net.cn/qyjj.htm
• http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2003-07/28/content_996380.htm

v • d • e Chinese Civil War
Main events pre-1945	Main events post-1945	Specific articles
First United Front (1924) Shanghai massacre of 1927 Nanchang Uprising Autumn Harvest Uprising Guangzhou Uprising Encirclement Campaigns (1930–1934) Chinese Soviet Republic (1931–1934) Long March (1934–1936) Xi'an Incident (1936) Second United Front (1937–1946)	Part of the Cold War Full-scale Civil War (1946–1949) First Taiwan Strait Crisis (1955) Second Taiwan Strait Crisis (1958) Third Taiwan Strait Crisis (1996) Pan-Blue visits to mainland China (2005-)	Political status of Taiwan Legal status of Taiwan Chinese reunification Taiwan independence Cross-Strait relations Primary participants Kuomintang of China Communist Party of China