Mood:
celebratoryNow Playing: yes
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai
Celebrating Phillies win over Milwaukee in Division Series - next up: League championship series against LA Dodgers.
China - 1925. A power struggle after the death of Sun Yat-sen - who would lead the Kuomintang? The KMT was divided into left, center, and right political groups. With the presence of the crafty and powerful Russian advisors it looked like the left would win it. Liao Chung-k'ai was the leading leftist candidate, he believed that capitalism should be restrained and the peasant farmers should be allowed to own their own land and have access to manufactured goods through consumer cooperatives. He was the one who had convinced Sun Yat-sen to seek aid from Russia. He was assassinated by Green Gang thugs seting up the election on July 7, 1926 of Chiang Kai-shek as president of the Nationalist Government. There was no lookiing back.
The Communists were still part of the Kuomintang and they thought Chiang was with them. It was a mark of Chiang's cleverness that they thought so - they couldn't have been more wrong. In hindsight it is hard to believe that he was able to maintain the ruse as long as he did. On February 19, 1927 he publicly announced his intention of eliminating the Communists from the Kumonitang. Over the next several months, with the help of Big-eared Tu and his Green Gang, Chiang directed the slaughter of thousands of Chinese peasants, students, intellectuals, even businessmen who resisted his rise to become the Dictator of all things Chinese - History has called it "The Shanghai Massacre". Soong Ai-ling, in cahoots with her long-time pal, Big-eared Tu, and her husband H.H. Kung
was in it up to her ears even if they weren't big. Three weeks after the massacre, Chiang Kai-shek proposed marriage to Soong May-ling. She accepted over the objections of her mother, "Mammy Soong". In the end, Chiang overcame the objections by agreeing to become a Christian.
President/Dictator Chiang was riding high, but not higher than Big-eared Tu who he never stopped paying protection money to. Soong Ching-ling, in the face of threats to her life, refused to abandon the principles of the now legendary Sun Yat-sen, and escaped to Moscow. Also escaping the KMT terror were Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung.
