Why did communism become popular in China between the

1920’s and 1949?

By the end of the lesson you will• Understand the main events and reasons for the popularity of the CCP•Have created a road map / timeline showing the main events of the period•Some of you might have highlighted how happy / sad people were at each event

Abdication of Pu YiIn 1911 the Ching (Manchu) dynasty was overthrown by republican factions, led by Dr Sun Yat Sen and the Nationalists.

Sun Yat Sen couldn’t hold together a majority and was forced to give way for Yuan Shi Kai.

Yuan Shi Kai controlled the war lords but couldn’t keep the Japanese from putting pressure on China. He died of a heart attack.

By the mid 1920’s Chiang Kai Shek had taken over the Nationalists and was the major force in Chinese politics.

Anti Communist Massacres, 1926

Study the extracts which follow

List all the ways in which the communists were killed.

Why do you think the KMT employed such brutal methods to kill the communists?

Source one the events in the city of Shanghai

• In the great hall of the prison….two hundred wounded Communists waited for someone to come and finish them off…Four regular soldiers marched up and down among the wounded with bayonets fixed……a whistle shrilled, drowning the whispers and the groans: the whistle of a locomotive. They were close to the station…..The door opened. Soldiers torches entered wheeling trolleys on which wounded men lay like luggage, and tipped them off…..Night came with them…..the sound of groaning was like the scurrying of rats. Most of the men could not move. The door closed. Time passed to and fro….suddenly came the deadened shriek of the locomotives whistle. One of the last batch of prisoners, lying on his face, pressed his hands over his ears and screamed. None of the others cried out, but again terror was in their midst, low on the ground.

The man lifted up his head, raised himself on his elbows. “The swine” he yelled. “The murderers”.

One of the sentries came and turned him over with a jab of his boot. The man shut his mouth. The sentry moved away. The wounded man began to mumble and rave. “They don’t shoot them, they fling them alive into the furnace of the locomotive….then that’s that – they blow the whistle.” The sentry was coming back. Silence, except for the sounds of suffering.

the extract comes from a novel, Mans Estate, written by a Frenchman, Andre Malraux fought with the Communists at the time of these massacres. Date unknown.

Source Two the events in the city of Canton

Written by an official from the American Embassy in 1926

• Execution squads patrolled the streets, and on finding a suspect, they questioned him, examining his neck for tell tale stain (the communists wore a red scarf during the uprising. During the hot weather the dye ran.) if found they ordered the victim to open his mouth, thrust a revolver into it and another coolie came to an end of his Communists venture……I myself saw a rickshaw stopped, the coolie grabbed by the police, his shirt jerked from his neck disclosing a red stain…..he was rushed to the side of the road, compelled to kneel down, and unceremoniously shot while the crowd of people in the street applauded.

Source Three Written by another official from the American

Embassy in 1926

• Many private scores were paid off. Two lots of 500 and 1,000 men each were taken out and machine gunned. Realising that this was a waste of ammunition, the soldiers loaded the victims on the boats, took them down below the city, and pushed them overboard in lots of ten or twelve men together. The slaughter continued for four or five days in which some 6,000 people, allegedly Communists, lost their lives in the city of Canton.

Source Four

Further events in the city of Canton • The first thing that I saw as I turned out of the

small lane was the body of a worker lying face up. It was covered with dirt. On its head was a red handkerchief. The forehead and right cheek had been shot away…..behind the fallen brick walls, propped up against trees and lying at the street curbs, floating on the surface of the river, wherever you looked, dead men and women….stones, bamboo swords and wooden spears still lay about the streets……The corpses lying stiff in their blood stank horribly….At the square of the park I saw three trucks piled high with corpses. In the shrubs to the right were ten bodies, seemingly newly shot.

Long March 1934 - 1935

How did these rules and these attitudes help encourage support for the CCP?

These rules encouraged support for the CCP by…

Find out about the Long March, October 1935, and how it increased support for the CCP.

Kuomintang, WW2 and the Japanese 1937 - 1945

1900 1950

The History of China after 1900

1900 – Imperial1911 – abdication of Emperor1920’s – decline of warlords1926 – Anti communist massacres1934 – Long March1939 – 45 – ww21946 – 49 Civil War1949 – Peoples’ republic