The Wuhan government () of the Republic of China (), was established by the left-wing of the Kuomintang in Wuhan following the capture of the city during the Northern Expedition. The government was eventually dissolved and reconciled with the Nanjing faction after the Kuomintang's purge of Chinese Communist Party members and the conclusion of the Nanjing–Wuhan split.
Following the capture of Wuhan during the Northern Expedition, the Nationalist government based in Guangzhou moved there in December 1926. In April 1927, after National Revolutionary Army (NRA) commander-in-chief Chiang Kai-shek purged communists and leftists in the Shanghai massacre, the Wuhan government split with Chiang in what is known as the "Nanjing–Wuhan split" (). Chiang subsequently formed his own government in Nanjing. While Chiang continued the Northern Expedition on his own, increasing tensions between communists and the KMT in the Wuhan government resulted in a new purge of communists from that government, and an eventual reconciliation with the Nanjing faction, after which the government moved to Nanjing.
History Background Despite Kuomintang founder Sun Yat-sen's policy of collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the First United Front, a discrepancy existed between the two parties' ultimate goals for the revolution, and there had been constant conflict between them, such as the March 1926 Canton Coup. Joseph Stalin tried to persuade the small Communist Party to merge with the Kuomintang to bring about a bourgeois revolution before attempting to bring about a Soviet-style working class revolution. Stalin funded the KMT during the Northern Expedition to reunify China. Stalin said that NRA commander-in-chief Chiang Kai-shek was the only one capable of defeating the imperialists, and that his forces were to be squeezed for all usefulness like a lemon before being discarded.
During the expedition, labour movements led by the Communist Party endangered commercial interests' support of the KMT. Land reform incited further dissatisfaction among generals and soldiers in the National Revolutionary Army who came from landowning families. For example, the landholding family of General He Jian were paraded through the streets as criminals by communists.
Formation of the Wuhan government
The National Revolutionary Army, military arm of the KMT, captured the three cities of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang in a series of battles from August to October 1926 during the early stage of the Northern Expedition, and merged their municipal governments to form Wuhan. After the Wuhan area had fallen to the KMT, local workers organized themselves into left-leaning trade unions, which grew to around 300,000 members by the end of the year. Trade unions also emerged in other NRA-held cities, while peasant uprisings spread throughout the countryside. Backed by these emerging mass-movements, members of the Kuomintang relocated from Guangzhou to Wuhan, and formed a new nationalist government in December. In order to consolidate the conquest, it was in the interest of the KMT to relocate from Guangzhou to Wuhan. Chiang initially invited the government to move to Wuhan but later demurred and tried to keep the members of the central committees in Nanchang, Jiangxi, where his headquarters was located.Beifa Zhanzheng yu Beiyang Junfa de fumie, ed. Tianshi Yang, Vol. 5 of Zhonghua Minguo Shi, ed. Xin Li (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2011). By the time the government moved to Wuhan with its left-leaning leadership including Sun Fo, Xu Qian, T. V. Soong, the peasant and labor movement led by communists and leftists of Kuomintang was in full swing in Hunan and Hubei. It was during this period that Mao Zedong prepared his Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan that severely criticized Party leadership.
Chiang Kai-shek, who had been Commander-in-Chief of the KMT military since the Canton Coup in March 1926, opted to stay at his military headquarters in Nanchang. He did not want to become involved in the politics at Wuhan, instead preferring to focus on the conquest of the rest of China while maintaining his independence from other KMT leaders. In January 1927, violent protests broke out in the British concession at Hankou, resulting in its evacuation by the British and handover to the Chinese. Under such an atmosphere the leftists expanded control over the Kuomintang government in the Third Plenary Session of the Second Central Committee of Kuomintang. The party congress elected a majority of communists and leftists into the central committees, and therefore strengthened the Soviet hold on the party at the expense of Chiang Kai-shek.郭廷以：《中華民國史事日誌》，第二冊李雲漢：《從容共到清黨》，下冊 Areas under Wuhan's control, such as Changsha, were plastered with propaganda posters with slogans including: "Communism is the heart of China", "Foster the mother country of the proletariat — Soviet Russia", and "China and Russia are one". At the same time, Chiang was arresting communists as he advanced downstream the Yangtze River. It was widely suspected that the Chinese Communist Party and Soviet advisors in the Wuhan government used anti-imperialist and anti-foreign sentiments to instigate violent confrontations with foreign militaries in the Nanjing incident to strengthen the communists while simultaneously damaging the right-wing faction of the Kuomintang.郭廷以，中華民國史事日誌，台北，中央研究院近代史研究所，1985年衛藤瀋吉，衛藤瀋吉著作集，第3卷，東方書店Keiji Furaya, Chiang Kai-Shek His Life and Times, translated by Chun-Ming Chang, (St.John's University 1981) p.189
It was under these circumstances that a divergence between the KMT and CCP appeared. KMT rightist figures like Chiang Kai-shek pushed for the "complete clearance of the Communist Party". Meanwhile, KMT leftists, CCP and the Communist International were alarmed and decided to support the leftist leader Wang Jingwei who previously had been exiled abroad. The Wuhan government, which was dominated by leftist KMT politicians from the beginning, aided by the Chinese Communist Party, as well as widespread grassroots support, transformed Wuhan into "a seedbed for revolution", while portraying themselves as the sole legitimate leadership of the KMT. Controlling much of Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong and Jiangxi, the Wuhan government began challenging Chiang's authority, and launched a propaganda campaign against him from January 1927. On 10 March, the Wuhan leadership nominally stripped Chiang of much of his military authority, though refrained from deposing him as commander-in-chief. At the same time, the Communist Party became an equal partner in the Wuhan government, sharing power with the KMT leftists. In response to these developments, Chiang started to rally anti-communist elements in the KMT and NRA around him.
Meanwhile, the Wuhan government began to face severe administrative problems. While the grassroots movements had originally been among its most important supporters, their actions sowed social instability and economic chaos in the areas under its control. They drove out foreigners, including several economically important firms, and suppressed middle and small merchants. Although the Wuhan government was reluctant to alienate the communist-leaning workers, they could hardly tolerate the ongoing social trend, as they were beginning to create severe financial downturn. By May 1927, the Wuhan government had an expenditure of 10 million Chinese dollars in contrast to a revenue of just 1.8 million dollars. Inflation and mass layoffs further worsened the economic situation. Furthermore, the countryside began to descend into chaos, as peasant rebels took control of large swaths of land. The communists generally claimed that the rural insurgents were under their control, but in reality these insurgents were often independent groups or simply found themselves allied with the leftists. Regardless of the political position of the peasants, the Wuhan government tried to sway them to their side through a reform program, although the planned agrarian reform never really took off. Instead, the rural insurgents started to govern themselves, which in response alienated much of the NRA officials as the Kuomintang military leadership were generally opposed to peasant self-rule.
In addition to peasants' organizations, United Front campaigners also helped found a number of women's associations. In Henan and Hubei dozens of women's associations were established as branches of county peasant associations. At a conference in Wuhan on International Women's Day, 1927, female revolutionaries laid out the goals of the women's movement. They demanded an end to foot-binding, increased female literacy, job opportunities for women, and an end to the patriarchal family structure. This last demand included women's right to get married and divorced as she chose, as well as bans on polygamy, concubinage, and child marriages. Most of these demands were granted by the Wuhan Nationalist government. Conference attendees from the countryside brought the message home, leading to some changes in the treatment of women there as well as in the cities.
Nanjing–Wuhan split
On 1 April 1927, Wang Jingwei returned to China, and arrived at Shanghai, which had been occupied by the National Revolutionary Army. Chiang Kai-shek and Li Zongren met with him to urge him to end the collaborative relations with the CCP as the president of the Wuhan government, but Wang stated that he would "pick up side with the workers and farmers",《真实的汪精卫》，第二部分之三：从拥共到反共 and proposed to tolerate the communists for the time being. Concurrently, violence broke out in Hankou, part of Wuhan, when trade unionists and communist agitators attacked the Japanese concession there, sparking the "Hankou incident". Wuhan garrison commander Tang Shengzhi and foreign minister Eugene Chen rushed to quell the disorder and assuage the Japanese. At a KMT senior officials' meeting in Shanghai on the following day, Wu Zhihui went so far as to kneel down and beg for Wang's assent to Chiang's proposals. The meeting only managed to proceed with Chiang Kai-shek's and others' mediation. In the fourth Plenary Session of the 2nd KMT Central Committee held in Nanjing, a consensus was reached on how to resolve the KMT-CCP dispute:
However, on 5 April, Wang decided to take the initiative by privately publishing with Chen Duxiu the "Joint Declaration of the Leaders of the Nationalist and Communist Parties", in which he proclaimed a permanent collaboration between the two parties. This declaration drove the anti-communist KMT officials into a rage. Wu Zhihui, who had previously knelt down to beg Wang, mocked him as paternalistic, "the parent of the KMT". Wang left Shanghai that night for Wuhan, the government there being made up mostly of the communists and the KMT left-wing.
Wang Jingwei arrived at Wuhan on 10 April and met Tang Shengzhi and Tan Yankai, nominally to call together members of central committee to attend the fourth plenary session of the 2nd KMT Central Committee held in Nanjing. He thought that the meeting would be held as planned, but unexpectedly, Chiang Kai-shek rallied the anti-communist factions of Hu Hanmin and Li Jishen to "exterminate the communists" on 12 April, and formed a rival government in Nanjing (). Incensed and shocked, Wang declared that Chiang had been "expelled from the party and dismissed from all his posts", namely, the KMT central executive membership.1927年4月17日中国国民党中央执行委员会通电 The Wuhan government responded by accusing Chiang and his followers of being the puppets of foreign imperialists and criticised his close cooperation with Shanghai's merchant class, arguing that he helped to oppress workers and peasants. On 18 April, the same day of the formation of the Nanjing government, during a public rally in Wuhan, Wang delivered a speech in which he severely condemned Chiang Kai-shek. The Nanjing and Wuhan governments were thus officially split.