ABSTRACT
Oil February 28, 1931, Chiang Kaishek, chairman of the Nanjing government, placed his colleague Hu Hanmin under house arrest in Tangshan. Hu, a senior leader of the Guomindang (GMD) and head of the Legislative Yuan at the time, had been engaged in dispute for months with Chiang over the issue of the constitution. Chiang proposed the promulgation of a "provisional constitution" (yuefa) for the current period of political tutelage (xunzheng), but Hu, true to the teaching of Sun Yatsen, opposed the idea. The dispute in fact revealed more profound causes for the conflict between the two men. Hu had long been dissatisfied with Chiang's monopoly of power in the Party and government. He regarded Chiang's proposal as a means of further enhancing and legitimizing Chiang's own power.
