ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to the beginning: the raising of the NRA in Guangdong. Arthur Waldron argued in China’s Turning Point that in the middle of the 1920s, a situation developed in which national regeneration on the back of armed revolution could latch on to new opportunities. In 1924, two factions of the Northern Government that ruled China went to war. The fighting affected nine provinces, involved half a million troops, undermined the economies of large cities such as Shanghai, and weakened the political cohesion of the Northern Government. The result was a ‘political and emotional vacuum’ filled by the radical ideologies of the CCP and the KMT. 1 It would be the Nationalists who prevailed in the warfare that followed. In 1926, they set out from their base in Guangdong on the Northern Expedition. Two years later the NRA made it to Beijing and unified China, even if more nominally than in fact.
