ABSTRACT
When the Northern Expedition reached Shanghai in April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek carried out a bloody purge of Communists and all leftist sympathizers. Yet, Chiang Kai-shek’s purge emerged out of more than the simple political expediency. The purge was intended to send a clear anti-labor and the pro-capitalist message to the Shanghai industrialists and the powerful pro-capitalist sentiments in the United States and Europe upon whose financial support Chiang’s near-term future depended. In the 1920s, many aspects of Marxism appealed to Chinese revolutionaries across the political spectrum. On a theoretical level, it offered a unified framework to resolve the social, political, and economic predicaments that faced China. On a practical level, the success of the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union only years earlier offered hope to many Chinese that the China would benefit from a Marxist revolution.
