White Terror (China)
The White Terror was an anti-communist political repression campaign by the Nationalist government in the Republic of China which began with the Shanghai massacre in April 1927 and continued through the early 1930s. Through the White Terror, the Nationalists and their allies targeted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), trade unionists, peasants, and women who they deemed progressive. Estimates of those killed range from the hundreds of thousands to more than one million.
The Nationalists' White Terror ended the First United Front between the Nationalists and the CCP and nearly wiped out the CCP.
History
In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists had developed sufficient military power such that Chiang believed the Nationalists no longer needed the support of the Chinese Communist Party and other revolutionary mass movements.The White Terror began with the Shanghai massacre by the Nationalists. In March 1927, a CCP-led workers movement gained control of parts of Shanghai. Chiang and the Nationalist Army were welcomed into the city later that month. Breaking the First United Front, in April 1927, regular units of the Nationalist Army allied with criminal triad organizations such as the Green Gang began massacring CCP members, trade unionists, and others they contended were radical.
From 1927 to 1930, the White Terror killed from the hundreds of thousands to more than one million people. Women with short hair and natural feet were presumed to be radical and became a specific target of the White Terror; Nationalist forces would often mutilate and display their corpses in an effort to cow people.
The CCP was nearly wiped out. Its membership of 58,000 at the beginning of 1927 was reduced less than 10,000 by the year end. Most of these lost members were killed in battle or summarily executed by the Nationalists; some also defected. Surviving members dispersed into rural China; perceiving the defeat of the urban proletariat, they attempted to reorganize in what Mao Zedong termed "revolutionary base areas" to wage a "people's war" against the Nationalist government, with a focus on the peasantry as the revolutionary class.