Zhongshan Warship incident
중산함 사건
The coup of 20 March 1926 in which Chiang Kai-shek declared martial law in Guangzhou and arrested the Communist acting naval chief Li Zhilong and the Communist political commissars of the National Revolutionary Army and Whampoa, set off by the unexplained movements of the warship Zhongshan. It curtailed Communist and Soviet influence inside the Kuomintang and gave Chiang control of party and army just before the Northern Expedition; what really happened is still disputed.
In depth
The Zhongshan, renamed in Sun Yat-sen's honour, was the strongest ship of the Nationalist navy. On the night of 18 March it moved from Guangzhou to the anchorage off Whampoa and came back the next day. Chiang's suspicions grew over a captain citing orders he had never given and a run of odd telephone calls; he bought a ticket for a steamer to Shantou, then decided to fight. On the 20th he declared martial law, cut the telephone network and seized the ship, used Whampoa cadets and Nationalist troops to detain the Communists of the First Corps and Whampoa (Zhou Enlai among them), and surrounded the residences of Wang Jingwei and the Soviet advisers and the Canton–Hong Kong strike committee. The workers' pickets were disarmed.
Interpretations divide three ways: a pre-emptive coup plotted by Chiang to push out Wang and the Communists; a Communist plot to kidnap Chiang to Vladivostok; or an accident of misunderstandings, crossed telephone lines and rivalries among junior staff. The Communists denied any plot and saw the affair as Chiang's move to remove Wang from influence over the army and the academy, while Bubnov, then head of the Soviet mission in Guangzhou, reported an abortive putsch mistakenly attempted by some Communist commanders.
The outcome was clear. Chiang and Bubnov agreed that Soviet aid would continue, that the adviser Kisanka would be recalled and that Communists would hold no top posts, and Chiang balanced matters by dismissing the right-winger Wu Tiecheng. Wang left for France. The "Resolution on Readjusting Party Affairs" of May 1926 barred Communists from more than a third of any party committee and from heading central departments, and the same session formalised Chiang's leadership of party and army. Trotsky and the CCP committees in Shanghai and Guangdong opposed the compromise; Stalin backed it.