Contemporary intellectuals who are familiar with the history of the Republic of China are familiar with Jinling University, a private, parochial university founded by the American Church in Nanjing in 1888. It was founded in Nanjing in 1888 by an American church and was housed on the site of today’s Nanjing University.
It is known for its English literature, Chinese cultural studies, and agriculture and forestry, and is also known as one of the “three schools of agriculture, literature, and science. Jinling University also pioneered Chinese film education, the first seven-year medical education and doctoral education in China. From 1888 to 1952, JNU had a total of 4,475 graduates in politics, industry, culture, education, agriculture, etc. After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, its faculties and departments were integrated into Nanjing University, and JNU disappeared.
In March 1927, an event that shocked all of us at Jinling University occurred: American Vice President Wenwen Wynn was killed. What was this all about?
It turns out that in 1926, despite opposition from the leftists of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, Chiang Kai-shek led the Northern Expedition and conquered Jiangxi in early 1927, followed by Hangzhou and then Shanghai and Nanking.
On March 22, Jiang Right Army troops belonging to the Central Army of the National Revolutionary Army, which had participated in the Northern Expedition, arrived in Nanjing. After receiving a negative answer, the troops left the foreign consulates in peace. However, at around 8:00 a.m., a massive xenophobic wave of looting of foreigners suddenly broke out in Nanking, which lasted until 5:00 p.m. During this time, the Northern Expeditionary Army (NEC), which had been in charge of the city for some time, was attacked by the Japanese.
During this period, the Northern Expeditionary Army entered foreign consulates, churches, shops, etc. and carried out armed attacks, killing six people from Britain, the United States, France, and Italy and wounding dozens of others. American Humanities Wynn, vice president of Jinling University, and the president of Aurora University were both killed. The British Consul was killed, and his wife was gang-raped until she was seriously wounded, in addition to hundreds of foreign women who were raped by soldiers of the Northern Expedition. In addition, hundreds of foreign women were raped by soldiers of the Northern Expedition. The property losses of foreign consulates and expatriates were untold.
Around 3:00 p.m., several British and American warships on the Yangtze River began shelling Nanjing in retaliation, killing more than thirty people and wounding dozens more. The commander of the Rightist Army, Cheng Qian, on the one hand, stopped the looting and, on the other hand, commissioned representatives of the Red Cross to contact the British and American warships and ask them to stop the shelling. The bombardment by the British and American warships lasted about an hour, and the wave of looting gradually subsided.
When Chiang Kai-shek heard about this, he thought that it was all the result of Communist incitement, because there were many Communists in the Second and Sixth Armies of the right-hand side of the river. The Northern Expedition could not succeed without separating from the Communists. As a result, Chiang did not trust Russia and the Chinese Communist Party and had long been anti-Communist, and most people in the KMT supported anti-communism, so Chiang decided to “purge the Party”.
As it turned out, the Chinese Communist Party was indeed behind the Nanjing Incident. This was confirmed in a directive from the Comintern to the military attachés of the Russian Embassy in Beijing, which was later seized by warlord Zhang Zuolin in a raid on the Russian Embassy in Beijing. The directive stated: “Every method must be devised to agitate the masses of the people and to exclude foreigners. …… In order to provoke interference from all countries, it should be carried out to the end, by any means, even plundering and massacre. …… “
On May 9, 1927, British Foreign Secretary Chamberlain, testifying before the House of Commons, stated clearly: “Those who planned the Nanking riots seemed to have intended to make things difficult for the Western powers and Chiang Kai-shek.” Although the incident was later dropped, the intentions of the Russians and the Chinese Communists were clear.
On April 12, the KMT troops in Shanghai gradually disarmed the Shanghai workers’ pickets and arrested and executed a number of Chinese Communist Party members. In Guangzhou, the KMT also carried out a purge. A large number of CCP members and radicals were arrested and more than 300 people were executed. On April 17, the Political Council of the Nanjing Central Committee decided that the National Government would begin its work in Nanjing on April 18, and named Hu Hanmin as the Chairman of the National Government Committee and Chairman of the Political Council. On the following day, the Nanjing National Government was formally established, with a new national flag and anthem.
After Chiang Kai-shek’s successful “purge” in Shanghai, warrants were issued for Li Fuchun and Lin Zuhan (Lin Boqu), the chiefs responsible for the “Nanjing Incident”. The two men had already escaped and gone to ask for credit from the CCP. This escape confirmed the Chinese Communist Party’s sinister intention of killing with a borrowed knife, and it is no wonder that Chiang Kai-shek later formulated the policy of “resisting foreigners and pacifying the interior first.
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