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the province, but General Sun drove him back to Kiangsi and appointed a nominee of his own to the post. General Fang Pen-jen, an officer connected with both the Anfu and Kuomin parties, remained as Military Governor of Kiangsi. Fukien Province was governed by General Chou Yin-jen (Chihli party), Honan by General Yüch Wei-chun, commanding the Second Kuomin Army, and Lupei by General Hsiao Yao-nan (Chilli party). In Szechuan, the province was nominally under the control of General Liu Hsiang, who was appointed on the 16th May by the Central Govern ment Military Governor, but in fact was divided into several areas each under the control of a separate general. In Yunnan Province, which was unaffected by the civil war in North and Middle China, a state of comparative quiet prevailed after the failure of General Fan Shih-sheng's invasion, and the chief anxiety of the Governor. Tang Chi-yao, was to prevent his generals from quarrelling among then selves. In the provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi the only vestige of authority left to the Peking Government was the Maritime Customs administration.
Central China and the Shanghai Incident.
20. The peculiar character of the responsibilities involved in questions affecting an international settlement, such as Shanghai, is well illustrated by the nature of the disturbances which led up to and which finally culminated in the regrettable events of the 30th May. It is, in fact, somewhat of an irony that it was the British. throughout China who were to be made the scapegoats for action taken to quell a riot which had its origin in a strike of certain Chinese workmen in a Japanese cotton-mill.
21. The trouble in the Japanese cotton-mill, of which the general strike is an outgrowth, began on the 9th February, 1925, when the employees of the Naigai Wata Kaisha No. 5 mill ceased work. The strike spread rapidly, and after a few days had extended to six different Japanese companies in the western and Yangtzep districts involving 31,328 workers. The dispute seems to have originated in the dismissal on the 2nd February of fifty male employees of No. 5 mill, six of whom were a few days later imprisoned for intimidation. The ill-feeling thus aroused would appear to have been aggravated by agitators, who made a practice of meeting the workers at night schools in the district affected. After transforming themselves into labour unions, these schools, just prior to the commencement of the strike. removed to Chinese territory an act full of significance in the light of subsequent events where they became bases for the activities of the agitators. The activities of certain labourers' clubs in the Chinese district of Chapei, the prominent part taken by certain notorious Chinese Communists, the swift and organised way in which the strike spread, the composition of some of the propaganda circulars, the overt actions and statements of the Soviet consul-general, Comrade Ozarnin, and his staff, all tended to show that from now onwards the supporters and organisers of the movement directed against the position and the privileges of the foreign settlements included men of education and ability. The original demands of the workers, which aimed at the improvement of the conditions of labour, an increase of wages and the reinstatement of the dismissed operatives, began at this stage to be gradually superseded by demands of a political complexion, and the original issue became more and more obscured, while the trend of the agitation was skilfully diverted into anti-British channels. In short, from a purely industrial movement for the improvement of the conditions in certain mills, it became a virtual crusade against foreign aggression and for the defence of China's sovereign rights.
22. The strike, which had thus broken out in the Japanese mills in the above- mentioned districts, which it should be noted are situated inside the limits of the International Settlement (which must again be differentiated from the so-called French Concession), thus continued without interruption and with practically no attempt on the part of the local Chinese police officials to co-operate on their side of the settlement boundary in maintaining control over the activities of the anti- foreign agitators and in confining the strike to its legitimate objects. For in the Chinese territory situated on the other side of the Soochow Creek, the written and printed propaganda of the agitators was supplemented by meetings and procession in Chinese territory, where intimidation, maltreatment and robbery of female Chines operatives by the strike pickets occurred daily. These malpractices were suffered to continue in spite of repeated representations to the Chinese police officer in charge of the district affected by the authorities of the Shanghai Municipal Police, whe fully realised that unless some drastic action were taken to curb the activities of the extreme Labour elements in Chapei before it was too late, a very dangerous situation
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might arise.
In fact, so far as could be observed, the Shanghai-Woosung (Chinese) police, during that period, played the role of disinterested observers, and their laxity was undoubtedly mainly responsible for the large proportions which the strike eventually reached.
The rampant lawlessness, which was thus allowed to continue, culminated in a murderous attack on the 15th February on a party of Japanese. A mob, organised by the strike leaders, proceeded about 7:30 PM, on that date from Jessfield Village to the Toyoda cotton-mill, situated outside the International Settlement, and, having intimidated the operatives into discontinuing work, they joined forces with them and assembled outside the gate. They there, a short time afterwards, attacked a motor car occupied by seven Japanese employees of the mill, including a Mr. Harada. This gentleman was beaten about the head with a stick and succumbed to his injuries on the 1st March. One of the others was shot through the chest and a third was beaten and thrown into the Soochow Creek. The Shanghai Municipal Police, who were handicapped through lack of authority to function off the Jessfield road, nevertheless finally succeeded in dispersing the crowd and in arresting nine of the rioters, To effect this they were obliged to fire some shots into the air, but fortunately none of the rioters were injured. It is, moreover, noteworthy that in the attack on Mr. Harada on the 15th February blood was shed for the first time, the Chinese being the aggressors and the Japanese the victims. This was, however, not the first time that the Chinese had resorted to violence, for on the 10th February they wrecked the machinery at the Naigai Wata Kaisha Mill No. 9, causing damage to the amount of several hundred thousand dollars and forced the employees to join the strike.
23.
The first phase of the strike movement, which, as stated above, had been declared in these particular Japanese mills on the 9th February, terminated on the 1st March, when the Chinese mill hands returned to work.
24. But, although this period of armed truce between the Japanese mill-owners and their Chinese operatives, which lasted from the 1st March to the 15th March, may be said to have terminated the first phase of the Shanghai disturbances, the extreme Red elements of the Kuomintang, skilfully reinforced by means of funds from the Soviet Ambassador in Peking through his agent, M. Ozarnin, the Soviet consul-general in Shanghai, and by means of Chinese Communist personnel from the south, continued with unremitting effort to exploit the situation, which had thus so suddenly arisen in Shanghai, to the best possible advantage. When the strike was over the Chapei agitators, instead of relaxing, intensified their activities and organised meetings at frequent intervals. It was at this stage that the Bolshevik tendencies of the movement became more evident. The workers and peasants were
urged to place themselves under the banner of the Kuomintang and to fight the oppression of the Imperialists and the militarists. These and other well-worn slogans of the Soviet seemed henceforth to give the impression that they merely desired to further the aims of the Red wing of the Kuomintang and to care little about the economic welfare of the workers. The leaflets which were distributed broadcast at these meetings bear the indisputable impress of alien Soviet inspiration. 25. The unrest took a serious turn again on the 14th May, when two Chinese foremen employed in the Japanese Naigai Wata Kaisha Cotton-Mills were discharged, which led to the strike of the operatives of one of the spinning-mills. In the course of a successful attempt made by the locked-out employees of one of the linked weaving-mills belonging to the same company to force their way into the mill and destroy the machinery, a collision occurred between them and the Japanese staff who fired on the crowd, wounding seven, of whom one subsequently succumbed to his injuries.
26. The death of the mill hand Kuo Tsung Hung was the occasion of demonstration of much spontaneous sympathy on the part of his fellow-workers, and there seems no doubt that any latent spark of discontent which may have been smouldering in the breasts of the thousands of out-of-work and disaffected mill hands was at once fanned into flame by numerous agitators, Chinese and others, who were merely awaiting such an opportunity for some kind of anti-foreign action.
27. Throughout the following days from the 19th May to the 30th May, no opportunity was lost by student agitators and Chinese strike leaders of inciting their fellow-nationals to acts of mob violence and riot against their Japanese employers. Cantonese members of the Kuomintang and other Chinese Communists from Peking and elsewhere were very active at this time, but there are no actual proofs of foreign Communists, such as Soviet Russians, taking any direct part, although there is much evidence in the possession of the police pointing to the fact that the guiding hand of Bolshevism was ever present in the background.
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