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expelled from the Kuomintang by a resolution of the
Conference of the Party held in March 1929.
7. In South China in particular it is doubtful
whether they will be able to regain a foothold for
some time to come. The elements on which they
relied for support in the past, the Labour Unions,
the Hong Kong Strike Committee, the Peasants
Organisations and the "Iron Army" of Cheung Fat-fui,
are all deeply tainted with Communism and not merely
doctrinaire Communism at that. Its fruits were
the arson and massacre at Canton in December, 1927,
and the still more bloodthirsty Soviet of the Hoi-Luk
Fung districts. Ever since Marshal Li Chai-sum returned to power at Canton early in 1928, the
Canton Government has prohibited the maintenance by
Labour Unions of bodies of armed men and has attempted
to restrict their activities to legitimate work in
their own sphere. The anti-British Boycott
Committee, with its armed and uniformed 'pickets'
and its extra legal courts and gaols for infringers
of the boycott, has been dissolved and many of its
members executed or driven into hiding. Even the
milder 'Society for the severence of economic relations with Japan' has been dissolved and its
private gaols closed. The remnants of the Peasants Organisation, established by Borodin and his adherents
as the nucleus of a Red Army, have taken refuge in
mountainous districts and are now indistinguishable
from bandits proper. The 'Iron Army' is still in
being; but its excesses in December, 1927, are still
remembered
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