CO129-505-4 Labour situation in Canton and effect on Hong Kong- Labour Advisory Board 27-1-1927 - 31-8-1927 — Page 38

5.

the consequent relief of the people from the yoke of hardship will deprive them of all their hope for a monopoly of power. They could not forget Kwangtung

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and were anxious to get hold of it with their concentrated

forces, in order that when our Kuomintang fell out of power, they would withhold their troops, sit on the fence and watch Central China in the grip of serious disturbances like flood and conflagration, and that when we became no longer popular and they had grown in military strength, they would then march out on another Northern Expedition

and would thus be able to seize all administrative power

posing as Saviours of our Nation. Up to the time when

our armies received orders to set out on our Northern

Expedition, they had kept on setting up strikes among our workmen to impede our military movements, and they did not change this policy until they had realized that no hindrance could thus be cued to us. With the support

of our National Revolutionary armies, and under the name of our Kuomintang, they wonopolized all the administrative work of our Kuomintang wherever they reached and all peasants and workmen movements. On the one hand they spared no effort to spoil the confidence of our masses in our Kuomintang and on the other they raised their own

members to power.

They were making preparation against us in Hunan and Hupeh while our National Revolutionary Armies were fighting desperately in Kiangsi, and when it was gonerally realized that the militarists could be removed without

great difficulty on our defeat of the main force of Sun

Chuen-fong, they began to perceive that their great rivals were we and not the militarists. Therefore they

resorted