Xiang Zhongfa - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

During the Northern Expedition, the army of Kuomintang (KMT) took over some parts of Hubei and marched towards Wuhan. Xiang and Xu Baihao mobilized workers for strikes against local warlords and set up the labor union of the Hubei province, greatly assisting the KMT army. After the CCP headquarters moved to Wuhan, Xiang was elected a member of the Central Committee of CCP for his contributions. Xiang was then among the most prominent worker activists, along with Su Zhaozheng, Wang Hebo and Deng Pei.

The CCP-KMT alliance was facing uncertainty with occasional conflicts arising between these two parties. Xiang expressed his discontent directly, as compared to the more compromising attitude of Chen Duxiu, who didn't attach much importance to worker leaders. The resolute standpoint of Xiang made a great impression on the Comintern, which issued a telegram on July 14, 1927 to denounce the central organs of the CCP, saying there were signs of opportunism in its compromise policy in relation to the KMT, and decreeing that all CCP members should fight against this opportunism. The basic task of reform "should make leaders of workers and peasants have decisive influence in the CCP", according to the Comintern. This view was more in line with Xiang's hard stance.

As a result, at the August 7, 1927 Conference of the CCP, the CCP fired Chen Duxiu and selected Su and Xiang as interim members of the politburo of the CCP. Even so, the CCC's new leadership of Qu Qiubai and Li Weihan was still dominated by intellectuals, contrary to the Comintern's ideals.

In October 1927, the Comintern asked the CCP to organize a delegation to Moscow to attend the celebration ceremony of 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. Many CCP leaders had taken refuge in Guangdong and Hong Kong after the failure of the Nanchang Uprising, and were still there. Su and Li Weihan were still on their way from Wuhan to Shanghai. This left the CCP central organization in disarray, and Xiang was elected to be the director of the delegation to the Soviet Union.

On October 15, 1927, Xiang and eight other delegates left for the Soviet Union. They reached Moscow in November, and were warmly welcomed by their Russian counterparts. Xiang attended a celebration ceremony and several major conferences for joint Comintern and Soviet communist activities, and gave talks on Soviet radio.

His experience and understanding of workers' movements in China earned him prestige in the Comintern. The Eastern Department of the Comintern was happy to have Xiang help them handle Chinese affairs, such as stopping a Chinese student protest in Moscow Eastern University.

At the same time, the interim politburo of the CCP had an extended meeting in Shanghai with the new elected Zhou Enlai and Luo Yinong being intellectuals too, and with Wang Hebo being executed by the KMT early before and Su coming to Moscow as delegate to Comintern, there was no representative of worker in this central organ of CCP, which should be a direct violation of Comintern policy.

In January 1928 Xiang wrote letters to Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin, denouncing the CCP. These letters won attention of Stalin and Bukharin, who became concerned at what Xiang pointed out. Then in March 1928, the Comintern asked the CCP to hold its 6th National Congress in Moscow, which should have reshuffled the leadership of the CCP. With the opening of this congress on June 18, Xiang was appointed as the chairman of the opening and closing sessions, which implied that a promotion was at hand. In this congress, Xiang attacked both the leftism of Qu Qiubai and the rightism of Zhang Guotao, essentially claiming himself to be the only orthodox representative of Chinese revolution. The day before the closing session of this congress, Pavel Mif, the minister of the Eastern Department of the Comintern, also known as the president of Moscow Sun Yat-sen University and mentor of 28 Bolsheviks, on behalf of the Comintern brought forward a list of candidates for the Central Committee of the CCP. The Central Committee at that time consisted of 36 members, with 22 workers among them, and stressed obedience to Comintern policy. Xiang was elected as member of the Politburo and made General Secretary of the CCP, which was no great surprise. This ending was a certainty from the beginning, for of the 84 delegates attending this congress, 50 of them were proletariat, compared with the previous congress in 1926, when 71 of the 82 delegates were intellectuals. So it was no wonder that Zhou Enlai would express his discontent by saying there were "a lot of mobs" in this 6th National Congress.