The Communist Party of China and the KMT both needed organizing. The KMT and Sun Yat-sen were overly reliant on southern warlords. When they turned on Sun, that made the KMT homeless and risked the life of Sun and those close to him, like his wife Song Qingling. She suffered a miscarriage when Chen Jiongming attacked their house in Guangzhou. Never again would Madame Sun Yat-sen be able to bear children.

Mikhail Borodin, born Mikhail Grusenberg, was valued by Sun and lead the re-organization of the KMT and the Communist Party's outreach in Guangdong. Students went to the people and organized the peasants and began class struggle in rural Guangdong. Sun helped turn a labour strike in Guangzhou into a nationalist victory.

The Whampoa Military Academy and the KMT and Communist Party were now able to train revolutionary soldiers. Borodin thought he had the perfect unpolitical soldier in its Director, Chiang Kai-shek.

The corrupt Cao Kun, leader of the Zhili Clique, was ousted as President in a coup and Sun hoped to assume the national presidency and unite China. But he was dying of cancer and Duan Qirui had more support in the north and with the Japanese.

What would happen after Sun's death?

Please share your advice and make the podcast even better here !

Image: "File:Borodin in Wuhan.png" by Unknown author is marked with CC0 1.0.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.