Page:Earl Browder - Civil War in Nationalist China (1927).pdf/23

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

awaiting the signal to sweep them out of power. In spite of the martial law and prohibition of all meetings, the city Kuomintang and the left wing army immediately arranged a mass demonstration for the International Workers' Delegation. This was held, the big meeting being followed by a procession through the streets of the city, to the slogan of "Down with the reactionary provincial government," and "Down with Chiang Kai Shek."

Kiukiang was our next stop. This city is located at the junction of the Kan River with the Yangtse. Here is located a British concession, the administration of which had just been taken over by the Nationalist government a week before our arrival. On the broad waters of the river we saw the gray gunboats and cruisers of Britain, United States, and Japan, sullenly threatening the Chinese revolution.

The trade unions and city Kuomintang of Kiukiang had just been burying their dead, killed in a pitched battle with the reactionaries a week before our arrival. Here as elsewhere under civil war conditions we had the experience of the actual street fighting being suspended during our visit while the leaders of both sides talked to us. The tactic of the right wing was always to prevent us from getting information, and to endeavor to occupy all of our time with formalities, banquets, and entertainments. The left wing forces always came to us with complete and systematic reports about the number of workers organized in each occupation and industry, the scales of wages, the conditions of the peasants, and their unions, the exact status of the international struggle in the Kuomintang, etc. At Kiukiang we had a symbol of the class forces operating on each side, during a meeting in which leaders from right and left were present with us. The secretary of the general trade unions was giving us a long, detailed report of the working and living conditions of the people; the personal representative of Chiang Kai Shek, a fat bourgeois army officer, partially under the influence of strong liquor, set back in his chair and went to sleep during the interview. His contribution, later, to the work of the International Delegation was to present us with a bas-

21