mar 20, 1926 - Canton Coup

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The captain of SS Zhongshan, Li Zhilong, was a Communist, working with a Soviet naval advisor. They had moved his warship to Guangzhou to support uprisings in the area, alarming the Nationalists. On the night of 18/19 March it suddenly relocated from Guangzhou to anchorage off Changzhou ("Dane's Island"). It then sailed back the next day. In his subsequent reports, Chiang stated that he became alarmed when the ship's commander claimed to be acting on orders from him, which he had never given. His suspicions were further increased by numerous odd phone calls. On 20 March 1926 Chiang declared martial law and cut off Guangzhou's phone network. He used Nationalist troops and cadets from the Whampoa Military Academy (where he was commandant) to arrest its Communist political commissars. Chiang's men also disarmed the Communists' paramilitary Workers' Guard. Gen. Victor Rogacheff, the head of the Soviet military mission at Guangzhou, fled to Beijing but Vasily Blyukher, the military consultant to the Nationalists, and Mikhail Borodin, the political consultant helping to remake the KMT into a Leninist organization, were both arrested;Borodin's assistant Kassanga was expelled on the 24th. Wang Jingwei, who had a high fever at the time, was visited by Chen Gongbo, Tan Yankai, Zhu Peide, Li Jishen and T. V. Soong. Wang was indignant and some of the others felt Chiang was overreacting, but the Nationalist Executive Committee convened at the house on 22 March and a compromise was reached in which Wang would take a vacation abroad in the near future.

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