The May Thirtieth Movement

The Mill Strikes and the Death of Gu Zhenghong

From February 1925 nearly 40,000 workers in 22 Japanese-owned cotton mills in Shanghai struck in succession against beatings, arbitrary dismissals and low wages. According to The Paper, citing the Putuo District Gazetteer, on 15 May the Japanese owners closed Naigai Mills No. 7 and No. 12; the worker Gu Zhenghong led workers who wanted to work in forcing open the gate, and Kawamura, the Japanese manager of Mill No. 7, opened fire. Gu, hit by several bullets, died the next afternoon aged 20; eleven other workers were injured. Communist sources describe Gu as a Party member and workers’ representative.

On 16 May all the Naigai mills struck, demanding punishment of the killer and recognition of the union among eight conditions. On 24 May a memorial meeting for Gu was held at Tanziwan; that day the Settlement authorities arrested four Shanghai University students who had attended, setting their hearing in the Mixed Court for the 30th. On 25 May the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee issued a telegram supporting the mill workers. On 28 May the CPC Central Committee decided to stage an anti-imperialist demonstration in the Shanghai concessions on the 30th.

The Shooting on Nanking Road

On 30 May students and workers made speeches and handed out leaflets in the streets of the International Settlement. According to Communist accounts, British police arrested more than 100 people on Nanking Road; a large crowd then gathered outside the Louza police station demanding their release, and the police opened fire. The Taiwanese scholar Lin Chia-hui writes that the order to fire was given by the British inspector Everson. The U.S. consul general, Edwin Cunningham, reported the next day that the students had become “a threatening mob,” assaulting foreign constables and attempting to force their way into the station: “The order was given to fire.” He judged that the police had “acted in the only possible way consistent with the situation.”

Casualty figures differ. Communist party-history sources say 13 were killed on the spot and dozens wounded. A note from the Beijing Foreign Ministry on 1 June reported “four students being killed on the spot,” two more dying of wounds and three passers-by dying later. Lin Chia-hui gives four dead at the scene and seven who died in hospital. Cunningham’s telegram of 31 May reported three killed, six more dead that night and about twenty wounded. Victims named in sources cited by The Paper include He Bingyi of Shanghai University, Yin Jingyi of Tongji University, the middle-school student Chen Yuqin, the telephone operator Tang Liangsheng and the hotel cook Chen Zhaochang.

The General Strike

According to Communist sources, the Central Committee met again that night and formed an action committee of Qu Qiubai, Cai Hesen, Li Lisan, Liu Shaoqi, Liu Hua and others. From 1 June Shanghai’s workers, students and merchants began a general strike, class boycott and closure of shops, and the Shanghai General Labour Union was founded with Li Lisan as chairman. On 4 June the union, student federations and street merchants’ associations formed the Shanghai Federation of Workers, Merchants and Students, and the Party launched the Rexue Ribao (Hot Blood Daily) under Qu Qiubai. Party sources say more than 200,000 workers and 50,000 students took part; The Paper reports that by 21 July some 250,000 workers had joined 206 strikes in Shanghai.

Further shootings occurred up to 10 June. Foreign naval forces came ashore; Cunningham reported that on 2 June “American and 200 Italian bluejackets were landed to guard light and water supplies,” and Communist sources say foreign marines occupied Shanghai University, Daxia University and other schools. Forty-nine people arrested on 30 May and 1 June were tried for rioting in the Mixed Court; the trials ended on 11 June and “none were imprisoned or fined.” On 26 June “all Chinese banks and most shops reopened” after closing on 1 June, but the strikes in the mill districts and harbour continued, the mill settlement deadlocked over recognition of the unions.

The Movement Spreads

On 3 June students marched in Beijing with handbills demanding punishment of those responsible, “abolition of foreign concessions and extraterritoriality,” withdrawal of foreign forces and “abolition of unequal treaties and special privileges.” On 11 June British sailors fired on demonstrators approaching the concession in Hankou; Communist sources say dozens were killed. Party sources put total participation nationwide at about 17 million. Zhang Zuolin and Feng Yuxiang telegraphed Beijing’s chief executive exonerating the demonstrators and blaming Britain; the U.S. chargé, Ferdinand Mayer, commented that “militarists are making every effort to use present situation in order to cause Chinese people to forget antimilitarist feelings.” On 1 June the Kuomintang’s Shanghai Executive Department issued a declaration condemning the shooting. The Soviet ambassador, Lev Karakhan, wrote to the Foreign Ministry expressing grief at “the shooting of several tens of Chinese workers and students at Shanghai.”

Negotiations and Inquiries

On 1 June the Beijing Foreign Ministry protested to the senior minister, the Italian minister Vittorio Cerruti, stating that the incident was one “for which the authorities of the Concession are entirely responsible.” The diplomatic body replied on 4 June that “the responsibility of the events which followed rests on the demonstrators and not upon the authorities of the Concession.” It then sent delegates to Shanghai on 8 June to investigate and to negotiate with a Chinese government commission; the Chinese side sought to settle the Mixed Court question and Chinese representation on the Municipal Council at the same time, whereas the legations had limited their delegates to compensation, suspensions, the restoration of order and withdrawal of troops, and the talks broke down on 18 June.

On 1 July the heads of legation adopted conclusions: the chairman of the Municipal Council’s conduct was “not devoid of blame”; “more than an hour and a quarter elapsed between the moment when the demonstrators entered the International Settlement and that when the shots were fired but during all this time Colonel McEuen was not at his post,” so that the police commissioner bore primary responsibility and “should be replaced”; Inspector Everson, a subordinate, “could not do otherwise than carry out the orders given him.” They also declared that the demonstrations had been arranged on Chinese territory and called on the Chinese government to fix responsibility. The British government had the communication of these conclusions suspended, and the Municipal Council refused them, claiming to be “primarily responsible only to the electorate of the International Settlement of Shanghai.”

Britain then proposed a judicial inquiry, to which Washington agreed provided “the proposed commission include a Chinese jurist of high standing”; Beijing declared that it would “not only be unwilling to participate but would take no cognizance of any of the findings of the inquiry.” The commission—E. Finley Johnson of the Philippine Supreme Court, Sir Henry Gollan of Hong Kong and Kitaro Suga of the Hiroshima Appeal Court—opened on 7 October without Chinese witnesses. The British and Japanese judges’ reports agreed “in exonerating police and municipal authorities”; Johnson held that the police “had no alternative but to fire in the circumstances which arose” but were “at fault in having allowed such a necessity to arise,” and that McEuen’s presence at Louza station “might have saved the lives of some innocent persons.” Johnson also recommended settling the Mixed Court question, Chinese participation in Shanghai’s government, extraterritoriality and the unequal treaties. In December the Municipal Council accepted the resignations of McEuen and Everson and offered “$75,000 solatium to victims or their families,” announced by the senior minister on 23 December.

Differing Accounts

Communist accounts describe the movement as “a mass anti-imperialist patriotic movement led by the Communist Party of China” that “raised the curtain on the high tide of the Great Revolution.” The Taiwanese scholar Lin Chia-hui argued in 2011 that the CCP’s activities during the May Thirtieth period took place under the Kuomintang’s umbrella—“its gains came because of the Kuomintang and were also limited by it”—while the Kuomintang used the movement to win leadership of anti-imperialist nationalism ahead of the Northern Expedition. American officials disagreed among themselves: the day after the shooting Cunningham stressed the “violent circulars of Bolshevik character,” whereas on 19 June Mayer judged the movement “essentially nationalist in character rather than antiforeign” and urged that foreigners “must make some concession to the Chinese.”