The First United Front (FUF) in China, from 1923 through 1927, combined Communists and Nationalists into a singular Guomindang (KMT) organization. Its initial intent was to eliminate Imperialist and Warlord influences residing in the country that had persisted since the 1911 Nationalist Revolution that rejected Imperial rule. The alliance served as an incubator for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), asserted KMT political dominance, and also satisfied Soviet goals. This essay will discuss the ideological context of what a United Front is, and then discuss its deployment in the FUF as it represents one of the first examples of the technique applied at a geopolitical scale. Focus will be given
to the specific reasons that the FUF was largely a catastrophic event for the CCP, as the implementation demonstrated that the technique was effective for the Soviets who continued work toward refining it.
A United Front was formally described by the Communist International (Comintern) in 1922 where they declared that groups of disorganized workers must unite into larger groups with a common aim of eliminating the influence of any organization that had mislead the working class (Comintern 1). Later in that document, more details are discussed as to the extension of this concept as it applies to both Political & Industrial United Fronts. The framework was meant to offer a tool to promote Communist success against Capitalism and Western Ideologies by using the tactic in the context presented. The timing of the presentation of this document against the formation of the FUF suggests that there was a dispute in Communist leadership, which may have perceived that the technique wouldn’t be suitable for obtaining Communist goals. This was a major motivation for the Soviet influence in the formation of the FUF, as building the smaller communist party in China was considered to be a good opportunity to enact the newer ideological pursuit.
The alliance between the CCP and the KMT precipitated from a Soviet directive delivered by Henk Sneevliet (Maring) to the CCP that it should join the KMT. Maring was the Comintern representative who was overseeing the CCP relations. As Ah Xiang writes in a paper regarding USSR / Comintern relations, “On August 17th, 1922, at the Second West Lake Meeting … Maring forced through the July 18th Comintern presidium’s directive [instructions from the Executive Committee of the Communist International to its Representatives in South China], which was brought to China on a shirt he wore, for the CCP to join the KMT…” (Xiang 6, courtesy Google Translate). This indicates that the motivations for the CCP to join the KMT was a Soviet initiative. This process was completed in 1923, where Xiang continues by writing that, “Maring … pushed through the Comintern’s May 1923 directives to have the CCP collectively … enter the KMT as a bloc-within at the CCP’s third congress that was held in June 1923.” (Xiang 8). This is the formal moment in which the alliance was created.
The initiative to accept the CCP members into the KMT was suggested to KMT leadership by Maring beginning in 1921. As David Barrett writes in a discussion about Hu Hanmin, a political advisor to Sun Yatsen, “In December 1921 Maring … may have made suggestions to Sun about the need to reorganize his party, and may have proposed some form of co-operation between it and the CCP.” (Barrett 35). Barrett later indicated that the Soviets offered numerous incentives to the KMT in exchange for doing this. These incentives included weapons, money and the signing of the Sino-Soviet agreement, which would have been highly beneficial to KMT economic interests and will be discussed later. From these references, it can be understood that the First United Front began as a Political United Front between the KMT and the CCP under Soviet direction. The Soviet selection process for uniting these parties had lead to them identifying the KMT as a suitable incubator for the CCP which was only just formed in 1921. This satisfied the first objective of the United Front methodology, which was to combine smaller groups into larger groups. Their unified goal was then to eliminate the influence of various parties that had resisted GMT authority.
These target parties included competing Chinese factions which were vying for various forms of control over land, property or people. Domestically, this included warlords in the countryside and gangs in the cities. The KMT and CCP worked with the Soviets and the Japanese in order to secure various arms and goods needed to maintain their military advantage. The focus of KMT efforts at the time were to stabilize Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing. In the cities, there was a secondary Industrial United Front (as it was described by the Comintern) that the CCP had enacted through Labor Unions established by the KMT. The importance of this Industrial United Front to the CCP can be derived from a new approach taken by Mikhail Borodin (Maring’s 1923 replacement advisor). This approach is discussed by An Xiang who writes that, “Borodin’s strategy was to have the CCP take control of all the local organizations of the KMT, develop a step by step plan to combat the KMT right-wing … and accelerate the inevitable split of the KMT left wing from the KMT right wing. (Xiang 14). These local organizations became the Farmers’ Bureau in the countryside, while the cities established Labor Unions. In both areas, this front struggled against gang and warlord control of the local labor markets.
Receiving Soviet support required the continued cooperation between the CCP and the KMT, in exchange for the weaponry that was used to consolidate power under the KMT leadership. This is explained where Barrett writes that, “Borodin must be assigned a role of some significance, since he was not only supreme adviser to the government, but the supplier of its arms.” (Barrett 49). It would be through a combination of this support and the formation of outlets discussed above that enabled the CCP to directly engage the Chinese population on more peaceful terms. This combination lead to the mass dissemination Communist ideology across the cities and countrysides as the warlords and gangs were defeated or incorporated into the KMT with a lot of popular support resulting for the CCP. This is supported where Xiang discusses the CCP initiative to control the Labor Unions in the cities in writing that, “The communist Labor Secretariat … in 1924 relocated to Shanghai from Peking, and in the cloak of the KMT-CCP collaboration and by means of hijacking the KMT’s Shanghai Executive Bureau, took
control of the KMT’s Shanghai Federation of Labor Unions.” (Xiang 7).
The control of these labor unions was in line with larger Communist ideology of a need to
secure the interests of the working class proletarians. Xiang later discusses the CCP initiatives in the countryside in writing that, “On July 3rd, 1924, communists pushed through their agenda to have the KMT organize the Farmers’ Bureau under the KMT central executive committee as well as launch the farmers’ Movement Training Institute.” (Xiang 14). This formed a two-pronged approach where CCP fronts were established in the major locations of unrest, and their ability to have control over training the peasants became a viable avenue to spread CCP ideology. With this organizational arrangement,
domestic affairs were more ordered. Geopolitical effects that arose from managing this alliance were to follow.
Xiang later discusses that regional politics lead to negotiations which included Japan, the
Soviets and China in jointly coordinating the maintenance and security for the Chinese Eastern Railway, which was considered to be critical infrastructure for trade as well as national defense (Xiang 17). The issue with this was that the railways and trains were paid for by the Soviets. The vested Soviet stake in the infrastructure and the issue of how they were to co-manage the Chinese railways lead to their actions in the Sino-Soviet agreement, which renegotiated previous agreements made by regimes which were no longer leading their respective countries. Xiang indicates that, “The Sino-Soviet Agreement nominally nullified all Conventions, Treaties, Agreements, Protocols, Contracts, etc …, concluded between the Government of China and Tsarist Government.” (Xiang 19). The removal of these restrictions were a major motivator for the KMT to agree to signing the agreement. There was a separate addendum to this agreement that was signed secretly by the Soviets and Japanese that effectively neutralized the part of the Sino-Soviet agreement that Chinese leadership had signed, which is mentioned in Bruce Elleman’s essay on Soviet diplomacy where he writes that, “a protocol counteracting this promise remained secret,” in referring to the addendum (Elleman 469).
In 1926, a political advisor to the late Sun Yatsen, Hu Hanmin, returned from Russia. Hu’s
experiences are summarized by Barrett: “Hu said his Moscow experience taught him how
extraordinarily secretive the Soviet leaders were about their plans, a characteristic which Borodin fully shared. As for the Chinese Communist Party, it had a dual nature on the one hand it lived as a parasite on the [KMT], while on the other hand it continually fomented social unrest.” (Barrett 60). Hu’s understanding solidified the approach that KMT leadership followed towards the CCP shortly after his return. It’s likely that if Chinese leadership became aware of the secret addendum to the Sino-Soviet agreement, it would have been a result Hu’s time in Moscow. The disclosure of this information to Hu would have revealed the contradiction to the drafted Sino-Soviet agreement that China had entered into, and is likely a reason for a lack of more direct Soviet intervention toward the actions that the KMT later took in initiating the White Terror movement.
The death of Sun Yatsen in 1925 lead to the CCP-KMT relationship deteriorating after his
replacement with Chiang Kai-shek. In Modernization and Revolution in China, Dr. Grasso writes that, “Sun Yatsen had been the unifying force within a party of disparate views. His death revealed a cleavage between two major factions that was never overcome” (Grasso 58). This point is important because it shows that without the previous leadership to drive the KMT to follow the expected course, much of the lingering KMT resentment toward the CCP came to the surface. The ensuing pivot in Nationalist politics to focus on the stalled Northward movement, along with the cities needing a consolidated power to stabilize them and the realization that foreign interests had more concern with the railroad than the CCP at the time were just a few of the major parts of what lead to the breakdown of the FUF, but the scope of this essay has been to consider these few key points. These events precluded the KMT dissolution of the KMT-CCP agreement, which was summarized by Dr. Grasso who again writes that, “The First United Front ended with the near annihilation of the CCP. During the next decade, although the foreign imperialists and several warlords remained unsubdued, Chiang Kai-shek and his party would dominate China.” (Grasso 60). This began with the White Terror movement
that drove the CCP from the country for the following decade.
In summary, the push to unite the KMT and the CCP by the Soviets was never meant to produce anything other than a strong Communist party with the CCP leading China, while testing a ideological tactic at a geopolitical scale. The FUF served to illustrate how wartime techniques, such as United Fronts, evolve in order to adapt to globalized efforts including multiple foreign sovereign nations. This hybrid war tactic enables a few major parties to engage in an ongoing civil war that’s fought covertly and with minimized outbreaks of violent repressions. It simultaneously leverages often violent efforts in repelling outside forces such as those that are uniformly identified by the major parties to be a threat. This tactic has been a common tool in many political parties to date and continues to be utilized to achieve new goals, but these approaches are outside the scope of this writing.
Works Cited
Barrett, David P. “The Role of Hu Hanmin in the ‘First United Front’: 1922-27 on JSTOR.” JSTOR, The China Quarterly, 1982, www.jstor.org/stable/653620. Accessed 20Oct2025.
Comintern, Communist International. “Theses on the United Front of Labor [1922].” Marxists.org, 29May1922, www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1922/0529-cec-unitedfronttheses.pdf. Accessed 20Oct2025.
Deal, Jacqueline, and Eleanor Harvey. “CCP Weapons of Mass Persuasion.” Andrew Marshall Foundation, 2022, www.andrewwmarshallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CCP-Weapons-of-Mass-Persuasion-Advance-December-2022.pdf. Accessed 20Oct2025.
Elleman, Bruce A. “Soviet Diplomacy and the First United Front in China on JSTOR.” JSTOR, 1995, www.jstor.org/stable/189387. Accessed 20Oct2025.
Grasso, June M., et al. Modernization and Revolution in China. 6th ed., Routledge, 2024.
Xiang, Ah. “USSR / Comintern Alliance with the KMT & the CCP.” Republican China, 27Mar2012, www.republicanchina.org/USSR-Comintern-KMT-CCP.pdf. Accessed 20Oct2025.