Question

What happened during the 1927 Shanghai Massacre?

Answer 1

In April 1927 Guomindang forces, aided by urban gangsters and warlord militia, attacked members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai. Hundreds of communists were rounded up, arrested and tortured; most were executed or assassinated. The Shanghai Massacre, or ‘April 12th Incident’ as it is sometimes called, was a pivotal moment in the Chinese Revolution. It triggered a nationwide purge of communists from the Guomindang and several years of anti-communist violence, dubbed the ‘White Terror’. Surviving communists were either forced underground or into rural and provincial areas outside Guomindang control. The events of April 1927 marked the end of the First United Front between the CCP and Guomindang and the end of Soviet Russian support for the Nationalists. The CCP leadership was forced to reassess its revolutionary strategy in the wake of the events in Shanghai.

Answer 2

The following happened during the 1927 Shanghai Massacre:

During this massacre, the military troops of the Nationalist party violently suppressed the China's communist party. In many of China’s parts, there were violent suppression and differences arising among the left-wing and right-wing factions.

Such suppression resulted in the Chinese Civil War, where the Guangzhou uprising failed and communist got diminished wherein, they couldn’t launch their major urban offensive. This is commonly called as the April 12 Purge. In memory, there is a wooden sculpture in Shanghai that depicts the number of murders in the massacre.