Why did the First United Front (1924–1927) between the Chinese Communist Party and the

Guomindang (Kuomintang) fail?

Chinese Communist Party was supported by Comintern, and after a fail to organize

railway stoppage in Beijing, Comintern concluded that CCP was not strong enough to

become a revolutionist party on its own. At the same time, Sun Yixian was reorganizing

Guomindang and was seeking for help from Soviet Union. Despite the different politics of

these two parties, Comintern was pushing the CCP to work with GMD, because it could help

it become strong revolutionist party. They did have some similar aims that they shared such

as defeating the warlords, getting rid of foreign domination in china and establishment of

unified government in China. The United Front was created in 1924, and the main objective

of it was defeating the warlords. Despite this objective, both parties continued to strive to

their own goals and that is what failure of the First United Front

GMD was also having agenda from only defeating warlords. After the death of Sun

Yatsen, anti-communist forces were released in GMD, which Sun knew how to suppress.

Chiang Kai Shek, as leader of Nationalist party, marked the beginning of Northern

Expedition in 1926, which was the plan of destroying warlords. However, this was not the

only aim of GMD for the Northern Expedition. The second part of the plan that was not

declared was destroying United Front and his allies the Communists. Even though, it was

considered that the second aim can not be public before the first one was achieved since

nationalist needed help of the communist, Chiang started purging the COmmunist event

before the Northern Expedition was over. This behaviour of Nationalists started creating

tension between allies but the Communist were unable to do anything because the Committee

was still supporting the United Front, with the belief that that is the best option for the CCP.

This made CCP incapable of reacting quicker to the purge, which could have made the

United Front work for longer period of time. Chiang wanted to rule over China and had big
urge to defeat the communist and rule over them, and this ultimately ruined the alliance. It is

visible how both parties and their background plans on the United Front effected its work and

created tensions between CCP and GDM, which ultimately killed the United Front.

Tensions were developing between the CCP members and the GMD over the issue of

dual membership and the Communists’ influence within the organisation. Resolutions were

passed to limit the number of official positions they could hold. Stalin ordered the CCP

members to accept this and remain in the GMD. But however, this was not what CCP

wanted, since their reason in getting into First United Front was to spread communism

through GMD and try to get more power, and become more influential and revolutionist

party. It was obvious that United Front would fail, since GDM was trying to have all of the

power and started to obviously show their goals for CCP.

To conclude, failure of First United Front between CCP and GMD was caused by

different hidden agendas of both parties, that were in a way pressured into the alliance by the

Soviet Union Comintern.