The May Thirtieth Movement () was a major labor and anti-imperialist movement during the middle-period of the

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

era. It began when the Shanghai Municipal Police opened fire on Chinese protesters in

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

's International Settlement on 30 May 1925 (the Shanghai massacre of 1925). The shootings sparked international censure and nationwide anti-foreign demonstrations and riots such as the Hands Off China protests in the United Kingdom.

Background

In the aftermath of the 1924 Second Zhili–Fengtian War, China found itself in the midst of one of the most destructive periods of turmoil since 1911.Waldron, Arthur, (1991) ''From War to Nationalism: China's Turning Point'', p. 5. The war had involved every major urban area in China, and badly damaged the rural infrastructure. As a result of the conflict the Zhili-controlled government, backed by varied Euro-American business interests, was ousted from power by pro- Japanese warlord Zhang Zuolin, who installed a government led by the generally unpopular statesman Duan Qirui in November 1924. Though victorious, the war left Zhang's central government bankrupt and Duan exercised little authority outside Beijing. Authority in the north of the country was divided between Zhang and Feng Yuxiang, a

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

-backed warlord, and public support for the northern militarists soon hit an all-time low, with southerners openly disparaging provincial governors as ''junfa'' (warlords). With his monarchist leanings and strong base in conservative

Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...

, Zhang represented the far right in Chinese politics and could claim few supporters. Meanwhile, the KMT (Nationalist) and Communist parties (allied as the First United Front) were running a diplomatically unrecognized Soviet-backed administration in the southern province of

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

. Alongside public grief at the recent death of China's Republican hero

Sun Yat-sen Sun Yat-senUsually known as Sun Zhongshan () in Chinese; also known by Names of Sun Yat-sen, several other names. (; 12 November 186612 March 1925) was a Chinese physician, revolutionary, statesman, and political philosopher who founded the Republ ...

(12 March 1925), the KMT and

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

(CCP) groups were particularly involved in unionising in Shanghai through the far-left Shanghai University.Ku, Hung-Ting 979(1979). Urban Mass Movement: The May Thirtieth Movement in Shanghai. Modern Asian Studies, Vol.13, No.2. pp.197-216 Shanghai's native Chinese were strongly unionised compared to other cities and better educated, and recognised their plight as involving lack of legal factory inspection, recourse for worker grievances or equal rights.B.L 936(Jul 15, 1936). Shanghai at Last Gets Factory Inspection Law. Far Eastern Survey, Vol.5, No.15. Educated Chinese were also offended by the council's plan to introduce a new

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...

law, forcing all publications in the Settlement to use the publisher's true name and address. In early months of 1925, strikes on those matters intensified.

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese-owned cotton mills were a source of contention, and demonstrations between Japanese owners and Chinese employees around the #8 Cotton Mill became regular occurrences. In early May, workers at Shanghai Naga Wata Kaisha company began striking again in an effort to force company management to negotiate. On 15 May, a Japanese guard employed by the company shot and killed a worker named Gu Zhenghong. The killing resulted in public outrage. The Shanghai Students Union began fundraising campaigns and delivered speeches condemning the killing. A week after the killing, a group of students, heading for Ku's public "state" funeral and carrying banners, were arrested while traveling through the International Settlement. With their trial set for 30 May, various student organisations convened in the days before and decided to hold mass demonstrations across the International Settlement and outside the Mixed Court.

The Nanjing Road incident

On 30 May 1925, the Communist Party organized an anti-imperialist protest in which thousands of workers, students, and others marched towards the British concession on Nanjing road. Just after the trial of the arrested students began, Shanghai Municipal Police arrested 15 ringleaders of a student protest being held on and around Nanjing Road, in the foreign controlled International Settlement. The protesters were held in Louza (Laozha) police station, which by 2:45 pm was facing a "huge crowd" of Chinese that had amassed outside. The demonstrators demanded the arrested ringleaders be returned to them. Police on Nanking Road reported the crowd, which was between 1,500 and 2,000 strong, started good-naturedly but became more aggressive as arrests were made. A picket of police (there was only a skeleton staff of approximately two dozen officers overall, predominantly

Sikh Sikhs (singular Sikh: or ; , ) are an ethnoreligious group who adhere to Sikhism, a religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Guru Nanak. The term ''Si ...

and Chinese, with three

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

officers) was set up to prevent demonstrators from entering the station.Potter, Edna Lee (1940). ''News Is My Job: A Correspondent in War-Torn China''. Macmillan publishing. p. 198Bickers, Robert 003(2003). ''Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai.'' Allen Lane publishing. . p. 165 Inspector Edward Everson, station commander and the highest-ranking officer on the scene (as the police commissioner K.J. McEuen had not let early warnings of public demonstrations interfere with his attendance at the city's Race Club) eventually shouted, "Stop! If you do not stop I will shoot!" in Wu. A few seconds later, at 3:37 pm, and as the crowd was within six feet of the station entrance, he fired into the crowd with his

revolver A revolver is a repeating handgun with at least one barrel and a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold six cartridges before needing to be reloaded, ...

. The Sikh and Chinese policemen then also opened fire, discharging some 40 rounds. At least four demonstrators were killed at the scene, with another five dying later of their injuries. At least 14 injured were hospitalized, with many others wounded.Carroll, John Mark Carroll. 007(2007). A concise history of Hong Kong. Rowman & Littlefield publishing. , . p. 100 In the evening of 30 May, the Communist Party decided to advocate for a strike of workers, students, and markets across Shanghai.

Strikes and martial law

On Sunday, 31 May, crowds of students protested. They then convened at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, where they gave a list of demands, including punishment of the officers involved in the shooting, an end to

extraterritoriality In international law, extraterritoriality or exterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Historically, this primarily applied to individuals, as jurisdict ...

and closure of the

Shanghai International Settlement The Shanghai International Settlement () originated from the 1863 merger of the British Concession (Shanghai), British and American Concession (Shanghai), American list of former foreign enclaves in China, enclaves in Shanghai, in which Brit ...

. The president of the Chamber of Commerce was away, but eventually his deputy agreed to press for the demands to be carried out. The Municipal Council declared a state of martial law on Monday, 1 June, calling up the Shanghai Volunteer Corps militia and requesting foreign military assistance to carry out raids and protect vested interests. Over the next month Shanghai businesses and workers went on strike. On 4 November 1925, Cai Hesen's brother, Cai Linzheng, was shot and killed while leading a workers' picket team during the Guangzhou-Hong Kong strike. The numbers of Chinese killed and injured in the 30 May Movement's protests vary: figures normally vary between 30 and 200 dead, with hundreds injured.

Aftermath

The incident shocked and galvanized China, and the strikes and boycotts, quickly spread across the country, bringing foreign economic interests to a near standstill. The 15 "ringleaders" originally arrested on 30 May were given light or suspended sentences by Shanghai's foreign-run Mixed Court. The target of public ire moved from the Japanese (for the killing of Ku Chen-Hung) to the British, and

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

was particularly affected (the strikes were there known as the Canton-Hong Kong strike). Further shootings by foreigners upon Chinese protesters occurred at Canton, Mukden and elsewhere. Indeed, the Chinese warlords used the incident as a pretext to further their own political aims. While Feng Yuxiang threatened to attack British interests via force and demanded a public apology, Zhang Zuolin, who effectively controlled Shanghai's Chinese outskirts, had his police and soldiers arrest protesters and Communists and assist the Settlement forces. Two investigations into the events of 30 May were ordered, one by Chinese authorities and one by international appointees, Justic
Finley Johnson
(presiding), Judge of the Court of First Instance in the Philippines (representing America), Sir Henry Gollan, Chief Justice of Hong Kong (representing Britain) and Justice Kisaburo Suga of the Hiroshima Court of Appeal (representing Japan). The Chinese authorities refused to participate in the international investigation, which found 2-1 that the shooting justifiable. Only the Justice Finley from America disagreed and recommended sweeping changes, including the retirement of the chief of the Settlement Police, Commissioner McEuen, and Inspector Everson. Their forced resignation in late-1925 would be the only official result of the inquiry. By November, with Chiang Kai-shek having finally wrested power from his rivals after Sun Yat-sen's death and with Chinese businesses wishing to return to operation (the Settlement had begun cutting electricity to Chinese mills), the strikes and protests began to fizzle out. In Hong Kong, however, they would not totally end until mid-1926. The

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the one party state, sole ruling party of the country Republic of China (1912-1949), during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until Retreat ...

's support for the movement, and its

Northern Expedition The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The purpose of the campaign was to reunify China prop ...

of 1926–27, eventually led to reforms in the governance of the International Settlement's Shanghai Municipal Council and the beginning of the removal of the Unequal Treaties. The May Thirtieth events caused the transfer of the Muslim Chengda College and Imam (Ahong) Ma Songting to Beijing. The May Thirtieth Movement began a period of increasing radicalization and militancy among China's industrial workers, students, and progressive intellectuals. It resulted in a major period of growth for the CCP. By the end of 1925, the number of Communist Party members had risen to approximately 10,000 from 994 at the time of the Fourth Congress earlier that year. Local communist organizations also expanded rapidly. The movement also helped boost the Kuomintang to national hegemony.

Memorial

In the 1990s, the May Thirtieth Movement Monument was installed at People's Park.

References