Labor unrest broke out in China after the Great War, as it did in many places, but in China it had a strong nationalist component. As the warlords fought each other to exhaustion, the United Front was ready to make its move to take control of the country.
But Sun Yat-sen’s death complicated the picture. Who would lead the Kuomintang? Candidates included party chair Wang Jingwei and KMT military commander Chiang Kai-shek, who had the added advantage of being Sun’s brother-in-law.
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Playlist:
Fanfare
Opening Theme
醉漁唱晚 (The Evening Song of the Drunken Fisherman)
Composed in 1876 by 天聞閣琴譜 (Tianwen Ge Qinpu). Public domain.
Performed by Charlie Huang. Used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Source.
二泉映月 (The Moon Reflected in the Second Spring)
Composed c. 1950 by 阿炳 (Abing). Public domain.
Performed by 张沛坚 (Zhang Peijian). Used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Source.
Closing Theme
Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.
Afaik, the next program is on jazz. On that note, what about devoting a future program on Argentinian Tango? Tango is almost forgotten today, but it was as popular as jazz on its heyday..
Another great episode and looking forward to Jazz next time!
Just a thing I’m curious about: you’ve told multiple times now how communists would work with other groups like the nationalists in China or the Duma in Russia to accelerate the progress towards a communist revolution. How did the works they worked together with feel about this implied idea that after they had produced the result they wanted the communists would essentially turn on them down the road?
Given what happened I’d be surprised if today anyone would want to work with someone calling themselves “marxist” or similar, given this almost planned for backstabbing.