Taiwan and the opium war - part 12
The British Opium Banksters’ Rebellion
Part 12 - The British Opium Banksters’ Rebellion
On August 2nd, the day before he was to begin his lectures on the People’s Livelihood, Dr. Sun appointed his brother-in-law, T.V. Soong, a Harvard-trained economist, to be the first manager of the Central Bank of China (with the starting capital coming from a $10 million loan from Soviet Russia) that would be the government’s treasury, that would accept people’s deposits, and that would issue bonds and issue banknotes - to begin to wrestle control of the markets and currency, away from corrupt tax-collectors, the warlords, and especially the foreign powers.
Nooooooooo!!!, screeched the British Empire’s opium banksters, Nooooooooo!!!
“The Canton Chamber of Commerce was getting secret help from Great Britain to expand the Merchants’ Volunteer Force. Locally, the volunteers were sponsored primarily by the powerful head of the Chamber, Chen Lien-po of the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank” [!!!] [The Soong Dynasty, by Sterling Seagrave, pg. 193]
A shipment from Amsterdam, of 5,000 rifles and 5,000 pistols (plus ammunition), that had been arranged by the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank and the British commissioner of customs at Canton [Guangzhou], arrived in the harbor for the Merchants Volunteer Corps – made up of ‘disbanded soldiers, discharged policemen, city ruffians, [bandits] and bad characters, all hired for $12 a month’. [Sun Yat-sen, by Martin Wilbur, pg. 364]
The shipment was seized by the Kuomintang government, under orders from Dr. Sun, and placed under guard of Commandant Chiang and a small force at Whampoa.
The Canton [Guangzhou] merchants threatened to call for a general strike, Dr. Sun threatened to impose martial law, but the British Consul General, in a dispatch, threatened Dr. Sun that:
“in the event of Chinese authorities firing upon the city, immediate action is to be taken against them by all British Naval forces available”!!! [ibid, pg. 252]
Dr. Sun responded with a manifesto that:
“… charged British imperialism with supporting the rebellion of the comprador of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, and called the threat in the British consul’s dispatch tantamount to a declaration of war.
It derided British concern over the ‘barbarity of firing on a defenseless city’ as hypocrisy ‘in light of the Singapore Massacre, Amritsar, and other atrocities in Egypt and Ireland’.[!!!] Dr. Sun repudiated the suggestion that his government could fire on a defenseless city, since the only section of Canton against which it might be compelled to take action was Hsi-kuan, the armed stronghold of the Chen Lien-po rebels.” [ibid, pg. 252]
And then, Dr. Sun declared an ‘anti-imperialism week’ with a rally and parade.
“The turmoil and poverty in this country, although in natural resources we are perhaps the richest in the world, is due to one cause, namely that our international status is worse than that of a colony … Hence we have many masters, pursuing their sinister objectives in devious ways: some ruthlessly, some cunningly, some openly, some under the guise of benevolence, some supported by powerful navies to break into our house, some kindly propose to keep open our door. But all together IMPERIALISM has but one aim – to keep us down economically and politically.” [ibid, pg. 253]
After weeks of negotiation, an agreement was worked out for the return of the rifles to the Merchants Corps, for which they would give $200,000 and a pledge of fealty.
On October 10th, there was a parade to celebrate the anniversary of the 1911 revolution, and when the parade reached the place at the waterfront where the arms were being transferred to the Merchants’ Corps, pushing and shoving between the different groups ended in a street battle, where some of the Merchants Corps fired on marchers – a dozen paraders were killed, and many spectators were killed or wounded.
The Merchants’ Corps claimed that they had only received half of their rifles and so they called a general strike, barricaded the streets of the Hsi-kuan suburb, and put up posters calling for the overthrow of Dr. Sun’s government. Dr. Sun brought 5,000 troops (from his Northern Expedition force at the East River) into the city, declared martial law, and set up a Revolutionary Committee to deal with the crisis.
At dawn on October 15th, the Nationalist forces raided the barricaded Hsi-kuan suburb, along with 800 Whampoa cadets, 220 cadets from the Hunan military school, 500 cadets from the Yunnan military school, 250 troops from armored trains, 2,000 policemen, and 320 Workers’ Militia and Peasants’ Corps – trained by instructor Mao Tse-tung. [Seagrave, pg. 195-196]
There is no mention of Chiang, and the Whampoa cadets that had guarded the arms, as participating in the battle. “Chiang Kai-shek’s name appears only in later Nationalist accounts.” [Wilbur, pg. 365]
When the Corpsmen began firing down on the government troops from the towers of the storehouses, these buildings were then set on fire by government saboteurs, and an estimated 490 houses were burned. The defeated Corpsmen were disarmed, while their leaders fled to the British at Hong Kong.
And as the rebellion was ended, the British Empire’s opium banksters stopped their screeching … for now.
[next week - part 13 - What is under heaven, is for all]