n of the Komingtang ("Revolutionary Party") founded by Sun
Yat-sen, which as a middle-class party had worked for the removal of the
dynasty. The new Kuomintang was more socialistic, as is shown by its
admission of Communists and the stress laid upon land reform.

At the end of 1924 Sun Yat-sen with some of his followers went to
Peking, to discuss the possibility of a reunion between north and south
on the basis of the programme of the People's Party. There, however, he
died at the beginning of 1925, before any definite results had been
attained; there was no prospect of achieving anything by the
negotiations, and the south broke them off. But the death of Sun Yat-sen
had been followed after a time by tension within the party between its
right and left wings. The southern government had invited a number of
Russian advisers in 1923 to assist in building up the administration,
civil and military, and on their advice the system of government had
been reorganized on lines similar to those of the soviet and commissar
system. This change had been advocated by an old friend of Sun Yat-sen,
Chiang Kai-shek, who later married Sun's sister-in-law. Chiang Kai-shek,
who was born in 1886, was the head of the military academy at Whampoa,
near Canton, where Russian instructors were at work. The new system was
approved by Sun Yat-sen's successor, Hu Han-min (who died in 1936), in
his capacity of party leader. It was opposed by the elements of the
right, who at first had little influence. Chiang Kai-shek soon became
one of the principal leaders of the south, as he had command of the
efficient troops of Canton, who had been organized by the Russians.

The People's Party of the south and its governments, at that time fairly
radical in politics, were disliked by the foreign powers; only Japan
supported them for a time, owing to the anti-British feeling of the
South Chinese and in order to further her purpose of maintaining
disunion in China. The first serious collision with the outer world came
on May 30th, 1925, when British soldiers shot at a crowd demonstrating
in Shanghai. This produced a widespread boycott of British goods in
Canton and in British Hong Kong, inflicting a great loss on British
trade with China and bringing considerable advantages in consequence to
Japanese trade and shipping: from the time of this boycott began the
Japanese grip on Chinese coastwise shipping.

The second party congress was held in Canton in 1926. Chian