The Western Hills Group was a faction of the

Chinese Nationalist Party The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Taiw ...

, or KMT, active in the 1920s. The faction was formed at a meeting of KMT leaders opposed to communist influence held at Biyun Temple in the

Western Hills The Western Hills () are the hills and mountains in the western part of Beijing. Geography Being an extension of the Taihang mountain range from the Hebei Province, the Western Hills cover approximately 17% of the Beijing municipality, inc ...

district of Beijing in November 1925.Gao, James, Z.,
Historical Dictionary of Modern China (1800-1949)
'. "West Hill Group". The Scarecrow Press, 2009. About half the KMT leadership attended the meeting.Perkins, Dorothy,
Japan Goes to War: A Chronology of Japanese Military Expansion from the Meiji Era to the Attack on Pearl Harbor (1868-1941)
' DIANE Publishing, 1997, p. 101. The group included

Lin Sen Lin Sen (; 16 March 1868 – 1 August 1943), courtesy name Tze-chao (子超), sobriquet Chang-jen (長仁), was a Chinese politician who served as Chairman of the National Government of the Republic of China from 1931 until his death. Early l ...

Ju Zheng Ju Zheng (; November 8, 1876 – November 23, 1951) né Ju Zhijun (居之骏), was a Chinese politician who was a leader in the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT, in the 1930s and 1940s. As president of the Judicial Yuan, he administered China's ...

Zou Lu Zou or ZOU may refer to: Places * Zou (state), Chinese state that existed during the Zhou Dynasty * Zou, Ivory Coast, town and sub-prefecture in Ivory Coast * Zou Department of Benin * Zou River of Benin * Zoucheng, formerly Zou County, in Jining, ...

, and Xie Chi. In the three-way struggle for party leadership that followed the death of

Sun Yat-sen Sun Yat-sen (; also known by several other names; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925)Singtao daily. Saturday edition. 23 October 2010. section A18. Sun Yat-sen Xinhai revolution 100th anniversary edition . was a Chinese politician who serve ...

, the group supported

Hu Hanmin Hu Hanmin (; born in Panyu, Guangdong, Qing dynasty, China, 9 December 1879 – Kwangtung, Republic of China, 12 May 1936) was a Chinese philosopher and politician who was one of the early conservative right factional leaders in the Kuomintang ...

against leftist

Wang Jingwei Wang Jingwei (4 May 1883 – 10 November 1944), born as Wang Zhaoming and widely known by his pen name Jingwei, was a Chinese politician. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang, leading a government in Wuhan in oppositi ...

and centrist

Chiang Kai-shek Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...

. Hu was Sun's intended successor, but he did not identify with the group.

History

The Nationalist Party had won a nationwide parliamentary election held in 1912. Lin Sen was selected Speaker in April 1913. In July, parliamentary government collapsed and the KMT leaders went into exile. Under Soviet sponsorship, the KMT and the Communist Party formed a "

united front A united front is an alliance of groups against their common enemies, figuratively evoking unification of previously separate geographic fronts and/or unification of previously separate armies into a front. The name often refers to a political a ...

" in 1923. This agreement allowed the KMT to receive Soviet arms and establish a foothold in

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

, a major city in southern China. The KMT and the communists were thus allies against the

Beiyang The term Beiyang (; pinyin: Běiyáng; Wade-Giles: Peiyang) literally means Northern Ocean.Clarence Martin Wilbur, Julie Lien-ying How,
Missionaries of Revolution: Soviet Advisers and Nationalist China, 1920-1927
', (1989), pp. 188-192. The group's first act was to pass a "Manifesto to Strike the Communist Faction from Party Register." On December 2, it passed a resolution to expel the four communist members of the KMT executive committee, as well as the five communist alternate members. (This included

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

, at this time an alternate member.) On December 4, the group voted to terminate the contract of Soviet agent

Mikhail Borodin Mikhail Markovich Gruzenberg, known by the alias Borodin, zh, 鮑羅廷 (9 July 1884 – 29 May 1951), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Communist International (Comintern) agent. He was an advisor to Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang (KMT) in ...

. On December 5, Wang was expelled from the KMT for a period of six months. Lin Sen2

Wang's supporters did not recognize these decisions. They argued that the meeting in Beijing had failed to achieve a quorum. Under the KMT bylaws, a quorum was fifteen full executive committee members. Only fourteen of the Western Hills attendees were full members. Lin Sen lent his prestige to the meeting by acting as convener. But otherwise he was detached, refusing even to comment on the resolutions. A "Society to Promote the Study of Sun Wenism," modeled after the KMT's various communist leagues, was created to promote non-communist views among KMT members. Wang responded to the Western Hills meeting by convening a Second National Party Conference in Guangzhou on 1 January 1926. The resolutions of a party conference overridden those of the executive committee, regardless of the quorum issue. The conference expelled the Western Hills participants from the party. Although the conference was a triumph for Wang and the left, it also provoked a reaction from those concerned about communist influence. Afterward, the Western Hills Group set up a rival KMT headquarters in Shanghai. The KMT suffered another split in January 1927. Wang's supporters began meeting in

Hankou Hankou, alternately romanized as Hankow (), was one of the three towns (the other two were Wuchang and Hanyang) merged to become modern-day Wuhan city, the capital of the Hubei province, China. It stands north of the Han and Yangtze Rivers wher ...

while supporters of military commander Chiang Kai-shek began meeting separately in Nanchang. In March, Chiang's forces captured Shanghai and Nanjing. On April 19, a "National Government" was proclaimed in Nanjing with Hu as party chairman and Chiang as military commander. This government represented a merger of the Shanghai and Nanchang factions. It immediately conducted a purge of communists and their allies. After intercepting a message from Moscow calling for a coup, Hankou purged its communists on 15 July 1927. In August, the Western Hills Group brokered a reconciliation between the Wang's Hankou-based faction and Chiang's Nanjing-based faction. Chiang resigned his position and took a trip to Japan to facilitate the reconciliation. With Hu chairman of a reunited KMT and Chiang absent, the Western Hills Group was for a brief interval the party's dominant faction. The field commanders, however, remained the kingmakers. On 6 January 1928, they restored Chiang as commander in chief. Hu, meanwhile, took an extended trip to Europe. In February, Chiang dismissed the Western Hills ministers and appointed the Chen brothers to prominent party organization and security positions. This "

CC Clique The CC Clique (), or Central Club Clique (), was one of the political factions within the Kuomintang (The Chinese Nationalist Party), in the Republic of China (1912–49). It was led by the brothers Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu, friends of Chiang Kai ...

" of

Chen Guofu Chen Guofu or Chen Kuo-fu (; 5 October 1892 – 25 August 1951), was a Chinese politician in the Republic of China. His given name was Zudao (), though he was also known as "Guofu (果夫)". He was born in Wuxing, Zhejiang, China (modern Huzh ...

and

Chen Lifu Chen Lifu or Ch'en Li-fu (; 21 August 1900 – 8 February 2001) was a Chinese politician and anti-communist of the Republic of China. Chen was born in Wuxing, Zhejiang, China (modern Huzhou). In 1925, Chen formally joined Kuomintang (KMT) in Sa ...

soon eclipsed and absorbed the Western Hills Group. When Hu returned in October, he was appointed president of the Legislative Yuan with Lin Sen as vice president. The Hu-Chiang alliance lasted until February 1931, when Chiang put Hu under house arrest. Although the Western Hills Group is often labeled "extreme right" or "far right," its resolutions called only for the expulsion of communists from the KMT. They did not exclude the possibility of cooperating with them. This position can be considered more moderate than that of Chiang, who pursued a series of "extermination campaigns" against the communists beginning in December 1930. However, the “right” and “left” labels of the Kuomintang itself seem to be determined by their opinion on communism and the CCP rather than concrete policies. Lin Sen served as Chinese president from 1931 to 1943. However, this was a nominal position without influence on policy. As for Ju Zheng, he administered China's court system from 1932 to 1947 as president of the

Judicial Yuan The Judicial Yuan () is the judicial branch of the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan.''See'' Constitution arts. 77-82, ''available at'' ''See'' Additional Articles of the Constitution art. 5, ''available at'' It runs a Constitution ...

.George Ernest Morrison, Hui-Min Lo,
The Correspondence of G. E. Morrison 1912-1920
', Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 378, note 2.

References

{{reflist, 1 1925 establishments in China 1928 disestablishments in China Kuomintang