As we all know, the Nanchang Uprising, which took place on August 1, 1927, fired the first shots against the Kuomintang reactionaries, and the Chinese Communists began a long journey of independently creating and leading armed forces. Although the rebel army once occupied nanchang city, due to the severe enemy situation in the surrounding area, it had to move south, and finally suffered a military defeat in the Chaoshan area.
The reasons for the ultimate failure of the Nanchang uprising were manifold, such as the disparity between the enemy and ourselves, the imitation of Russian experience in the decision-making of the leadership team, the failure to mobilize the masses more extensively, the failure to create base areas on the spot, and so on.
However, from the perspective of the insurgent army, since the troops of the uprising were not completely controlled by our Party, there were not many Communists in many rebel armies, they were not clear about the purpose of the uprising, and these troops were not transformed in time after the uprising, resulting in many rebel troops defecting one after another after withdrawing from Nanchang City, thus greatly weakening the strength of the rebel army. This cannot but be said to be an important reason for the failure of the uprising.
So, which was the largest unit that defected after the Nanchang Uprising? It was the Tenth Division of Ye Ting's Eleventh Army. This is a division with strong combat effectiveness and a personnel of about 5,000. The defection of this division reduced the strength of the rebel army by a quarter!
The number one rebel general who led this division to defect, whose name is not unfamiliar to everyone, is called Cai Tingkai. Because, everyone knows that he is a national hero who led the 19th Route Army to fight a war of resistance in Shanghai after the "128 Incident" in 1932. But little is known about what he did after the Nanchang uprising.
Cai Tingkai, like Ye Ting, is a native of Guangdong, born in Luoding in 1892 and graduated from the Army Lecture Hall of the Second Army of the Protectorate. Both he and Ye Ting were born in the First Division of the Cantonese Army, and both were comrades-in-arms and friends, and later served as division commanders in the Eleventh Army, which originally belonged to Chen Mingshu. Cai Tingkai was a loyal confidant of Chen Mingshu, and when Chen Mingshu left Wuhan in the spring of 1927 to join Chiang Kai-shek, Cai Tingkai had to temporarily commit himself to Zhang Fakui's Second Front.
On the eve of the Nanchang Uprising, Cai Tingkai participated in the Eastern Expedition to discuss Chiang Kai-shek's war, and his troops were stationed in the suburbs of Nanchang. Under the situation at that time, after Ye Ting's work, Cai Tingkai led his troops to participate in the uprising. Cai Tingkai was not optimistic about the future of the uprising, but the Nanchang uprising also gave him the opportunity to leave Zhang Fakui, and when the uprising was completed, Ye Ting proposed to return to Guangdong, which was exactly what he wanted.
On August 3, the 10th Division, as a left-wing vanguard force, took the lead in withdrawing from Nanchang, and on the 4th, it advanced to Jinxian County. At 8:00 a.m. on the 5th, Cai Tingkai sent troops to forcibly drive away the Communists in his unit, and then led the Tenth Division to break away from the rebel army and go east to defect to his old commander Chen Mingshu.
After Cai Tingkai defected, he accepted Chiang Kai's military expenses of 100,000 yuan and expanded it into the Eleventh Army. In 1930, Cai Tingkai participated in the Battle of the Central Plains, made military achievements for Chiang Kai-shek, and was promoted to deputy commander-in-chief of the Nineteenth Route Army. The following year, he led his troops into Jiangxi and participated in the second and third "encirclement and suppression" of the Red Army.
Although Cai Tingkai became a "generation of famous generals" in the Songhu War of Resistance in 1932 and was awarded the "Order of the Blue Sky and White Sun" after the war, he also became Chiang's "pawn" against the Red Army. In May 1932, after the Songhu Armistice, Cai Tingkai was promoted to the commander-in-chief of the 19th Route Army and was transferred to Fujian to "encircle and suppress" the Red Army.
Cai Tingkai gradually saw the true face of Chiang Kai-shek, and in November 1933, together with Li Jishen, Chen Mingshu, Jiang Guangnai and others, launched the Anti-Japanese and Anti-Chiang Kai-shek Fujian Incident. After the defeat, Cai Tingkai went abroad several times, traveled to Hong Kong and other places, and organized the Great Revolutionary Alliance of the Chinese Nation with Li Jishen, Chen Mingshu, Jiang Guangnai, and others to continue to publicize the idea of resisting Japan and saving the country. During the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, although Cai Tingkai went out to the mountains several times to resist Japan, he had no positions and no soldiers, and he could not achieve great deeds.
After the outbreak of the civil war, Cai Tingkai actively participated in the struggle against Chiang's dictatorship and established the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy in Hong Kong to make unremitting efforts to realize the country's democracy and reunification. At the beginning of 1949, Cai Tingkai was invited to Beiping as the chief representative of the Democratic Promotion Association and was elected as a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Cai Tingkai also held the post of vice-state level (vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference).
Conclusion: Returning to the sea after a thousand turns, although General Cai Tingkai led his troops to flee after the Nanchang Uprising and once became an accomplice of the Chiang clique's civil war, however, in the face of the great national righteousness, General Cai recognized the direction, resolutely broke with Chiang Kai-shek, persisted in the War of Resistance, and adhered to the original intention of serving the country and the people, and finally achieved positive results.