The theory of "releasing water" originally came from within the Kuomintang. During the period of the Nationalist Government, the anti-Chiang faction, represented by the southwest, criticized Chiang Kai-shek for his ineffective "suppression of the Communists" and for conniving at the Communists to weaken dissidents. This kind of "release of water" theory is mainly the need for anti-Chiang tactics, and is more based on speculation based on stance and subjective intentions.
After the breakdown of the KMT-CCP cooperation in 1927, anti-communism became politically correct within the KMT. The Xishan Conference faction, which had previously opposed the Kuomintang's policy of uniting Russia with the Communist Party, was reinstated, while Wang Ching-wei and other reorganized factions were once in a disadvantageous position in the Kuomintang political struggle because of their sluggishness in "splitting the Communist Party" and their ineffective anti-communism. In this political climate, accusing the Kuomintang of "conniving with the Communist Party" and "releasing water" became a frequent means used by the Kuomintang to attack political opponents. At the beginning of 1931, Chiang Kai-shek detained Hu Hanmin due to the dispute between the French treaty and France, which led to a confrontation between the southwest and Nanjing. One of the main excuses for the impeachment of Chiang Kai-shek by telegram in the name of the Kuomintang Central Supervisory Committee members was that Chiang Kai-shek "raised troops for self-respect," which caused the Chinese communists' red armed forces to become a prairie fire, and blamed Chiang Kai-shek's "connivance with the Communist Party" for the development and growth of the Red Army. This is probably the earliest version of Chiang Kai-shek's "release of water" Red Army theory.
After the defeat of the Great Revolution, the Communist Party of China once again held high the banner of opposing the rule of the Kuomintang, established numerous red regimes in the southern mountainous areas, and ignited the spark of revolution. Mao Zedong wrote in Why Can China's Red Regime Exist? The imbalance in political and economic development and the long-term division and war between the white regimes caused by the imperialist policy of divide and rule were important reasons for the existence of the red regime. In other words, the development and growth of the Red regime was not unrelated to the rivalry between Chiang Kai-shek and the various factions. But this does not mean that Chiang Kai-shek's theory of "releasing water" into the Red Army is valid.
The reason why Chiang Kai-shek focused his policy on dealing with the challenges of various factions within the Kuomintang in the early days of the Nationalist government was mainly because although the CCP established many red regimes during this period, it did not pose much threat to the central cities and transportation arteries. In contrast to the Red regime, the challenges of the KMT's factions were enough to threaten the survival of the regime. Therefore, in the early days of the Nanjing Nationalist Government, Chiang Kai-shek treated the local powerful faction as the main contradiction. However, even during the period of vigorous attack on the local powerful factions, Chiang Kai-shek still had a clear understanding of the "suppression of the Communists" and made this comparison between the "suppression of the Communists" and the crusade against the local powerful factions: "The rebels are still being used to make them obey the central government, and the bandits are harming the people, so they must be urgently suppressed." The strategy of "suppressing the Communists" has also been explored: "The officers of the anti-bandit forces must make them implement the armor protection law and promote local autonomy, so that the anti-bandit can be effective." ”
In the face of the accusations of "conniving with the Communists" in the southwest, Chiang Kai-shek regretted that he could not go to the front line to "suppress the Communists" in person after the dispute between the Covenant and France: "After the Hu Incident occurred, if he went to suppress the Communists in person, so that Chen Jitang and Gu Yingfen had no excuse, then the change may be suspended. However, when Chiang Kai-shek mobilized Chen Cheng, Jiang Dingwen, Wei Lihuang and other troops of the Central Army to participate in the third "encirclement and suppression" of the Jiangxi Soviet District and went to Nanchang to take command, the southwest immediately accused Chiang Kai-shek of "trying to conquer Guangdong by suppressing the Communists", "Now Chiang Kai-shek actually went to Jiangxi, and he still shouted about suppressing the Communists, but everyone knows that he is using the Communists to suppress the Communists"; He now plans to take the communist bandits as the vanguard, and Jiang Jun will follow behind, go straight to Chaoshan, and spy on Guangzhou. If this conspiracy is realized, the people of Canton will surely die at the hands of Chiang." And there is another proof: "When Zhang Huizan failed miserably and his head flowed into the Ganjiang River, he did not see the Jiang family in person; When Changsha fell and killed Yingcheng, he did not see the Jiang Supervisor, and now he was alone in the day when Liangguang opposed Chiang, and suddenly he had a hundred times the courage to go out in person. This is probably the earliest version of Chiang Kai-shek's theory of "releasing water" to the Red Army to unify the two Guangzhous. In short, from the southwest's point of view, Chiang Kai-shek's failure to "suppress the Communists" was "supporting the army and respecting himself," and "suppressing the Communists" was "using the Communists to suppress the Communists in an attempt to conquer Guangdong." In either case, it is difficult to escape the suspicion of "conniving with the Communist Party."
When accusing Chiang Kai-shek of "letting go of water" and "conniving with the Communists" became an anti-Chiang tactic, it was not so important whether this was true or not. The South China Review, which represents public opinion in the southwest, put it this way: "Don't we see that Chiang Kai-shek talked about suppressing the Communist Party three years ago? But how? On the one hand, in the name of suppressing the Communist Party, he scraped a large amount of money and sent it to the United States as a preparation for his overseas residence after his defeat in the year; On the other hand, he fabricated false words and slaughtered countless loyal comrades of the Chinese Kuomintang, but secretly sent Shao Liziqian to contact the communist cadres and formulate a secret agreement of 'division and cooperation': 'The communist bandits rule the countryside, and Allah rules the city', and there is no conflict of interests, so why not embarrass each other? Whether Chiang Kai-shek scraped money for the "suppression of the Communists" and sent it to the United States as an overseas residence for other Japanese officials is not in the discussion, and it will be put aside, but it is a fact that he slaughtered the loyal comrades of the Chinese Kuomintang.
According to Wang Qisheng's research, because the activities of the Communist Party in the Kuomintang were carried out secretly, it was difficult to distinguish who was the Communist Party in the process of "purging the party" and "splitting the Communist Party" in the Kuomintang. As a result, the number of non-Communist Party members killed in the "Qing Party" far exceeded the number of Communist Party members, and a considerable proportion of them were Kuomintang members. As for Chiang Kai-shek's dispatch of Shao Lizi to liaise with the CCP and conclude a partition cooperation, it was purely fabricated. When the southwest accused Chiang Kai-shek of "conniving with the Communists", Chiang Kai-shek himself shouted that he was wronged: "I heard that the puppet government of Guangdong has ordered a crusade, and it is said that the Yu Lian Communist Party is ineffective in suppressing bandits." Woohoo, there are still traitors in the world who endure their hearts to frame people to get here! ”
As the spiritual leader of the anti-Chiang faction in the southwest, Hu Hanmin personally wrote the article "The Policy of Complicity and Its Crisis" to summarize and summarize Chiang Kai-shek's "Complicity Communism". In the article, Hu Hanmin recounted Chiang Kai-shek's performance of "conniving with the Communists": "Before September 18, 1931, his policy was to use the suppression of Chi as a tool to eliminate dissident forces, and after September 18, 1931, he used the suppression of Chi to cover up his mistake of moving to Japan and surrendering, and using the slogan of 'to resist Japan must first suppress the Communists' in an attempt to maintain the trust and understanding of the people in him." At the same time, it still pursues its policy of eliminating dissent, and hopes to establish its private position as a descendant of force. The reason for the "indulgence of the Communists" was that Chiang Kai-shek shouted "suppress the Communists" and that "the situation of the Red Army was the same as before." In this article, Hu Hanmin noticed that the "suppression of the Communists" as a means was quite insightful, whether it was to cover up external mistakes or to cultivate descendants internally, but he ignored that the "suppression of the Communists" itself was also Chiang Kai-shek's goal. The logic of blaming Chiang for "conniving with the Communist Party" is to turn the effect into the cause.
Some scholars have pointed out that Hu Hanmin formulated a basic strategy for the southwest to oppose the actions of the central government, and worked against Chiang Kai-shek in almost all aspects. The role of this opposition mentality should also be taken into account when analyzing the southwest's accusations against Chiang Kai-shek's "connivance with the Communists." After reading this article, Feng Yuxiang wrote in his diary: "The Three People's Doctrine Monthly, after reading Mr. Hu's recent article, about Chiang's sending the Red Army to the west, is a very good thing. Feng Yuxiang and Hu Hanmin share the same anti-Chiang stance, so they can share the emotional pleasure of this article criticizing Chiang Kai-shek, and do not dwell on whether the facts are true.
During the fifth "encirclement and suppression" and anti-"encirclement and suppression" period, the southwestern side watched every move of Nanjing and the Red Army with great vigilance, worried about the conspiracy and calculations behind the "suppression of the Communists," and was especially worried that Chiang Kai-shek would deliberately force the Red Army to withdraw westward and that the central authorities would take the opportunity to enter Guangdong and Guangxi. The patriarch sent Xiao Focheng to Chen Jitang and pointed out: "The Jiang clan poured the country's troops into the south, called the suppression of the communists, and the communist army broke through and fled westward. When the communist army led its elite to attack our army in separate ways, they did not hear that the so-called central government imposed a soldier on the communist army's lair in order to contain the effect of the attack. Jiang Zhi's intentions are especially obvious. "The most important thing to pay attention to is to prevent Chiang's army from taking the opportunity to follow me under the pretext of pursuing the communist army, which will catch me off guard." Hsiao Focheng's statement is subjective speculation and suspicion of Chiang Kai-shek's intentions under the Southwest-Nanjing confrontation. This kind of speculation is relatively common in the southwest, but because it is speculation, there are often contradictions.
Li Jishen said: "The central government originally wanted to drive the people into the two Guangdongs, but the plan did not succeed, but now it has changed to a long-term encirclement style, but we always have a good way to deal with it." Li Zongren said: "As far as the principle of strategy is concerned, the central government should build blockhouses in all directions, besiege them heavily, and make the communist army have no way to escape, and the entire army will be wiped out on the spot." …… However, the strategic deployment of the central government this time opened the gap to the southwest and pressed the communist army to the west. The two Li both accused Chiang Kai-shek of deliberately driving the Communists into the two Guangdong, and it seems that they can refer to each other. However, Li Zongren also said in his memoirs: "The central authorities planned to kill people with a knife, so they allowed the communist army to enter Guangxi and did not follow the pursuit," and "if we have no choice but to open the net, we should also open the gap to Fujian and Guangdong provinces, and drive the communist army to the coastal areas and eliminate them; for example, in the 16th year of the Republic of China, He and Ye Nan were finally defeated by Li Jishen and Huang Shaohong in the Chaoshan area, which is an excellent example." He and Ye refer to He Long and Ye Ting. In October 1927, He Long and Ye Ting led the Nanchang uprising troops south, encountered snipers in the Chaoshan area, and most of them were scattered. After the cited materials are complete, it is not difficult to find that Er Li's statement is actually contradictory. Li Jishen judged that Chiang Kai-shek's intention was to drive the Communists into Guangdong, while Li Zongren believed that Chiang Kai-shek should have driven the Communists into Guangdong, but he drove the Communists into Guangdong.
Unlike the anti-Chiang faction in the southwest who accused Chiang of "conniving with the Communists" and "releasing water", Chiang Weiguo and others described the theory of "releasing water" into the Red Army's Long March as Chiang Kai-shek's deliberate "wise" strategy of running Sichuan for the rear of the Anti-Japanese War. Jiang Weiguo said in his autobiography: "On the whole, it was not so much that the CCP broke through without the success of the encirclement, but that we released the water", "If we don't look at it as a whole, there is no way to understand why we released the water." Anyone who studies history understands strategy, and those who understand strategy can better understand history." The strategy in Chiang Weiguo's mouth refers to the central forces in Nanjing "following the communist army into Yunnan-Guichuan to achieve real reunification of China." "It was a very successful political strategy for the time."
Whether it was the anti-Chiang faction in the Kuomintang in the 30s who accused Chiang Kai-shek of "conniving with the Communist Party" and "releasing water," or Chiang Wei-kuo and others' various statements about Chiang Kai-shek's "releasing water" of the Red Army to run Sichuan as the rear of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, they were not academic views in the strict sense, and they all carried a certain utilitarian intention. With the opening and accessibility of relevant archival materials, especially the diaries and archival materials related to Chiang Kai-shek, new progress may be made in academic research. Judging from these materials, there are indeed many doubts about some of Chiang Kai-shek's words and deeds.
Judging from what was said, in Chiang Kai-shek's diary, on October 30, 1934, he wrote: "This month passed: A. Xingguo Ningdu Shicheng was completely recovered; B. Traversing the provinces of Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Henan, Hebei and Shandong; C. Bandits fleeing westward; D. Extension of the conference; E. The experience of one's own health is unharmed, which is a gift from nature and God; Ji, Jin and Lu army transferred to Jiangxi; Geng, Sichuan affairs gradually stabilized; Xin and Xinjiang were opened to traffic. This is all the good news of unity. The text also regarded the Red Army's westward retreat as good news for reunification. Diary of December 29: "If it is a plan against the Japanese and the principle of using the suppression of bandits as a cover to resist Japan, to avoid civil war, so that the Japanese can take advantage of no gaps, and to win the sympathy of the public, it is still a matter of pro-suppressing the remnants of the bandits in Sichuan and Guizhou as the basis for running the southwest base area, and it is not a policy. This diary is the easiest way to associate the "release of water" Red Army from the westward retreat with the operation of the rear of the Sichuan Anti-Japanese War. Judging from Chiang Kai-shek's behavior, the suspicious points are such as the weakness of the southwest line in the east, west, north and south "encirclement and suppression" layout; At the critical moment of "encirclement and suppression", Chiang Kai-shek left Jiangxi to start a trip to the northwest for more than a month; Wait a minute. On the basis of these suspicions, some scholars, combined with other relevant sources, also believe that Chiang Kai-shek was suspected of "releasing water" into the Red Army.