The serial case caused by the assassination of the newspaper king Shi Liangcai was horrified step by step, and both the concubine and the provincial chairman were killed

On November 13, 1934, Shi Liangcai, the king of the newspaper industry and the general manager of the "Declaration", accompanied by Shen Qiushui, the wife of the second room, and his son Shi Yonggeng, returned to Shanghai from Hangzhou in a bulletproof car. Also accompanied were niece Shen Lijuan and son's classmate Deng Zuqian. When we reached the vicinity of Wengjiabu in Haining County, an open-top Buick crossed the front and suddenly appeared 6 gangsters armed with barge guns and dressed in black. Shi Liangcai and his son's classmates and drivers were killed on the spot.

The 6 killers were all agents of the Kuomintang military command, so why did they assassinate Shi Liangcai? This has to start from the grudge between Shi Liangcai and Chiang Kai-shek. Born in 1880 in a merchant family in Qingpu County, Shanghai, Shi Liangcai became the chief writer of the Shanghai Times in 1908, the general manager of the Declaration in 1913, and in 1929 he successively purchased most of the equity of the Newspaper and the Current Affairs News, becoming the largest newspaper capitalist in China. Shi Liangcai believed that newspapers were the tongue of the people, and that only by speaking for the people could they stand up, and often published the works of left-wing writers in newspapers.

Shi Liangcai

Shi Liangcai boasted that in the Shanghai Concession, the Kuomintang government could not help it, and often criticized the Actions of the Kuomintang Government. The "Declaration" successively published articles by Lu Xun and Tao Xingzhi under the pseudonym "Do not remove the court grass Jaifu" opposing chiang kai-shek's regime. When Shi Liangcai attended the Nanjing Economic Conference in the name of Zhongnan Bank, he refused to subscribe for huge bonds, but donated a huge amount of money during the Shanghai Anti-Japanese War of the Nineteenth Route Army. These actions aroused chiang kai-shek's jealousy.

In June 1932, the post of president of Nanjing Central University was vacant for nearly half a year, and the Executive Yuan sent Duan Xipeng, vice minister of education, to take his place. The students were extremely dissatisfied with the bureaucratic politician Duan Xipeng, which triggered a student uprising and an incident of beating the principal. The Declaration reported the incident truthfully, arguing that the greatest source of the growing corruption of education was the intrusion of bureaucracy and criticizing the many political and military measures of the Kuomintang government. Zhu Jiahua, then minister of education, immediately reported it to Chiang Kai-shek. In August 1932, the Shanghai Police Command was instructed by Chiang Kai-shek to ban the mailing of the Declaration in all areas outside the Shanghai Concession. Later, after shi liangcai's mediation, Chiang Kai-shek lifted the ban, but asked the Kuomintang Central Propaganda Department to send personnel to guide the editing and distribution of the "Declaration," which Shi Liangcai categorically refused.

At the end of 1933, Soong Ching-ling drafted an English manifesto in the name of the Chinese Civil Rights Protection League to protest chiang kai-shek's assassination of Deng Yanda. Yang Xingfo translated it into Chinese and asked Shi Liangcai to try to publish it. Although Shi Liangcai was not published in the "Declaration", he was published in other media through connections. Chiang Kai-shek was forced to make up his mind to get rid of Shi Liangcai. This case is one of the three major political murders ordered by the supreme ruler after the founding of the Republic of China, and it is another bloody case after the bloody cases of Song Jiaoren and Yang Xingfo.

The occurrence of the "historical case", coupled with the fact that Gu Zhutong had previously blatantly killed journalist Liu Yusheng during his presidency of the Jiangsu Provincial Government, caused an uproar in public opinion throughout the country. The Kuomintang Military and Political Department had to issue a "Directive on Protecting Journalists." Under the pressure of public opinion, Chiang Kai-shek sent a telegram of condolences to Shi Liangcai's relatives and, on the other hand, he falsely inscribed an elegy saying "Philosophers wither away." The Kuomintang government also pretended to arrange investigations and solve cases, and offered a reward of 50,000 yuan to arrest the murderer.

Who knows, Lu Diping, a famous General of the Kuomintang and former chairman of Zhejiang Province, did not know the details and actually seriously investigated it. But some people also say that Lu Diping did this only by admiring Shi Liang from the bottom of his heart. Some people also say that Lu Diping, because he is not a concubine of Chiang Kai-shek, is afraid that he will become a victim in the "historical case," so he simply investigates the case clearly. Chiang Kai-shek was annoyed that Dai Kasa and others had not done a good job of doing a clean job in the "historical case." Soon, Chiang Kai-shek used the excuse of ineffective handling of the case as an excuse to transfer Lu Diping away from Zhejiang and ordered Dai To secretly instruct Zhao Wenlong to attack him. At a banquet on March 15, 1935, Lu Diping was poisoned and died. Chiang Kai-shek again pretended to be sorry for Lu Diping.

At that time, it was said that Lu Diping could not be rescued by a stroke, but it aroused the suspicion of his wife Ding Jing'an and his concubine Sha Zuo'an. One is that Lu Diping does not have high blood pressure and other diseases, and the other is that they have seen the embarrassment of Lu Diping's death with their own eyes, and heard some hidden feelings from his murmur when he was dying. Sha Zuoan threatened to wash away Lu Diping's grievances. Zhao Wenlong and others simply did not do two things at a time. As a result, Sha Zuoan actually "jumped off the building and was martyred". The assassination of Shi Liangcai and the serial cases it triggered were not resolved.