Clio Walker | An original AI-assisted historical narrative checked against the Chiang Kai-shek Diaries and independent sources. This is not Chiang's own text or a submission by him. The diary sources are user-supplied electronic compilations and transcriptions, not a complete original manuscript.

November 5, 1920: "Took the train at five in the afternoon and reached Guangzhou at seven. Met Ruwei and Zhongyuan; their complaints poured out and could not be stopped."

On the afternoon of September 30, 1920, three men walked into the French consulate general in Guangzhou.

Li Fulin, Wei Bangping, and Huang Qiang, who represented Chen Jiongming.

Their request was an unusual one. They asked the consular body to notify the old military governor, Mo Rongxin, who was still in office, that they had chosen a new military governor, Tang Tingguang.

The consuls refused.

They had chosen a successor but could not make the man in office leave. Who, in this city, was really in charge?

1. The Weight of a Piece of Paper

Li and Wei had troops and local influence, but they had not yet been able to make Mo Rongxin give up his post. If the foreign consuls were willing to serve as messengers, the notice might carry far more weight than if they delivered it themselves.

Representatives of Britain, Portugal, Japan, and the United States met at the French consulate to discuss it. Their conclusion was that they could not, at the request of the side opposing the military government, carry such a message to the head of that government.

They had worries of their own. Guangzhou was crowded with foreign businesses and residents, and what they least wanted to see was fighting in the city.

A few months later, all of this could be reduced to one sentence: the Guangdong Army returned to Guangdong and drove out the Guangxi clique. But on that afternoon, events had not yet been reduced to a sentence.

That day Chiang Kai-shek had just set out from Shanghai. Before leaving, he called on Hu Hanmin to discuss arrangements for after Guangzhou was taken; on the ship he talked with Wang Jingwei and Liao Zhongkai. While he was still at sea, the people in the city were already using railways, police, river defenses, and negotiation to rewrite their own positions.

2. Railways, Police, and River Defenses

Li Fulin's base was in "Henan," the old name for the south bank of the Pearl River, not the province of Henan in the north. Wei Bangping controlled Guangzhou's police. Mo Rongxin relied on the old military and civil offices and the Guangxi troops.

No one was standing outside the city waiting for an order from Chen Jiongming. Each had his own position, his own bargaining chips.

On September 26, Li Fulin's side seized the Guangzhou–Sanshui railway to block the other side's reinforcements. The river defense forces also switched sides, and the situation on the water changed with them.

Making Mo Rongxin resign was not just a matter of shouting. Behind it, transport and troops were moving.

The old military government was not idle either. Its officials went to the consuls to ask them to mediate, hoping to avoid a battle in the city. The French consul made contacts between the sides and discussed finding a neutral place for them to meet.

3. Even a Letter of Advice Was Hard

After the meeting on September 30, the American consul general, Bergholz, proposed asking Huang Qiang to tell Chen Jiongming, Li Fulin, and Wei Bangping that the consular body was deeply concerned about an assault on the city and street fighting.

France, Portugal, and Japan agreed. The British consul general had left early, and when he learned of it afterward, he objected on the grounds that he had not been present.

Before a single letter of advice could speak for "the consular body," there had first to be an argument about who had been present and who had agreed.

Bergholz was annoyed that his British colleague had left early and put it in his report. This is the voice of one participant, not a consensus among the consuls.

In early October, Tang Tingguang was installed by his supporters in Henan. Mo Rongxin still did not resign. A consular telegram of October 10 even judged that Mo's position was improving and that an immediate battle had become less likely.

Later events would make that judgment look short-lived. But it preserves a moment: those watching the situation did not yet know what would happen next.

4. The Forces on the Map

By now Chiang had reached Shantou and then gone on to the commander-in-chief's headquarters at Laolong, writing operational proposals and helping the Second Army. What he could reach were front-line plans and colleagues in the army. How the various sides in Guangzhou dealt with one another cannot be seen in his diary.

Bergholz divided Guangdong into several forces. Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang was trying to return to power, with Chen Jiongming as its key local military man. Another group held the old civil administration and the provincial assembly, backed by Mo Rongxin and the Guangxi clique. And there was Li Yaohan and the forces around Zhaoqing, which had already turned toward "Guangdong ruled by the people of Guangdong."

Zhaoqing lay on the West River transport line, not in the city's Henan district. Those who did not hold the governor's yamen could still control the routes and sway which way local armed forces leaned.

5. In the City, but the War Was Not Over

In late October, events sped up at the front and in the city together. The leaders of the old military government left one after another, and Mo Rongxin withdrew. On the evening of the 28th, the arsenal exploded and caught fire. The next day, Chen Jiongming's troops entered Guangzhou, and there was still scattered gunfire at the railway station and in front of the governor's office.

Entering the city and handing over power did not split neatly on either side of midnight.

On November 6, Vice Consul Adams reported that heavy fighting was still going on along the North River and on the West River near Zhaoqing, and that Guangzhou was sending reinforcements there. He wrote separately about Chen Jiongming's own troops and the independent armed groups that said they had come over to him.

Supporting someone in name did not mean being in the same chain of command.

He also left a question mark: how would the various sides divide up the official posts, and could they keep cooperating peacefully?

6. Seals Changing Hands

In early November, Chen Jiongming publicly rejected the decision by Cen Chunxuan and Mo Rongxin to abolish the military government and end Guangdong's independence. His reasoning was that the earlier meeting of the governing council had lacked a quorum and could no longer speak for the military government; only the body maintained by Sun Yat-sen and the three other directors had the right to continue its business.

Troops controlled the city. This statement had to answer a different question: by what right could the new power issue orders?

Tang Tingguang still held the titles of military governor and civil governor. His official letter of November 3 said he had taken office as civil governor on October 29. Adams then reported that Tang was believed willing to give the post to Chen Jiongming, and that the title of military governor was expected to be abolished.

The man put forward to replace Mo Rongxin now had to hand the seal to a new master.

Chen Jiongming himself had asked not to hold the governorship as well, but to handle military affairs only. In the end he became both governor of Guangdong and commander-in-chief of the Guangdong Army. Appointment, receipt of the seal, and assumption of duties are dated differently in different records.

On November 13, Adams wrote down what he could confirm: the heads of foreign affairs and finance had taken up their posts, Chen Jiongming had formally assumed office, and the customs affairs had a new chief. Last week's expected list had, this week, partly turned into people actually sitting in offices.

The navy was another thread. Lin Baoyi declared his allegiance to Beijing, was removed as naval minister by the southern military government, and left by ship for Shanghai on November 7. The naval post was reportedly offered to Tang Tingguang. Whether Tang later refused every post in the southern government, Adams said plainly: the report was unconfirmed.

For someone recording a situation, sometimes the most useful sentence is an admission that he does not yet know.

7. He Stayed Only One Day

On November 5, Chiang took the train to Guangzhou and saw Xu Chongzhi and Deng Keng. The next day he left for Hong Kong. What he saw was a city still in the middle of a handover. That only a few familiar faces appear in his diary does not mean others were not at work.

In Hong Kong he toured Kowloon, admired how well the place was run, and was pained that Chinese land was at others' disposal. These are a visitor's feelings, not the findings of an inquiry into the administration of Guangzhou.

8. The First Order

In late November, Sun Yat-sen and the others returned to Guangzhou.

On December 1, Chen Jiongming, as governor, ordered a ban on gambling.

By now, "who is in charge" finally had a visible form: a person with authority issuing an administrative order to the whole of society. Whether it could be sustained, and how the lost revenue would be made up, were matters for the next step. But this was already different from the scene two months before, when foreign consuls had to be asked for help just to get a successor's name delivered into the military governor's office.

Reports from the time say Guangzhou had grown quiet, and business was still slow.

Mo Rongxin was gone, Chen Jiongming held the provincial government and the army, new officials were arriving one by one, and Sun Yat-sen was back in Guangzhou. But the city did not speak with only one voice. The army, the police, the civil administration, the finances, the consuls, and the merchants each still had their own strength, able to give a push or to hold things back.

Who was in charge in the city had not yet been settled. On his second day in Guangzhou, Chiang "resolved to return to Shanghai."

Sources and narrative boundaries

  1. Diary: the actual electronic compilation/OCR text for September 30; October 5, 11, 14, 20, 24, and 26; and November 5–9, 21, and 25, 1920, with surrounding entries, compared with the user-supplied DOCX and private R1 transcription. Chiang's feelings do not establish other people's intentions. No unavailable manuscript has been quoted, and the private source corpus is not reproduced.

2. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1920, volume I: document 472, Bergholz's September 28 report, published extracts; document 474, October 5, No. 144, 893.00/3589, published extracts, without any claim to have obtained the omitted portions; document 475, the October 10 Canton telegram forwarded through Beijing, whose U.S. receipt date is not the event date; document 476, Adams, October 30, No. 164, 893.00/3638; document 477, November 6, No. 168, 893.00/3645; document 478, November 13, No. 171, 893.00/3666, a published extract; document 480, Price, December 1, No. 87, 893.00/3690. All available published text was read. Diplomatic classifications, assessments, and rumors retain their attribution. The American reports together constitute one external source group.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1920v01/d472
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1920v01/d474
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1920v01/d475
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1920v01/d476
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1920v01/d477
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1920v01/d478
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1920v01/d480

3. Chronology of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, lower volume, pages 1104–1105 as identified by the database: the November 1, 1920 appointment, Chen's reply, and his public rejection of Cen and Mo's decision. The public chronology entries and transcribed telegrams were read. Their cited transmission sources include archival references, Dongfang zazhi, and Mao Sicheng's compilation; the underlying originals were not personally inspected. Chen's telegrams and the consular observations are independently generated texts, requiring separate evaluation rather than substitution for one another.
https://sunology.culture.tw/detail/b2c0233a32b79cbc55808296d701a959/
https://sunology.culture.tw/detail/de25b8694acf09ff7167a404d7fa998b/?seq=1

4. Geography: Canton is Guangzhou. Honam here denotes the historical area on the Pearl River's southern side, not Henan Province. Zhaoqing belongs to the West River corridor; Laolong lies on the upper Dong River. Neither is treated as an urban location in Canton. Events are associated only with supported city or regional references. No exact consulate, station, or hotel coordinates are presumed. A modern city reference point does not represent the boundary of Canton in 1920. Guangzhou's planning and natural-resources authority identifies Henan/Honam as the historical name of Haizhu:
https://ghzyj.gz.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/content/post_10821830.html

  1. This is original paraphrase, without invented meeting dialogue, walking routes, inner thoughts, or precise interior settings. U.S. government publications and historical telegrams supply factual evidence rather than reproduced protected text. The foreign consuls are neither omnipotent arbiters nor disinterested observers. Sources differ on the precise day of Sun and his colleagues' return; the narrative retains late November rather than forcibly harmonizing those dates.