This Week in China's History: The Assassination of Zhang Zuolin
June 4, 1928
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Dawn comes early in the Manchurian summertime. So on June 4, 1928, the sun was already up when a train approached the bridge at Huanggutun, Liaoning, at about 5:30 am. The brightening light revealed the bodies of two Chinese men lying on the tracks, their pockets filled with documents detailing an elaborate assassination plot.
The train was making its way west, having left Beijing about one in the morning. Twenty carriages long and bright blue, the train stood out — but this was especially so for the eighth car, which was not normal rolling stock but a custom-built private car. Inside was a man who was, in effect, the uncrowned president of the Republic of China, arguably its most powerful militarist — and the target of the putative plot: Zhang Zuolin.
Zhang’s career had been eventful, to say the least. His slight frame and delicate features seemed at odds with his reputation for ruthlessness and ambition, which had earned him the nickname the “tiger of Manchuria.” For decades he had played Chinese, Russian, and Japanese interests against one another, enlisting in the Qing army to fight against the Japanese in 1894, then joining a bandit gang. Zhang was coldly pragmatic, offering his gang’s services to the Qing army during the Boxer movement of 1900, then working for the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-5. But whoever was paying him, Zhang Zuolin was always working for himself, and as the Qing dynasty neared its end, Zhang’s army maintained authority in Manchuria.
When the 1911 Revolution broke out, Zhang resisted calls to declare Manchuria independent but kept his loyalties sufficiently vague that all sides solicited his help in the brief civil war. Correctly perceiving that Yuan Shikai would emerge as China’s leader, Zhang threw his support behind Yuan and was one of the few who stayed with him to the end, all the while maintaining his forces in Manchuria. While others fought over titles and recognition, Zhang remained focused on his position in the Northeast. Yuan died, the Republic faltered, and China disintegrated, but Zhang remained in place. By 1920, Zhang’s control was unassailable, and recognized by the central government — such as it was — with the title Governor-General of the Three Eastern Provinces.
As the 1920s progressed, Zhang’s power increased in part because of the support he received from the Japanese. It was in Japan’s interests to keep China divided, but not chaotic. Zhang’s authority in the Northeast counterbalanced not only the scores of rival militarists across the country but also the Guomindang and its plans to reunify the Republic under their rule. Zhang grew to become the most powerful warlord in China, and the de facto head of state when his clique took control of the capital in Beijing, but he was never able to extend his power across the entire country.
Japan’s support for Zhang was partly based on the assumption that he could be manipulated or bribed into supporting Japanese interests. This assumption was plausible given Zhang’s biography: his loyalties appeared fickle, able to be swayed by strategic and/or financial opportunities. And indeed, since before the 1911 revolution Zhang had enjoyed Japanese military and economic backing in exchange for his support in suppressing anti-Japanese sentiment and facilitating Japanese expansion in the region. But while flexible loyalties were one asset for a leader of Zhang’s ilk, another one was ego. Zhang’s commitment to serving a Chinese state even to the idea of China may have fallen short of solid, but he was unflaggingly committed to serving the interests of Zhang Zuolin. As long as Japanese interests aligned with Zhang’s — for instance, when both wanted to expand power at the expense of the Chinese central government — their partnership went swimmingly.
But by the mid-1920s those interests had begun to diverge. The Manchurian economy had grown quickly in the early years of Zhang’s rule, but as time went on his policies, and various external forces had fueled inflation and other economic challenges. In addition, the population became increasingly disillusioned with foreign power in China. To maintain his popularity, Zhang began resisting the expansion of Japanese interests in the region, to the frustration of policymakers in Tokyo.
The unrest at home — that is, in Manchuria — coincided with both expansion and conflict south of the Great Wall. In 1926, Zhang captured Beijing, a feat that during this “warlord era” usually meant he would become president of the Republic of China. He never took that step, though a year later he did declare himself “generalissimo” and at the same time began conducting imperial rituals, prompting rumors that he would declare himself emperor. Meanwhile, the Guomindang’s Northern Expedition threatened Zhang’s autonomy in the northeast.
The Northern Expedition put Zhang’s relationship with Japan under pressure, and as it turned out more pressure than it could bear. Japan hoped to avoid directly intervening in China’s civil war, as long as its interests in China would be protected. They had looked to Zhang Zuolin to ensure that those interests were safe, but Zhang was becoming increasingly reluctant (or unable) to maintain his power at the expense of Chinese nationalist sentiment directed at Japan.
For his part, Zhang had long relied on Japanese support to protect his power from internal rivals, but as Zhang’s ability or willingness to deliver waned, Japanese support for Zhang diminished, further weakening him. And as Zhang weakened, his importance to the Japanese did as well. From the Japanese perspective, Zhang Zuolin was either an unreliable ally or a potential threat.
Facing advancing Nationalist armies and wavering Japanese support, Zhang decided to abandon the capital for Manchuria, boarding his special blue train early in the morning of June 4, 1928. As soon as he did, Japanese officers hurried to their offices to cable operatives in Shenyang to put into effect their plan to remove Zhang Zuolin from the board.
The plan had been hatched by Colonel Kōmoto Daisaku, a Japanese officer who had taken it upon himself to solve the “Manchurian problem” that was bedeviling Japanese strategists. Historian Danny Orbach, in his book A Curse on this Country, describes Kōmoto as infatuated with the “last samurai” Saigō Takamori, who had rebelled against the Japanese government in the 1870s in an attempt to stave off Western influence and the demise of imperial rule. Kōmoto was, in Orbach’s words, “bold, daring but disobedient, fond of adventures and quickly bored with day-to-day military routine,” and he put these traits to use in a plan that was meant to rid Japan of a major stumbling block to its Manchuria policy and provoke a war that would invite Japanese intervention. The plan was secret and in direct defiance of Japanese government policy. To throw investigators off the scent, Kōmoto and his co-conspirators used their underworld connections to find three morphine addicts with grudges against Zhang Zuolin, whom they convinced to join an operation to bring down the warlord. “That was correct, of course,” Orbach writes, “but the three beggars could not guess to what end.”
The three men were taken into custody, putatively to be briefed for their mission. One of them, sensing something was amiss, escaped and fled, but the other two were taken to Kwantung Army headquarters where they were bayoneted to death. Documents detailing a Guomindang plot to assassinate Zhang were planted on the bodies along with some weapons and ammunition, hoping to distract blame from the Japanese.
The rails running from Beijing to Shenyang were under Zhang’s control, and theoretically safe for Zhang to travel, and of course, Zhang had ample protection on board the train itself. Kōmoto’s plot relied on the arrangement that Chinese soldiers (e.g.., Zhang’s guards) were not allowed in the right of way of the South Manchurian Railway (SMR), a Japanese company responsible for railroads (and much more) in northeast China. About 100 miles southwest of Shenyang, an SMR bridge crossed the railway, giving the assassins access to the train.
Kōmoto’s accomplices rigged explosives on the bridge crossing the track. They detonated just as the train was passing beneath it, precise intelligence about which car Zhang was riding in having been provided by the Japanese officers in Beijing. The bridge collapsed onto the train below, killing Zhang’s traveling companion immediately, and mortally wounding the Old Marshal himself, who died a few hours later (though his death was not revealed for more than two weeks).
The elaborate plan achieved its immediate goal by murdering Zhang, but Kōmoto’s larger goal of an uprising by Zhang’s armies that would invite Japanese intervention foundered. The bodies of the two men murdered as red herrings were placed amid the wreckage, but they failed to persuade anyone — in part because the conspirators had written the supposed plans in Japanese — notwithstanding the fact that the third victim, who had escaped, reported his encounter to the local authorities. Japanese military leaders. — caught completely off guard — conducted an “investigation” that vaguely implicated the framed Chinese vagrants and denied any association with the killing.
If anything, the assassination slowed Japanese expansion into Manchuria — the exact opposite of what Kōmoto intended. With Zhang Zuolin dead, the Guomindang’s path to victory in the Northern Expedition may have been easier. Zhang Xueliang, Zhang Zuolin’s son, assumed power in his father’s place, and allied with the Guomindang, producing a more serious obstacle to Japan’s plans. It would take another three years, using another false-flag railroad bombing, before Japanese armies would invade and pry Manchuria away from the Chinese republic.
Image: By Unknown author - http://bbs.voc.com.cn/archiver/tid-1558629-page-9.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18005506