Chapter 17 military intelligence work

The Northern Expedition began on July 1, 1926.By Dai Li's own account, he, like many other Whampoa cadets, left the military academy on Chiang Kai-shek's orders after the "purge" of April 15, 1927, to embark on the National Revolutionary Army's eastward march through Fujian and Zhejiang.Because there were not enough horses for the entire cavalry unit, some members of Dai Li's company dispersed by boat to Shanghai, where they were divided into two groups and stationed in Xuzhou and Suzhou respectively.Dai Li belongs to the group in Suzhou.However, what is different is that Dai Li's task is not to fight on horseback, but to scout and subvert the enemy.His specific task is to go ahead of the main force and report the enemy's military intelligence and front-line position.Once he reached the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas where he had "traveled" in his early years, Dai Li seemed to be at his fingertips. He sent back a steady stream of reports written in invisible ink for Jiang to read.

In short, those well-known areas triggered Dai Li's habit of gambling and cheating in the past, so his old illness relapsed. In the summer of 1927, when he and several other people came to Shanghai to buy gifts for Chiang Kai-shek who had just returned from the front, he left alone with the money and went to eat, drink, whore and gamble in Shanghai in Shili Yangchang.In the end, he ran out of money and had to borrow money from his cousin to buy a train ticket back to the camp.He was held in confinement for two weeks, but once released, he repeated his old tricks of corruption.In order to avoid punishment, he went to Nanjing to join Hu Jing'an. In July 1927, Hu was preparing to build Jiang's "Secret Investigation Team".Dai Li asked the newly appointed intelligence chief to take him in to take care of the children. At the same time, he told Hu that he left his original unit because he was accused of helping Hu cleanse Communist students in Huangpu.As a result, Hu Jing'an recommended Dai Li to the short-lived "secret investigation team".

When the "secret investigation team" began to disintegrate in the late summer of 1927, Dai Li found himself "traveling" in Shanghai again, sleeping at the house of his cousin Zhang Guanfu, looking for any opportunity he could find.To his surprise, this actually gave him the opportunity to do "a dog's work" for his old superior Chiang Kai-shek. On August 13 of that year, Chiang Kai-shek resigned his commander-in-chief after the Northern Expedition in the Huai River Basin did not go well and the government encountered difficulties in raising funds in Shanghai.He stayed in his hometown of Xikou for a while, and passed through Shanghai in September 1927, preparing to go to Japan for strategic exile.When Dai Li learned that his old boss was in the French Concession, he knocked on Jiang's door and volunteered to be his bodyguard.Soon after this, Chiang went to Japan on September 28.There he both persuaded Mrs. Song to let him marry her daughter and struck a deal with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiichi Tanaka, who agreed to help him fight the Communists, but at the same time urged Chiang to concentrate his forces south of the Yangtze River and leave the North to the north. To Zhang Zuolin and his impatient Japanese experts.

Meanwhile, Tang Shengzhi, Chiang's arch-rival in the army, was coerced by other generals into exile in Japan.After Wang Jingwei's failed attempt to convene the Fourth Central Executive Committee Plenary Session in Guangzhou, Wang agreed to meet with Chiang Kai-shek in Shanghai and discuss the possibility of a settlement.After Li Jishen was expelled from the city and Zhang Fakui, Chen Gongbo and other supporters of Wang Jingwei established their own government, Wang Jingwei took the action of "protecting the party and saving the country" on November 7, which consolidated his position.But his influence across the country has waned as party elders such as Hu Hanmin and Wu Zhihui despise him.Naturally, Chiang Kai-shek's status increased accordingly. In late November, Kuomintang leaders held talks at Chiang's mansion in the French Concession.Although the talks were adjourned inconclusively on December 10, 1927, Wang Jingwei was forced to invite Chiang Kai-shek to resume his post as commander-in-chief.Immediately after the talks, the Canton Commune revolt broke out on December 11, with the result that Wang Jingwei lost his base in Guangdong, while Chiang Kai-shek returned to Nanking on January 4, 1928, to begin rebuilding his military alliance. Five days later he regained his previous position as supreme commander in the Kuomintang government.

After Chiang Kai-shek was once again Commander-in-Chief and Soong Tzu-wen Minister of Finance, he apparently wanted to take advantage of this new opportunity to root out his enemies in the Kuomintang as much as possible and to reorganize some of the provincial party committees. On February 2, 1928, without the supporters of the Communist Party and Wang Jingwei, the second session of the KMT Executive Committee was held in Nanjing.The meeting accepted Chiang Kai-shek's proposal and decided that all propaganda should be based on Sun Yat-sen's "National Reconstruction Plan" (which was proposed before Sun came under the influence of the Communist Party), replacing the ideology of class struggle with the spirit of national reconciliation and mutual cooperation, Re-registration of party members after the disbandment of local party organizations, abolishment of various departments (peasants, women, youth, businessmen, etc.) responsible for mobilizing the masses for the united front during the Northern Expedition.The New KMT established only three departments: Organization, Propaganda, and Party Training.The CMC would be headed directly by Chairman Chiang Kai-shek, while within the army a political training department would be reorganized, headed by Dai Li's old patron and friend Dai Jitao.