The Visit of General Yang Hucheng to Spain

General Yang Hucheng (1893-1949), shown here during his visit to Spain in October 1937, was one of the architects of the second United Front that allied the Communist Party of China with the Kuomintang. There had been a previous one between 1924 and 1927 which followed the Comintern line that Communist parties in countries subject to colonialism, as was China, should associate with non-Communist parties, like the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang, in order to fight against imperialism.

Following the rupture of that Alliance in the spring of 1927, General Chiang Kai-shek, known as Generalissimo) had fought a number of campaigns against the Communists. However, while he was in the city of Xi’an in December 1936, he was kidnapped by two of his generals: Zhang Xueliang of the Army of the Northwest and Yang Hucheng of the Army of the Northeast, and forced to meet with a Communist delegation led by Zhou Enlai. The goal was to end the civil war between the two forces and created a new united front to prosecute the war against Japan. Chiang Kai-shek agreed, and the second United Front, which lasted from 1937 to 1945, began.

This coincided with the existence of Popular Front governments in France and Spain. There, as in China, the goal was to promote collaboration between the Communists and other political parties in order to confront the growing threat of fascism. Although official relations between the Spanish and Chinese governments were very limited, there were frequent references to and comparisons between Spain’s Popular Front and China’s United Front, in the Spanish, Chinese and international press.

During his visit to Spain, Yang Hucheng met with the Chinese community and gave a number of speeches that were covered by Spanish newspapers and radio. Emphasizing the antifascist nature of the two conflicts, he declared that “your war is the same as our war”. As it did in Spain, the war in China, which lasted more than a decade, claimed many lives, including that of Yang Hucheng. He was shot on Chiang Kai-shek’s orders in 1949, shortly before the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China.