‘The Revolutionary Women of the Canton Insurrection’ by H. N. from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 8 No. 11. March 1, 1928.

On December 11th 1927 the workers and soldiers of Canton engaged in a heroic fight against the white guardist regime of the landowners, capitalists and other reactionaries. The majority of the Canton garrison, two elite regiments of Kuomintang troops went over to the side of the proletariat in the night between the 10th of December, shot down their reactionary officers, tore off their Kuomintang badges, replacing them by red badges with the hammer and sickle, proclaimed the army parole “revolt” and placed themselves under the command of the Canton Soviet. The Red soldiers and the workers’ guard, which has been formed by the red trade unions, succeeded by this united attack in capturing the whole town of two million inhabitants, one of the biggest harbours of Asia, in an embittered fight within a few hours.

The workers organised mass meetings and proclaimed the establishment of Red Soviet Canton. Counter-revolution mobilised its whole military force against the Canton Commune without delay. Four divisions on war-footing, the whole Chinese war navy which was present, the cruisers and canon boats of the British, Japanese, American and French imperialists, the fascist organisations and the so-called “Mintuan”, the reactionary corps of bandits of the landowners were thrown into the fight against Soviet Canton. The Commune defended its existence heroically, to the last breath. After three days and three nights of uninterrupted fighting, Soviet Canton was defeated by the superior forces of the white enemies. The terror of reaction began; 4000 revolutionary workers, soldiers, peasants and civil guards were slaughtered.

In spite of having been overthrown so quickly, the Canton Soviet Power is “historically immortal” as was declared after its fall in a Manifesto of the Comintern. The Soviet Power was established, although for a short time, for the first time in Asia and in the colonies of the East altogether. The young Chinese proletariat has, in that short time, proved to be a gigantic, revolutionary force, it has stood the test as the undisputed leader and organiser of the fighting masses. Tens of thousands of workers took part in the Canton struggles. Far more than hundred thousand workers supported the Soviet Power either in one form or another.

The proletarian women took a particularly active share in the revolt and in the defence of the Commune. In the first ranks were the women Communists and the members of the Young Communist League. When the Canton district Executive of the C.P. of China resolved, at its meeting on November 26th, on preparing for the insurrection, on founding a Red Guard and on the military mobilisation of all the Party members, the women Communists and the members of the Young Communist League were also enlisted in the revolutionary work. They took a large share in the information service of the Party, in providing illegal quarters and meeting rooms, in the underground transport of arms etc.

The Party was obliged to make its preparations for the insurrection under conditions of strictest illegality and threatened by the most cruel white terror. As the proletarian class war developed tremendously even in the first months of Autumn 1927 and in view of the fact that demonstrations, strike movements and armed attacks on the Red trade union premises occupied by the police were on the order of the day, the reaction was expecting every day a revolutionary act on the part of the working class as a whole. It therefore made preparations, proceeded with a constantly increasing number of arrests, fired several times on demonstrating crowds and searched passers-by day and night for weapons and Communist agitation material. That was the time when the women Communists and the non-Party women in the Red trade unions rendered invaluable service to the revolutionary cause.

Towards the middle of November the political prisoners in the Central prison of Canton organised a prison-break, by means of which many of them recovered their freedom. In this action also the revolutionary women who were under arrest, played an important part. The women workers of Canton took part in all the public demonstrations and illegal meetings.

In the night of the insurrection, the courier and information service, upon the functioning of which depended the success of the revolt, was, to a considerable extent, in the hands of the women Communists and of the women members of the Red trade unions.

When the police headquarters, the strategical centre of counter-revolution was stormed by the Red Guard, hundreds of women from all the suburbs, especially from the workers’ quarters, hurried to the seat of the Canton Soviet and to the staff of the Red Guard in order to help in carrying through the insurrection. A young Communist woman participated in directing the storming of the Finance Ministry which was being obstinately defended by the reactionaries. The revolutionary troops in their hard struggle having no time and forces to spare for arresting the bourgeois and reactionaries who were flocking to the British ships, the revolutionary women organised shock troops armed with rifles and surrounded the wharves of the big shipping companies. The Red women troops barred the roads leading to the harbour, stopped the rich capitalists in their flight with their “goods and chattels”, arrested all the well-known reactionaries and suspicious elements, shooting down those who offered resistance and frustrated their plan of fleeing to Hongkong, the British crown colony.

After the victory of the insurrection, the fighting workers, soldiers and peasants were faced with the gigantic task of organising the revolutionary Power. Forces were lacking with which to accomplish the whole work in the shortest time. It was necessary to send every single worker, every revolutionary capable of fighting, every Communist, every youth comrade to the front against the approaching division of the enemy from the first hour of the establishment of the Soviet Power.

At that moment the proletarian women of Canton undertook the work of organisation behind the front with an exertion, of force, with a heroism and such cleverness that they aroused the general admiration. The whole task of provisioning the Red Army of 6000 men engaged in the combat was carried out exclusively by the Canton women Communards. With the help of the Red Guard these women fighters requisitioned the food stocks of the big rice store houses, organised the supply of food on transport wagons with the help of the Red transport workers’ union and provided the red troops engaged in the fight with food. In all the districts of Canton women were seen occupied with transporting cases of munition containing shells and cartridges to the army: sometimes in the midst of the enemy’s fire.

The participation of the red women and girls of Canton in the whole work of agitation and propaganda for the Soviet Power was also of the utmost importance. The members of the Soviets and of the Council of People’s Commissaries had no time for the general management of that extremely important sphere of work except at the hours of the night. The Council of People’s Commissaries issued the most important decrees, the Party Committee determined the slogans, the Agitprop Department of the Canton District Executive wrote the most important appeals and published the “Red Flag”, the paper of the Soviet government, of which a quarter of a million copies were distributed.

The chief question however was that of spreading the programme of the Soviet Power, its resolutions, Manifestoes and slogans. That task was brilliantly solved by the women. It was the women who posted up the documents of the Soviet Power on thousands of houses, fixed up the red linen streamers bearing the slogans of the insurrection in all the streets. They distributed the “Red Flag”, scattered pamphlets among the masses and wrote the ever recurring slogans “Long live Red Soviet Canton! All Power to the workers, peasants and soldiers!” in big red letters on the pavements. Shortly after the storming of the police headquarters when chaos and disorganisation still prevailed, a group of revolutionary women and girls set to work and began to establish a regular control of the entries and exits and organised distribution of the premises in the centre of the revolutionary power. Other groups of women organised a regular passport office, in which credentials, permits etc., were written and stamped for thousands of Communards in accordance with the regulations of the revolutionary War Council and of the Soviets.

On the second day of the insurrection the staff of the Red Guard already presented a firmer and more organised aspect. The arms, munition and equipment were gathered together in the building in which the staff had taken up quarters; the rifles and cartridges were handed out to the leaders of the separate divisions of the Red Army when they had special orders in writing. The distribution of weapons was carried out chiefly by red women and girls.

Needless to say, the entire ambulance service, rendering of first aid and transporting of a large number of wounded was for the greater part carried out by the women workers. In this work as in all other activities however, many women who belonged to the non-proletarian strata, to the poor of the town, regular hospital nurses in their Red Cross uniform, hospital employees and women students who remained at the side of their proletarian fellow-combatants to the last breath, took part.

Finally, the activity of the women Communards of Canton was very important in the Cheka, in detecting, arresting and punishing counterrevolutionaries, further as scouts and on patrol duty in the Red Army, in protecting the town against surprises by the enemy at night.

Many hundreds of the heroic women who took part in the Canton insurrection, paid for their self-sacrifice and activity with their lives and with tortures, when the wave of white terror swept over Canton with bestial ferocity. In the first days after the overthrow of the Commune the white executioners in their blind fury slaughtered any woman or girl with bobbed hair. In the first place the petty bourgeois intellectuals fell victim to their raging madness, amongst them in the majority of cases women and girls who had nothing to do with the insurrection but had merely committed the “crime” of wearing their heir according to modern European mode. A large number of the women communards and many women Communists succeeded in finding shelter in the numerous secret places of a town of two million inhabitants. It is not known how many of them had been butchered. The number of women martyrs, however, certainly amounts to several hundred.

The women and girls of Red Canton can be eradicated from the memory of all the workers, from the remembrance of the international proletariat, just as little as the women Communards of Paris to whose memory Marx dedicated an immortal work. The services rendered by the women Communards of Canton on the occasion of the insurrection in the armed fight, in the work of agitation, in the ambulance service, in the Commissariats, in the Cheka and in the Red Army are written in brazen letters in the history of the Chinese workers’ and peasants revolution.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

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