The New Campaign of Hunan Representatives to Expel Zhang
# Date: 1920-02-28
# Source: en:MRP

The New Campaign of Hunan Representatives to
Expel Zhang (People’s News Agency dispatch,
February 28,1920)
In the attempt to expel Zhang Jingyao, the Hunan Petition Delegation has been in
Beijing for over two months now, during which time they have submitted their petition
to the government no fewer than ten times and have also requested an interview no
fewer than ten times, yet the government has still not made any response. Their last
mass petition gained no more than a promise that someone would be sent to conduct
a secret investigation. These representatives realize that the central government alone
can hardly be expected to punish Zhang at this time. In addition to making energetic efforts to influence the various offices that command actual power in Hengyang,
Chenzhou, Guangxi, and Guangdong, they are also contacting all those forces that are
connected in one way or another with these offices to help out. Because a delegation
was to be sent to Baoding to ask Cao Kun,74 inspector general of the four provinces of
Hunan, Sichuan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong, to exercise his authority as inspector general to give as much support as possible, representatives Luo Zonghan, Xiong Kexian,
Liu Ying, and others, went earlier to Baoding and got in touch with every important
person under Cao, all of whom expressed their strong desire to be of help. On the
seventeenth, the inspector general’s headquarters sent an aide to the place where the
representatives were staying to arrange a time for a meeting with the secretary-general
and the chief aide-de-camp. On the afternoon of the eighteenth, the representatives
went to the inspector general’s headquarters and enumerated the facts regarding the
disasters that Zhang had caused to Hunan. When they came to the more tragic and
painful events, everyone present was moved. Mr. Wang, the secretary-general, said,
“The crimes that Governor Zhang has committed in Hunan and the other things you
have related in your petition or told us personally have been known to us, and in even
greater detail. They have long been decried in the Chinese and foreign press, so they
are also widely and thoroughly known
to the public. Inspector General Cao has expressed his profound sympathy with the
request you have made.” The representatives submitted again to Mr. Cao materials
such as A Brief Account of Calamity in Hunan, A Brief Record of War Disasters in
73 The Girls’ Normal School in Changsha was known as Old Ricefield (Daotian) Normal School.
74 Li Yichun (1899–1984), from Changsha, was a graduate of Changsha Zhounan Girls’ School. She
joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1925.