The Beijing Coup d'État and the Merchants
(July 11, 1923)

The present coup d'état has startled the merchants, who have persistently ignored
politics, and made them suddenly look up and pay attention to politics. This is
most welcome news! On June 14, the Shanghai General Federation of Merchant
Street Associations¹ put out a declaration calling for the convening of a national
assembly to deal with national affairs. The Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce,² in accordance with a resolution passed by its membership at a general
meeting on June 23, has issued a declaration to the whole nation which reads in
part:

We venture to proclaim with sincerity to the Chinese and to the foreigners
that from the fourteenth of this month, the people of our nation do not recognize any of the various actions, whether in domestic or in foreign affairs, that
have been taken by Cao Kun,³ Gao Lingwei, et al., since their usurpation of
political power as being the actions of qualified representatives of the state. In
addition to sending telegrams to all top provincial military and civilian officials asking them to maintain peace and order and the status quo within the
areas under their jurisdiction, we shall seek, together with the people of the
whole nation, to devise an appropriate solution to the problems of reconstruction and of planning a better future.

This article was originally published in the Communist Party organ Xiangdao zhoubao
(henceforth Xiangdao), No. 31-32, July 11, 1923. Our translation is based on the text as
reproduced in Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 1, pp. 87-90.
1. The Shanghai General Federation of Merchant Street Associations was inaugurated
on October 26, 1919. It was formed as an umbrella organization for the numerous city
street unions that emerged during the shopkeepers' strikes of the May Fourth Movement.
The federation became the voice of the small merchant enterprises, mostly shopkeepers
who owned their own premises.
2. The Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce was established in 1902 as an organization to represent the commercial interests of important businesses, bankers, merchants,
and industrialists against the foreign threat. In the early 1920s the group remained dominated by the old elite comprador merchants and the powerful Ningbo group. Its membership was limited by high annual subscription fees, and a powerful directorship of wealthy
merchants controlled decision making.
3. Cao Kun, leader of the Zhili clique and military governor of the northern provinces,
led a coup that ousted Li Yuanhong and imposed himself as leader of the Beijing government on June 13, 1923. He officially assumed office as president on October 10, 1923.
4. Gao Lingwei, member of the Zhili clique and associate of Cao Kun, was appointed
acting prime minister of the new Beijing government.

At the same time, the General Chamber of Commerce resolved not to recognize the parliament, which "cannot represent the people's will," and moreover to
organize a committee for people's rule as an organ for dealing actively with
national affairs. This action of the Shanghai General Federation of Merchant
Street Associations and the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce may be considered
as the first instance of merchant involvement in politics, and as a manifestation
of the fact that the merchants, who for three years had remained silent, now
speak in awesome tones.

The present political problem in China is quite simply the problem of the
national revolution. To use the might of the people to overthrow the warlords
and also to overthrow foreign imperialism, which colludes with the warlords in
their evil acts such is the historic mission of the Chinese people. This revolution is the task of all the people. Among the Chinese people as a whole, the
merchants, workers, peasants, students, and teachers should all alike come forward to take on responsibility for a portion of the work of revolution. But
because of historical necessity and the trend of current realities, the task that the
merchants should shoulder in the national revolution is more urgent and more
important than the work that the rest of the Chinese people should take upon
themselves. We know that the politics of semicolonial China is a politics of the
dual oppression of the warlords and foreign powers, which have banded together
to fetter the people of the whole country. Under the politics of this kind of dual
oppression, the people of the whole country naturally all suffer profoundly together. Nonetheless, the merchants are the ones who feel these sufferings most
keenly, most urgently. Everyone knows that the lijin⁵ and customs duties are two
life-and-death matters for the merchants. The urgent demand of the merchants
that the lijin be reduced and that customs duties be raised is the expression of
their most immediate interests. But abolishing the lijin and raising the customs
duties is not something that can be easily done, for abolishing the lijin would
hurt the interests of the warlords, while raising customs duties would also hurt
the interests of the imperialists. If the lijin were abolished completely, the warlords would get thinner day by day, and the merchants fatter. Then the merchants
would only have to rise up and "give a shout" in order to overthrow the warlords.
But the clever warlords will certainly not do anything so stupid as to lift a stone
in this way to crush their own feet. And if the customs duty on foreign goods
were raised considerably, or if we even went so far as to abolish the treaty tariffs
and replace them by protective tariffs fixed by China itself, thus unshackling the
Chinese merchants, the domestic industry and commerce would develop more
rapidly, and foreign goods would no longer be able to gain a foothold in China.
The cunning foreign imperialists are even less likely to do something this stupid.
Consequently, abolishing the lijin and increasing customs duties are quite simply

5. The transportation tax on goods moved within the country, commonly transcribed
likin in English-language sources of the period.

matters of life and death both to the foreign imperialists and to our own warlords.
This absolutely cannot be achieved through some comical order by Li
Yuanhong, as though at the sounding of a reveille. If we also consider how just
recently Cao Rui and Jin Yunpeng sabotaged the Shanghai textile merchants'
demand that the state provide public loans for the textile industry, and how the
foreign diplomatic corps wrecked the demand for a national ban on the export of
cotton, we see further and sufficient proof that the position of the foreign powers and warlords on the one hand, and of the merchants on the other, are incompatible. All of this bitterness has been personally tasted by those dignified
merchants like Mr. Mu Ouzhai who attended the general conference of the
Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce on the 23rd of last month!
Hitherto the merchants have always "dearly loved peace," and have never
imagined that political reform required a revolution, and could not be achieved
with just a few telegrams on "reducing troops, drawing up a constitution, and
managing finances." Still less did they imagine that they themselves would have
to participate actively in the revolution, and that only by calling for the organization of all the people and creating a broad mass movement could a revolutionary
force be created. They even believed that political reform did not require a
political party, going so far as to criticize the revolutionary efforts of the
Guomindang as superfluous. If we compare this childish and timid mentality of
the merchants in the past with the present situation, how can we stifle a laugh? In
the past there were also some merchants with a superstitious faith in America.
They firmly believed that America was a good friend who helped China; they
did not realize that America is actually the most murderous of hangmen. If we
consider such actual recent examples as how America schemed to help Cao Kun,
who was opposed by the merchants and by all the people of China, to usurp
political power, and how it exerted every effort to obstruct the demand of the
merchants for a ban on exporting cotton, and so on, it becomes apparent how

6. Li Yuanhong, former military governor of Hubei and member of the Guomindang,
was vice president of the first republican government in 1912. He was president of the
Beijing government at the time of the 1923 coup.
7. Cao Rui, Cao Kun's younger brother, was civil governor of Zhili province from
1917 until June 1922.
8. Jin Yunpeng, former army official of the Zhili clique, was prime minister in Beijing in 1920-1921.
9. In late 1922 the Association of Chinese Spinning Mill Owners requested an embargo on cotton exports, which was then approved by official decree by the Beijing
government. The petition was made in response to a worldwide rise in the price of raw
cotton which inconvenienced Chinese mill owners and led to a buying up of Chinese
cotton by Japanese mill owners. Protests from the Japanese, with the support of the foreign
diplomatic corps, led the Chinese government in May 1923 to abrogate its earlier decree.
10. Ouzhai appears to be a variant of the zi, Ouchu, of Mu Xiangyue, president of the
Shanghai Cotton Exchange. On Mu, see, above, the relevant note to the article of April 10,
1923, "The Foreign Powers, the Warlords, and the Revolution."

wrong it is to have a superstitious faith in America. Judging from the actions of
the Shanghai merchants in response to the coup d'état, we know that they have
already changed their attitudes, cast away their pacifism, adopted revolutionary
methods, and drummed up the courage to shoulder responsibility for national
affairs; they have progressed remarkably fast! From their anger at the American
schemes of aggression against China, as evidenced in the telegram of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and the Banking Association opposing the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Overseas Chinese Association for "taking advantage of the struggle of our people in the movement for democracy, to make
proposals to our national government, singing loudly a tune that surreptitiously
implies joint control of China and falsely suggesting that the Chinese Chamber
of Commerce and banking circles have already agreed," we can see that they
have been at least partially cleansed of their bad name as "Chinese merchants
who fawn on foreigners."
The Shanghai merchants have arisen and begun to act. We hope that merchants outside Shanghai will all rise up together and act in unison. The present
crisis is one of extreme urgency, as though the fire were already singeing our
eyebrows, and does not permit us idly to fall asleep once more. At present, we
must unite the people of the whole country to carry out the revolutionary movement. It is not a time that allows the merchants to continue to split into factions.
It must be understood that the foreign powers and the warlords are the common
enemy of all the merchants, as well as of the whole nation. Moreover, the
advantages obtained after the success of the revolution will be common advantages. It is absolutely essential that we unite and struggle together to overthrow
the common enemy in order to secure the common interest. We hope that the
merchants of both Tianjin and Beijing will not be deceived by Cao Rui and a
group of "bureaucratic capitalists," that the merchants of Hankou will not be
manipulated by Wu Peifu, but that they will rise up together and take united
revolutionary action with the merchants of Shanghai. The broader the unity of
the merchants, the greater will be their influence, the greater their strength to
lead the people of the entire nation, and the more rapid the success of the
revolution!
In conclusion, we must still address the following warnings to merchants
throughout China. First, the great enterprise of revolution is no easy matter,
above all in the circumstances of China, a country where the revolution is subjected to twofold repression by the foreign powers and the warlords. Only if we
call upon the merchants, the workers, the peasants, the students, and the teachers
of the whole country, as well as all the other members of our nation who suffer
under a common oppression, and establish a closely knit united front, can this
revolution succeed. We must put into practice the proclamation of the General
Chamber of Commerce calling for "solving [this problem] together with the
people of the entire nation." We must not repeat the previous mistake that the
United Association of Merchants and Teachers made of rejecting the participa-

matters of life and death both to the foreign imperialists and to our own warlords.
This absolutely cannot be achieved through some comical order by Li
Yuanhong, as though at the sounding of a reveille. If we also consider how just
recently Cao Rui' and Jin Yunpeng sabotaged the Shanghai textile merchants'
demand that the state provide public loans for the textile industry, and how the
foreign diplomatic corps wrecked the demand for a national ban on the export of
cotton, we see further and sufficient proof that the position of the foreign powers and warlords on the one hand, and of the merchants on the other, are incompatible. All of this bitterness has been personally tasted by those dignified
merchants like Mr. Mu Ouzhai who attended the general conference of the
wrong it is to have a superstitious faith in America. Judging from the actions of
the Shanghai merchants in response to the coup d'état, we know that they have
already changed their attitudes, cast away their pacifism, adopted revolutionary
methods, and drummed up the courage to shoulder responsibility for national
affairs; they have progressed remarkably fast! From their anger at the American
schemes of aggression against China, as evidenced in the telegram of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and the Banking Association opposing the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Overseas Chinese Association for "taking advantage of the struggle of our people in the movement for democracy, to make
proposals to our national government, singing loudly a tune that surreptitiously
implies joint control of China and falsely suggesting that the Chinese Chamber
of Commerce and banking circles have already agreed," we can see that they
have been at least partially cleansed of their bad name as "Chinese merchants
who fawn on foreigners."
The Shanghai merchants have arisen and begun to act. We hope that merchants outside Shanghai will all rise up together and act in unison. The present
crisis is one of extreme urgency, as though the fire were already singeing our
eyebrows, and does not permit us idly to fall asleep once more. At present, we
must unite the people of the whole country to carry out the revolutionary movement. It is not a time that allows the merchants to continue to split into factions.
It must be understood that the foreign powers and the warlords are the common
enemy of all the merchants, as well as of the whole nation. Moreover, the
advantages obtained after the success of the revolution will be common advantages. It is absolutely essential that we unite and struggle together to overthrow
the common enemy in order to secure the common interest. We hope that the
merchants of both Tianjin and Beijing will not be deceived by Cao Rui and a
group of "bureaucratic capitalists," that the merchants of Hankou will not be
manipulated by Wu Peifu, but that they will rise up together and take united
revolutionary action with the merchants of Shanghai. The broader the unity of
the merchants, the greater will be their influence, the greater their strength to
lead the people of the entire nation, and the more rapid the success of the
revolution!
In conclusion, we must still address the following warnings to merchants
throughout China. First, the great enterprise of revolution is no easy matter,
above all in the circumstances of China, a country where the revolution is subjected to twofold repression by the foreign powers and the warlords. Only if we
call upon the merchants, the workers, the peasants, the students, and the teachers
of the whole country, as well as all the other members of our nation who suffer
under a common oppression, and establish a closely knit united front, can this
revolution succeed. We must put into practice the proclamation of the General
Chamber of Commerce calling for "solving [this problem] together with the
people of the entire nation." We must not repeat the previous mistake that the
United Association of Merchants and Teachers made of rejecting the participa-