White Terror (mainland China)

In modern Chinese history, White Terror (Chinese: 白色恐怖; pinyin: Báisè Kǒngbù) describes a period of political suppression enacted by the Kuomintang party under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. It began in 1927 following the purge of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai.

On April 12, 1927, Chiang initiated a purge of Communists from the Shanghai Kuomintang and began large-scale killings in the "Shanghai massacre of 1927". Chiang's forces turned machine guns on 100,000 workers who had taken to the streets in labor union demonstrations, killing more than 5,000 people. Throughout April 1927 in Shanghai, more than 12,000 people were killed or had disappeared. The killing in Shanghai drove most of the Communists out of the cities and into the rural countryside. The greatest slaughter took place in the countryside. The White Terror in China took millions of lives, most of them in rural areas. The Chinese Communist Party was virtually extinguished. At the beginning of 1927, the Chinese Communist Party had about 60,000 members. By the end of the year, no more than 10,000 remained.

The White Terror continued throughout the Chinese Civil War, and also resulted in the assassination of a number of prominent Communists, leftists, and democrats such as Wen Yiduo, which lasted until the end of the Civil War in 1949.