Government of the Republic of China in Wuhan in the context of "Northern expedition"

The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The purpose of the campaign was to reunify China, which had become fragmented in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution. The expedition was led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and was divided into two phases. The first phase ended in a 1927 political split between two factions of the KMT: the right-leaning Nanjing faction, led by Chiang, and the left-leaning faction in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei. The split was partially motivated by Chiang's Shanghai Massacre of Communists within the KMT, which marked the end of the First United Front. In an effort to mend this schism, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as the commander of the NRA in August 1927, and went into exile in Japan.

The second phase of the Expedition began in January 1928, when Chiang resumed command. By April 1928, the nationalist forces had advanced to the Yellow River. With the assistance of allied warlords, including Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang, the nationalist forces secured a series of decisive victories against the Beiyang Army. As they approached Beijing, Zhang Zuolin, leader of the Manchuria-based Fengtian clique, was forced to flee and was later assassinated shortly thereafter by the Japanese. His son, Zhang Xueliang, took over as the leader of the Fengtian clique, and in December 1928, announced that Manchuria would accept the authority of the nationalist government in Nanjing. With the final piece of China under KMT control, the Northern Expedition concluded successfully and China was reunified, heralding the start of the Nanjing decade.

Wang Zhaoming (4 May 1883 – 10 November 1944), widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician and poet who was president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang (KMT), leading a government in Wuhan in opposition to the centrist Nationalist government in Nanjing, but later became increasingly anti-communist after his efforts to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party ended in political failure.

Wang was a close associate of Sun Yat-sen for the last twenty years of Sun's life. After Sun's death in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the centrist faction of Kuomintang, gradually became dominant among the party. Wang remained inside the Kuomintang, but continued to have disagreements with Chiang. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Wang accepted an invitation from the Japanese to form a collaborationist government in Nanjing, of which he served as the head of state until his death shortly before the End of World War II in Asia. Although he is still regarded as an important contributor in the 1911 Revolution, his collaboration with Imperial Japan is a subject of academic debate, and the typical narratives often regard him as a traitor with his name becoming synonymous with treason.

Wuhan is the capital of Hubei, China. With a population of over eleven million, it is the most populous city in Hubei and the seventh-most-populous city in China. It is also one of China's nine national central cities.

Wuhan historically served as a busy city port for commerce and trading with some crucial influences on Chinese history. The name "Wuhan" came from the city's historical origin from the conglomeration of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang, which are collectively known as the "Three Towns of Wuhan" (武汉三镇). Wuhan lies in the eastern Jianghan Plain, at the confluence of the Yangtze river and its largest tributary, the Han River, and is known as "Nine Provinces' Thoroughfare" (九省通衢). Wuhan was the site of the 1911 Wuchang Uprising against the Qing dynasty which ended 2,000 years of dynastic rule. Wuhan was briefly a capital of China twice, in 1927 under a left wing Kuomintang (KMT) government, and in 1937 as a provisional wartime capital during World War II. In 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city was the site of the Battle of Wuhan. On December 31, 2019, SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus that later caused the COVID-19 pandemic, was first discovered in Wuhan and the city was the location of the first lockdown of the pandemic in January 2020.

The July 15 Incident (Chinese: 七一五事变), known by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the July 15 counter-revolutionary coup (Chinese: 七一五反革命政变), and as the Wuhan–Communist split (Chinese: 武汉分共) by the Kuomintang (KMT), occurred on 15 July 1927. Following growing strains in the coalition between the KMT government in Wuhan and the CCP, and under pressure from the rival nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, Wuhan leader Wang Jingwei ordered a purge of communists from his government in July 1927.