On August 20, 1925, 48-year-old Liao Zhongkai and 32-year-old Chen Qulin were on their way to a meeting at the KMT Central Party Headquarters when Liao Zhongkai was shot in the face and killed as soon as he got out of his car. He was assassinated in front of the heavily guarded KMT Central Party headquarters.

　　On August 20, 1925, Liao Zhongkai, a Chinese democratic revolutionary, was assassinated in Guangzhou by the right wing of the Kuomintang; in April 1921, Sun Yat-sen established the Cantonese revolutionary government and appointed Liao Zhongkai as vice minister of finance; after the KMT was reformed in 1924, he was elected by Sun Yat-sen as a member of the executive committee of the Central Executive Committee. He had served as director of the Workers' and Peasants' Departments, KMT representative at the Huangpu Cadet School, provincial chief of Guangdong Province, director of finance, and commissioner of munitions. Chiang Kai-shek took advantage of the assassination of Liao Zhong-kai to seize military and political power in the Guangdong Nationalist government. Without any policemen guarding the main gate of the Central Party headquarters, the assassins fled without a trace. The assassinated Liao Zhongkai was taken to the hospital where he was admitted after his death: on August 20, 1925, 48-year-old Liao Zhongkai and 32-year-old Chen Qulin were on their way to a meeting at the Central Party headquarters when Liao Zhongkai was shot in the face and killed as soon as he got out of his car. He was assassinated in front of the heavily guarded KMT Central Party Headquarters.

　After the assassination of Liao Zhongkai, the KMT Central Executive Committee and the KMT Government Military Committee decided to organize a special committee to investigate the assassination. Chiang Kai-shek, who was invited to join the special commission, together with Wang Jing-wei, Xu Chong-chih, and others, took over the police authority from the political and military. Chiang Kai-shek was appointed commander of the Guangzhou garrison. After an investigation, Hu Hanmin, Xu Chongzhi, and others were suspected of being involved in this assassination of Liao Zhongkai and his wife, and were forced to leave Guangdong Province.

　Assassination is distinguished from murder and is limited in its scope of application. Assassination is the killing of an important political figure by illegal means for political purposes. Assassination can be broadly classified into the case where the party in power kills a political opponent in the broad sense, and the case where an anti-authority or anti-establishment faction kills the party in power, depending on the subject. Liao Zhongkai, a theorist from the KMT left faction who was a political opponent, was gunned down by the right faction within the KMT on August 20, 1925, and was succeeded by Chiang Kai-shek from the power side. Earlier, Chen Qimei, a key figure in the KMT, was assassinated by Yuan Shikai's assassins at the residence of Yamada Junzaburo in the French concession on May 18, 1916, and Chiang Kai-shek was declared the successor on the side of power.