In April 1927, Communist Communist leaders were captured and beheaded by the National Revolutionary Army in the Shanghai coup. The National Revolutionary Army killed and wounded many Communist Party members and factory workers who rioted in the course of the arrests.

　　In April 1927, Communist leaders of the Communist Party of China were captured and beheaded by Nationalist government forces in the Shanghai Coup. The Shanghai coup led to the third Shanghai riot in the Republic of China on April 12, 1927, when armed workers' denunciation units responded to the Northern Expedition. They attempted to resist orders to disarm by the right faction of the National Revolutionary Army. The Nationalist Workers' Inspection Corps was attacked by the Nationalist Revolutionary Army. The KMT fired on and massacred workers and civilians who demonstrated against the use of force. They ordered the dissolution of the KMT leftists and Communist trade unions, and occupied the building of the General Federation of Trade Unions. The Chinese Nationalist Party called it the Qing Party, while the Communist Party of China called it the April 12 Counterrevolutionary Political Rebellion and the April 12 Disaster Plan. The Nationalist Revolutionary Army killed or wounded many Communist Party members and factory workers who caused riots in the process of arrests.

　Around the time of Sun Yat-sen's death in Beijing on March 12, 1925, Chinese workers went on violent strikes in Shanghai and Qingdao, mainly in textile mills owned by Japanese capitalists. In response to the strikes, Japanese capitalists, Northern warlords, and British police forces joined forces to suppress the strikes. On May 15, 1925, Japanese supervisors and British police killed and wounded more than a dozen striking Chinese workers in Shanghai, and on May 30, a large protest demonstration led by about 2,000 students was held, with nearly 10,000 Shanghai citizens shouting for the overthrow of imperialism. British policemen opened fire, resulting in the May 30 Incident, which left 10 dead and 15 seriously injured.

　On September 7, 1926, the National Revolutionary Army liberated Hankou, an industrial city on the Yangtze River coast; on January 4, 1927, the British concession in Hankou was recaptured by the Chinese people; after three major strikes from February 19 to March 21, workers of the Shanghai General Workers' Association rose in arms on March 22, enabling the National Revolutionary Army's Shanghai Finally, on March 24, Nanjing was recaptured by the National Revolutionary Army. Eventually, on April 18, the Nationalist Government under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek and others was established in Nanjing.

　The Northern Expedition progressed with the shedding of the blood of many Chinese. South and Central China, which had been the British sphere of influence, was liberated by the Nationalist Revolutionary Army. The next phase of the Northern Expedition was directed mainly toward North China and Manchuria, the sphere of influence of the Japanese forces. It ignited the Japanese military rulers into an armed struggle in the Sino-Japanese War.