Chinese Kuomintang security forces hung the head of 42-year-old Ding Xishan, a Chinese Communist guerrilla leader, from a city wall in February 1948 and made it public. A silent crowd gathered around the dead body of the Communist guerrilla.

     Chinese Kuomintang security forces prepared to hang the head of 42-year-old Ding Xishan, a guerrilla leader of the Chinese Communist Party, on the city wall in February 1948. The security forces cut off the head of Ding Xishan, the guerrilla leader, and hung it on the city wall for public viewing. A silent crowd gathered around the bodies of Ding Xishan and other Communist guerrillas. Some of the Communist guerrilla troops were captured and shot, and their corpses were exposed on the river beach outside the city walls of Shanghai. This photo shows the execution of Chinese Communist Party members by the Kuomintang.

　On February 13, 1948, the Chinese People's Liberation Army led more than 60 guerrillas southward by Ding Xishan, a guerrilla commander in the Suzhou-Zhejiang border region. When they reached the Hu Jia dock in Qianqiao, Fengxian County, Shanghai, they were surrounded by Kuomintang troops on a tip-off from a traitor. The Communist-led guerrilla force, led by Captain Ding Xishan, failed to mount an armed attack on the Songjiang County seat of Shanghai. The guerrillas were captured and their key members were killed by the Songjiang garrison security forces by execution. The leader, Ding Xishan, was beheaded in public and his head hung from the city wall for public viewing. After the liberation of Shanghai, Ding Xishan's remains were buried in the Shanghai Longhua Aristocrats Cemetery.

　In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek of the Chinese Nationalist Party staged a coup d'etat in the name of cleaning up the party and began to hunt down and kill Communist Party members; on July 15, 1940, the Japanese military puppet regime of Wang Jingwei staged a coup d'etat, completely destroying cooperation with the Communist Party and starting a long civil war between the two. After the end of the War of Resistance against the Japanese in 1945, China once again fell into civil war with the Communist Party of China. During the period of mutual hostility, the KMT arrested, publicly executed, and killed CCP members on numerous occasions. Mao Zedong of the People's Republic of China, who had defeated the Kuomintang in the Chinese Communist Revolution of the Chinese Civil War, officially proclaimed the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949.