1928

The year in brief

In May 1928 Japanese soldiers and Chiang Kai-shek’s troops clashed at Jinan. The Japanese took the city, and thousands of Chinese were killed, most of them civilians. On 4 June officers of the Kwantung Army blew up the train of Zhang Zuolin, the ruler of Manchuria, near Mukden; his son went over to Nanjing. In the Jinggang Mountains the units of Zhu De and Mao Zedong joined forces, and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party named its forces the Red Army. On 27 August fifteen states signed the Kellogg–Briand Pact in Paris, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy; it provided for no sanctions. In the USSR the first Five-Year Plan began: Stalin built heavy and armaments industry at the expense of the countryside. In November Herbert Hoover was elected President of the United States.