‘A Cubist Picture’: The Soviet Menace in China, 1918–27

Abstract

Even before the Great War ended in 1918, the potential threat from Bolshevik Russia began to impinge on the consciousness of British intelligence in East Asia and over the next fifteen years, in the guise of the Comintern, it developed into the main challenge to the British stake in the region both in China and in the colonies in South-East Asia. For British interests in China the threat was to become particularly serious, because Bolshevism was able to flourish in that country as it descended into the anarchy of the warlord years, and moreover appealed to Chinese radicals because it provided an ideological rationale for China’s plight and their desire to liberate themselves from the shackles of Western imperialism.¹ The Comintern was to prove a difficult foe for Britain to resist, and the struggle against its influence was to reveal many problems with the provision and interpretation of intelligence and to exacerbate the tensions already revealed in the Great War between the diplomats and the intelligence-providers. These tendencies were strikingly revealed in 1927 when a drastic intelligence failure led to the sudden emergence of a threat to British interests in Shanghai and the despatch of a division of British troops to secure the city.