Labor troubles, peasant uprisings and antiforeign riots alarmed property-owners in their own ranks and property-owners whose support they needed. Communists working with the Kuomintang, including Mao Tse-tung, were busy organizing rent strikes and anti-landlord demonstrations among 2,000,000 peasants of Hunan, and Mao was promising that soon all over China “several hundred million peasants will rise like a tornado…and rush forward along the road to revolution.” Chiang needed the support of landlord families. Communist organizers were equally active among the proletariat and labor unions of
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