centre with a large worker class, so as to avoid conflict with British and Japanese interests in the Shanghai area. As the expedition progressed, Borodin moved together with the KMT government from Guangzhou to Hankou, which was merged with two other cities to form Wuhan. Chiang, who refused to move his headquarters from Nanchang to Wuhan, gradually came into conflict with the leftist-dominated KMT government from December 1926, and Borodin publicly disavowed him the following month. During his time in Wuhan, Borodin advocated a strategy of directing anti-imperialist feeling against Britain specifically, rather than other colonial powers such as America and France. A series of anti-British demonstrations carried out under Borodin's advice in December 1926–January 1927 led to the occupation of the concessions at Hankou and Jiujiang by NRA troops, forcing the British to agree to their return to Chinese jurisdiction in an agreement negotiated by Eugene Chen. In a startling turn of events, Borodin's wife Fanya was captured by White Russian mercenaries employed by warlord Zhang Zongchang whilst travelling on board the ship Pamyat Lenina between Shanghai and Wuhan on 28 February 1927, after which she was held hostage in Jinan, Shandong. Borodin's anxieties heightened even further in April 1927, when Chiang initiated a new purge of KMT leftists and communists, known as the "Shanghai Massacre". Borodin and the communists gave their backing to the left-wing KMT government in Wuhan led by Wang Jingwei and Eugene Chen against Chiang's rival Nanjing government. KMT attacks on communists and peasant leaders would continue, however, and even Wuhan army leader Tang Shengzhi's forces harassed local communist groups, preventing their access to Wuhan's armouries. Revelations in the Arcos Affair Borodin's activities were brought into the British political limelight during the Arcos Affair of May 1927. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin stated in parliament that his government had decrypted a telegram dated 12th November 1926 from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to the Soviet envoy in Beijing. The telegram read: According to Baldwin, this contradicted February 1927 statements by Soviet representatives in London to the effect that Borodin "was a private citizen in service of the Chinese government", and "that the Soviet government were not answerable for his actions". Baldwin declared that: "The denials of any responsibility for Borodin's actions...were therefore untrue and were made only in the hope of deceiving His Majesty's Government and the British public while under their cloak Borodin was,