causes of the chinese civil war essay

World History Edu

• Chinese Civil War / Mao Zedong

Chinese Civil War: History, Causes & Effects

by World History Edu · June 14, 2023

The Chinese Civil War was a protracted conflict that took place in China from 1927 to 1949 between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT). Here are the key aspects of the Chinese Civil War:

Demise of the Qing Dynasty and the rise of regionalism

The Chinese Civil War can be traced back to the power struggles and tensions between the CCP and the KMT, which began in the early 20th century. After the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and its last ruler Emperor Puyi in 1911, the KMT, led by Sun Yat-sen, sought to establish a modern and unified China.

Believing the 1911 Revolution had achieved its goal, Sun stepped down as provisional president of the Republic of China (ROC) and handed power to Yuan Shikai, a former military officer in the Qing Dynasty.

It turned out that Shikai was only interested in amassing power and reestablishing monarchy in China. This was evident in his decision to crown himself emperor of China. As a result of Shikai’s poor management of the country, China was plagued by regional warlords and increased foreign intervention. Sun was basically expelled from the government in Beijing and had to go into exile.

Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) was Provisional President of the Republic of China from January to March 1912.

Sun Yat-sen’s forced alliance with the Soviets

After the death of Shikai in 1916, Sun returned from exile and took up the task of restoring order to the country by getting rid of the various warlords that controlled large parts of China.

Operating from his headquarters (HQ) in Guangzhou in southern China, Sun and the KMT went to great lengths to see to it that China was reunified, even if it meant securing assistance from the Soviet Union.

The Sun-Joffe Manifesto, also known as the Sun-Joffe Declaration, was a joint statement issued in January 1923 by Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT), and Adolf Joffe, a representative of the Soviet Union. The manifesto outlined their shared vision for cooperation between the KMT and the Soviet Union. Here are the key points of the Sun-Joffe Manifesto:

• The manifesto emphasized the importance of cooperation between the KMT and the Soviet Union, recognizing the shared interests and goals of both parties.
• The manifesto affirmed the commitment of the KMT and the Soviet Union to the principles of nationalism and anti-imperialism. They aimed to oppose foreign imperialist powers and secure China’s independence and sovereignty.
• The manifesto expressed solidarity with the workers and peasants of China, advocating for their rights and improved living conditions. It highlighted the importance of agrarian reform and protection of workers’ rights.
• The manifesto called for military collaboration between the KMT and the Soviet Union to strengthen China’s defense capabilities. It proposed the establishment of a military academy in Guangzhou (Canton) to train Chinese officers.
• The manifesto called for political and economic reforms in China, including the establishment of a democratic republic, protection of civil liberties, and modernization of industry and agriculture.
• The manifesto emphasized the importance of international cooperation and the need for China to actively participate in international affairs. It sought diplomatic recognition and equal treatment from other nations.

Quote by Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China

Did you know…?

Many western nations, including the United States, initially turned down request for aid from the KMT. As a result, Sun Yat-sen had to look for assistance from the Soviet Union. However, the cooperation between the KMT and the Soviets faced challenges and eventually led to disagreements and conflicts, particularly with regard to ideological differences and power struggles within the KMT.

Rise of Communism and the Communist Party in China

The Sun-Joffe Manifesto represented a significant moment in Chinese history, as it marked the early collaboration between the KMT and the Soviet Union. The manifesto also included pledges by the KMT and the Comintern (i.e. the Communist International) to corporate with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the purpose of China’s unification.

The CCP, founded in 1921, gained traction during the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in rural areas, where they garnered support from peasants by advocating for land redistribution and social reforms. The CCP, led by Mao Zedong , developed strong guerrilla warfare tactics and formed rural base areas, such as Yan’an, which served as a center for Communist activities.

The First United Front – a KMT-CCP alliance formed to end warlordism in China

In the same year the Sun-Joffe Manifesto was declared, Chiang Kai-shek, a protégé and one of Sun’s trusted lieutenants, was sent to Moscow to acquire both military and political skills.

Upon his return, Chiang was placed in charge of the Whampoa Military Academy where military officers and generals were trained to vanquish the various warlords and steer China towards unification. One of such military officers was Zhou Enlai, who would later become a leading member of the CCP and the first premier of the People’s Republic of China.

Formed in 1924, the First United Front would see KMT collaborate with the CCP in order to vanquish the various regional warlords that had sprung up following the demise of the Qing Dynasty. Under the guidance of Sun, the military arm of the KMT – the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) – included some members of the CCP.

Third Plenum of the KMT (Kuomintang) Central Executive Committee. Mao is third from the right in the second row.

Upon the death of Sun in 1925, Chiang became the leader of the KMT. He would spearhead a shakable KMT-CCP alliance and lead the National Revolutionary Army in its military campaign to remove the Beiyang (Beijing) generals and other warlords from power.

The Beiyang generals were members of the Beiyang government who rose to power beginning around the rule of Yuan Shikai in 1912. Following the death of Shikai in 1916, those generals began competing for power, ushering in the Warlord Era (1916-1928).

Ultimately, the NRA, under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, would go on to defeat the Beiyang Army in 1928, marking the start of the Nanjing decade (1928-1937). However, Chiang had to contend with growing resentment from some left-wing members of the KMT, many of who were based in Wuhan.

It must be noted that CCP sort of tagged along with KMT because it hoped to use the military might of the KMT as a means to spread its communist ideologies. Basically, the KMT-CCP alliance was a marriage of convenience as both sides had ideological differences.

The White Terror and the Onset of the Chinese Civil War

The death of Sun in 1925 in so many ways caused cracks to appears within the KMT. Ideological differences and power struggles within the KMT caused the KMT to splinter in two – the right-wing, which was led by Chiang in Nanjing (Nanking), and the left-wing, which was led by Wang Jingwei in Wuhan.

Chiang’s faction was of the view that the Soviets were in cohort with the left-wing of the KMT and the CCP in order to destroy the KMT from within.

On the other hand, the Soviets feared that China under the leadership of Chiang would slip into the orbit of Western capitalists; therefore, the Soviets channeled a lot of aid, including military, to the CCP.

In the first few months of the Northern Expedition, leadership of the KMT began to slip into the hands of the left-wing. This was evident in the decision of the KMT to transfer their HQ from Guangzhou to Wuhan.

In April 1927, Chiang and the right-wing of the KMT deemed Communist activities as threats to the Nationalist revolution. Prior to that, there were even rumors of a plot to arrest Chiang.

Fearing the worse, Chiang and his allies began a brutal purge of Communists and left-wingers in the KMT. The April 12 Purge, which came to be known as the Shanghai Massacre or the White Terror, saw Chiang’s Nationalist faction round up and eliminate many leading Communists, especially in Guangzhou and Changsha.

In Shanghai, Chiang solicited the help of Du Yuesheng, the leader of the criminal organization Green Gang, to carry out attacks against the Communists. Using an emergency decree, Chiang disarmed the military wing of the Communists in Shanghai as hundreds of union workers were arrested.

It’s been estimated that the White Terror claimed the lives of several thousands of people, with many of them being peasants. Many atrocities, including public beheading, were perpetrated by the KMT and its allies against people they deemed radicals.

Undoubtedly, the Chiang-led purge of Communists in the KMT was the number one reason why China was plunged into a civil war in the late 1920s.

Owing to the sheer horror unleashed by the KMT, the Soviet Union severed its ties with the Chiang-led government. Wang, the leader of the Communist faction in the KMT, was left with no option than to flee China, leaving the Wuhan government to die out.

With the Communist wing removed from power, Chiang and his right-wing nationalists ushered in the Nanjing government, which had the full support of the NRA and western powers and businesses.

The KMT government prided itself with following Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People (also known as the San-min Doctrine) – nationalism, welfarism, and democracy. As a result, it received a quick approval as the legitimate government of China from the international community aligned to the west.

On the other hand, Chiang was denounced by the exiled Communist members as a big traitor to the revolution and the ideals of Sun Yat-sen. Despite being vastly outnumbered and outgunned, the few surviving Communists banded with the CCP and began an armed conflict with the KMT.

In late 1927, communist insurrections sprouted in quite a number of places, including Changsha, Nanchang, Hunan, and Guangzhou. However, they were quickly put down by the Chiang regime. In Hunan, Mao Zedong’s Communist uprising in September was crushed, and thereafter many Communists retreated to the mountains of Jiangxi. There, they formed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that would champion the cause of the CCP in the decades that followed.

KMT defeat of Beiyang warlords during the Northern Expedition

KMT-CCP conflict: 1927-1937

In the immediate aftermath of the White Terror, many CCP leaders, including Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Liu Bocheng, came together to form the Red Army (also known as the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army) to end what they saw as the tyrannical reign and suppression of dissent by the KMT.

The left wing of the KMT collaborated with the CCP to stair up resent among the peasants in rural areas. Known as the Nanchang uprising, the conflict was the first major conflict between the Red Army and the KMT’s National Revolutionary Army.

Zhu De (second from right) photographed with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai (second from left) and Bo Gu (left) in 1937.

The Nanchang Uprising – August 1927

The Nanchang Uprising took place on August 1, 1927, in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province, China. At the time, the CCP and the KMT were in a tenuous alliance against warlords and foreign powers. However, the alliance quickly disintegrated due to growing tensions and ideological differences between the two parties.

The primary objective of the Nanchang Uprising was to seize control of Nanchang and establish a revolutionary base area for the CCP. The uprising aimed to spark a larger armed rebellion against the KMT government and promote the spread of communism.

CCP military commanders of the Nanchang Uprising (L-R): Ye Ting, Zhou Enlai, and Zhu De

The uprising was led by a group of communist military officers, including Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, and He Long. Zhu De was appointed as the overall commander of the rebel forces.

The uprising began with the rebels seizing the Jiangxi Army Training School and the Nanchang arsenal. They managed to capture key government offices and briefly held control over Nanchang. However, the rebel forces faced strong opposition from the KMT troops and were unable to hold the city for an extended period.

After facing heavy resistance and lacking sufficient reinforcements, the rebel forces were forced to retreat from Nanchang. They marched southward to establish a new revolutionary base in the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi Province. This retreat is often referred to as the “Long March of the Red Army.”

The Autumn Harvest Uprising

The Autumn Harvest Uprising occurred in September 1927 in the context of the growing tension and conflict between the CCP and the KMT. After the split between the two parties, the CCP faced severe suppression by the KMT, leading to increased radicalization among CCP members.

The main objective of the Autumn Harvest Uprising was to overthrow the local KMT authorities in Hunan Province and establish a revolutionary base area for the CCP. The uprising aimed to mobilize the peasantry and workers to rise up against the KMT government and promote communist revolution.

The Autumn Harvest Uprising was led by Li Zhen and Mao Zedong. The latter was an emerging leader within the CCP and had gained immense support among peasants in Hunan through his advocacy for land reform and peasant rights.

Following the failure of the Autumn Harvest Uprising, Mao Zedong and the surviving CCP forces were forced to retreat to the Jinggang Mountains, where they established a new revolutionary base. This marked the continuation of Mao’s strategy of developing rural base areas and building support among the peasantry. Image: Mao in 1927

On September 7, 1927, Communist forces launched an attack on Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. The rebels, consisting of communist guerrilla forces and peasant militias, launched coordinated attacks on KMT government offices and police stations. They briefly gained control over parts of the city.

However, KMT forces, supported by superior weaponry and reinforcements, launched a counteroffensive. CCP forces faced heavy resistance and were eventually driven out of Changsha. The uprising was suppressed within a matter of weeks.

Significance Of the Autumn Harvest Uprising

Although the Autumn Harvest Uprising itself was not successful in achieving its objectives, it served as a pivotal moment for Mao Zedong and the CCP. It highlighted the importance of mobilizing peasants and workers as a revolutionary force and provided valuable lessons for future armed struggles. Mao’s experiences during the uprising and subsequent retreat laid the foundation for his later revolutionary strategies, including the establishment of rural base areas and the concept of protracted people’s war.

The Autumn Harvest Uprising demonstrated the determination of the CCP to challenge the KMT’s authority and pursue armed struggle as a means of achieving communist revolution in China. It represented an important step in the CCP’s revolutionary trajectory, ultimately leading to their eventual victory in the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

The Guangzhou Uprising

The primary objective of the Guangzhou Uprising was to seize control of Guangzhou and establish a revolutionary base area for the CCP. The uprising aimed to mobilize the urban proletariat and workers to rise up against the KMT government and promote the cause of communism.

The uprising was led by the CCP’s military forces, primarily consisting of the newly formed Guangzhou Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. The leadership included figures such as Ye Ting, Xu Xiangqian, and Ye Jianying.

The Guangzhou Uprising began on December 11, 1927, with the communist forces launching a series of coordinated attacks on government buildings, police stations, and military installations in Guangzhou. The rebels faced fierce resistance from KMT forces, including artillery bombardment and aerial attacks.

Despite initial gains, the communist forces were unable to maintain control over the city. The KMT, with superior resources and military support, launched a counteroffensive and gradually regained control. The uprising was suppressed within a matter of days by the KMT-aligned warlord and commander Zhang Fakui.

Following the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising, the surviving communist forces were forced to retreat and disperse. Many CCP members, including key leaders like Ye Ting, fled to the countryside to regroup and rebuild their revolutionary forces.

The Guangzhou Uprising represented a setback for the CCP in their struggle against the KMT. However, it demonstrated the determination and resolve of the communist forces and highlighted the importance of urban workers as a revolutionary force. The failed uprising provided valuable lessons for the CCP in terms of military strategy, organization, and the need to establish rural base areas.

Despite its immediate failure, the Guangzhou Uprising contributed to the consolidation of the CCP’s revolutionary forces and the development of their revolutionary strategies. It marked a significant stage in the CCP’s efforts to build a broad-based revolutionary movement, gain popular support, and pursue armed struggle as a means to achieve communist revolution in China.

Even though the Guangzhou Uprising was the third failed uprising of 1927, and reducing the morale of the communists, it encouraged further uprisings across China.

The Guangzhou Uprising occurred in the aftermath of the split between the CCP and the KMT, following the suppression of the Communist movement by the KMT-led government. The CCP had been organizing and mobilizing workers and peasants in Guangzhou and other areas, and tensions between the two parties had escalated.

The Long March – CCP Red Army’s evasive march from Jiangxi to Shaanxi

The Long March was a monumental military retreat undertaken by the Red Army, the armed forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), from 1934 to 1936. It was a strategic maneuver that played a crucial role in shaping the future of the CCP and the Chinese revolution.

The primary objective of the Long March was to evade the encircling KMT forces and establish new bases in areas beyond their reach. The CCP leadership, including Mao Zedong, recognized the importance of regrouping, reorganizing, and preserving their fighting force to continue the revolution.

The Long March covered approximately 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) across challenging terrains, including mountains, rivers, and hostile territories. The route took the Red Army through several provinces, including Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Shaanxi.

The march presented numerous challenges, including frequent engagements with KMT forces, lack of supplies, harsh weather conditions, and difficult terrain. The Red Army faced attacks, ambushes, and aerial bombardments from KMT forces.

The Long March took place between 16 October 1934 – 22 October 1935. Image: The leaders of the CCP (L-R) Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, and Zhu De during the Long March

Did you know…?

Of the 100,000 troops that began the march in October 1934, only about 10% of them made it alive to the Shaanxi province.

The Long March was led by the CCP leadership, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and other prominent communist commanders. Mao Zedong emerged as the key strategist and political leader during the march.

The CCP leadership employed a strategy of both military engagement and guerrilla warfare tactics to survive and evade KMT forces. They also emphasized ideological and political education among their troops, promoting communist ideals and revolutionary spirit.

Legacy and Significance: The Long March is considered a defining moment in Chinese history and a symbol of the CCP’s resilience, determination, and revolutionary spirit. It helped solidify Mao Zedong’s leadership within the party and contributed to the development of Maoist ideology.

The march allowed the CCP to establish new bases and expand their influence in rural areas. It also helped to build support among peasants and gain sympathy from the Chinese population, which was crucial to the CCP’s eventual victory in the Chinese Civil War.

The Long March became a powerful symbol of endurance and sacrifice for the CCP and has had a lasting impact on Chinese revolutionary history. It remains an integral part of the narrative surrounding the rise of the CCP and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

The Xi’an Incident and the Second United Front against Japanese Invasion

On 12 December 1936, the disgruntled Zhang and Yang conspired to kidnap Chiang and force him into a truce with the CCP. The incident became known as the Xi’an Incident Image: Chang Hsüeh-liang, Yang Hucheng, and Chiang Kai-shek

In December 1936, Yang Hucheng and Zhang Xueliang, both senior generals aligned to the KMT met with Chiang Kai-shek in Xi’an. During the meeting, they demanded an end to the KMT’s military suppression of the CCP and requested a united front against the Japanese invasion. When Chiang refused, Yang and Zhang resorted to kidnapping him to pressure the KMT into changing its policies.

The kidnapping of Chiang Kai-shek caused a political crisis within the KMT government. However, negotiations took place between the KMT and CCP representatives, resulting in the signing of the Xi’an Incident Agreement on December 25, 1936. The agreement included several key provisions, including:

• The formation of a united front between the KMT and the CCP to resist Japanese aggression.
• The release of Chiang Kai-shek and the restoration of his leadership position within the KMT.
• A temporary cessation of military hostilities between the KMT and the CCP.
• The adoption of policies to address social and economic issues in order to gain popular support.

China was embroiled in a complex political situation characterized by the Chinese Civil War between the KMT and the CCP, as well as the ongoing conflict with Japanese aggression. The CCP and KMT had formed a tenuous united front against the Japanese, but tensions remained between the two parties. Image: Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai Shek during the Chongqing Negotiations

The Xi’an Incident had significant implications for the political landscape in China. It led to a temporary truce between the KMT and the CCP, allowing them to focus on the shared goal of resisting Japanese invasion during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The incident also highlighted the complex power dynamics and shifting alliances within the Chinese political landscape during that time.

Japan’s surrender and the shaky peace pact between the KMT and the CCP

After Japan’s formal surrender on September 2, 1945, the alliance between the CCP and the KMT deteriorated, leading to the resumption of hostilities.

Of the two competing factions in the Chinese Civil War – the KMT and the CCP – the CCP were the ones who emerged better off after the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japan’s surrender in 1945. The Chinese Communists had the upper hand largely because of the immense support they received from the Soviets. Besides, the guerilla tactics deployed by the leaders of the PLA garnered a lot of local support from areas that were previously occupied by Japan. It’s estimated that the Red Army increased its size to almost 1.5 million troops by the end of the war.

As the KMT was officially the recognized government of China, it had to shoulder a lot of the load when it came to defending China from Japan’s aggression during the Second Sino-Japanese War. As a result, the KMT suffered significantly greater losses than the CCP’s PLA, which deployed guerrilla tactics.

With Japan defeated by the lose coalition of KMT-CCP forces in 1945, the two warring sides resumed hostilities as there wasn’t any shared goal. Furthermore, the two sides deeply mistrusted each other.

Therefore, by the time curtain closed in on the Second Sino-Japanese War, the KMT’s force was in weaker shape than it was in the mid-1930s. And by golly did the CCP capitalize on Chiang Kai-shek’s weak position. For example, the CCP took advantage of Chiang’s preoccupation with Japanese forces and increased its sphere of control territorially. By the end of the war, more than 90 million people resided in areas controlled by the CCP.

Regardless, both the CCP and KMT still managed to sign a friendly treaty after the Second Sino-War. Termed the Double Tenth Agreement (aka the Summary of Conversations Between the Government and Representatives of the Communist Party of China), the agreement was signed on October 10, 1945 at Chongqing.

Pressured into attending the meeting by the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong, who was accompanied to the meeting by US ambassador to China Patrick J. Hurley, acknowledged the KMT as the legitimate government. The KMT on the other hand recognized the CCP as a legitimate opposition political party. Both the US and the Soviet Union welcomed the agreement and maintained their commitment to supporting peace within China.

KMT’s leader Chiang Kai-shek (left) and CCP’s Mao Zedong met in Chongqing in 1945.

In spite of the friendly meeting at Chongqing, the two warring sides reneged on their promises and resumed fierce hostilities. This was simply because of the lack trust between the two sides.

The KMT would also discover that despite the post-war Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance in 1945, the Soviet Union continued to support the CCP. For example, Joseph Stalin refused handing Manchuria to the KMT, preferring to give it to the CCP. Also, many of the captured weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army were given to the CCP.

Read More: Major Facts about Joseph Stalin

Second phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949)

Unlike the KMT leaders who hoped that CCP could co-exist peacefully as an opposition party, Mao’s CCP hatched plans of a future revolution in which the CCP would rid China off the KMT for good. Mao was fully aware that that the KMT had suffered significantly during the Second Sino-Japanese War and therefore Chiang could not marshal any reasonable force to begin a civil war.

As both sides vied for greater territories in the previously occupied territories by Japan, the treaty between the KMT and CCP failed in January 1946. Both sides were disinterested in the formation of a democratic coalition; instead, they were bent on eliminating the other for good.

By June 1946, full-scale war was underway between CCP and KMT. The conflict would rage for more than three years.

The civil war was characterized by large-scale conventional battles, guerrilla warfare, political maneuvering, and foreign involvement.

As stated above, the CCP’s Red Army were in a much better position during the second phase of the Chinese Civil War, as it boasted a total force of more than 3 million troops. Making matters worse for the KMT was the fact that some their skilled military men began defecting to the CCP.

Mao’s Communist forces benefited from the enormous support it received from poor and landless peasants in the countryside. The promise of land reforms was enough reason to sway their support from the KMT to the CCP. The latter was also perceived as relatively less corrupt than the former.

As a result, the CCP began to have not just the numerical advantage but also tactical advantage over the KMT on the field of battle. This was evident during the Huaihai campaign (November 1948-January 1949), when the CCP managed to raise more than 5 million troops and launch a huge offensive against the KMT headquarters in Xuzhou.

The PLA made it as far as the Yangtze River. This meant that the CCP was gained control of east central China. The defeat gave a lot to the United States to think about its support to the KMT.

Prior to the Huaihai campaign, the CCP had captured quite a number of cities in the north, including Changchun, Luoyang, Jinan, Shandong, and Shenyang. Counterattacks were mounted in the Northeast. In those captured territories, the CCP helped themselves to military equipment seized from the KMT, including heavy artillery.

The Pingjin Campaign

Between late November 1948 and 31 January 1949, the CCP mounted a fierce campaign – the Pingjin campaign – to liberate KMT-held areas of Tianjin and Beijing. The campaign began following the withdrawal of KMT troops from areas like Qinhuangdao, Baoding, Chengde and Shanhai in the aftermath of the Liaoshen campaign (September – November 1948), The KMT decided to consolidate their troops in Beijing, Zhangjiakou, and Tianjin.

The PLA captured Zhangjiakou and Xinbao’an before marching on to Tianjin in early January 1949. In the ensuing battle for Tianjin, more than 100,000 troops of the Nationalist forces were either taken prisoners or killed. Tianjin fell to the Communists, allowing Communist commanders Lin Biao, Nie rongzhen, and Luo Ronghuan to march into Beijing with relatively no significant opposition from the KMT.

The KMT had about 610,000 troops against the more than 850,000 troops possessed by the CCP during the Pingjing Campaign. It’s also estimated that more than half a million KMT troops died during the Pingjing Campaign.

People’s Liberation Army enters Beiping (Beijing)

The Yangtze River Crossing Campaign and the capture of Nanjing

The Huaihai Campaign brought the PLA close to the Yangtze River in January 1949, and the Communist were poised to cross the river and vanquish KMT forces south of the river.

Stalin was a bit anxious about the complete obliteration of the KMT in China. Therefore, the Soviet Union tried to persuade Mao from crossing the Yangtze River. Those appeals fell on deaf ears as Mao and his commanders did not want to miss such an important opportunity to rid China off the KMT. Mao began the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign on April 20, 1949. The goal was to capture KMT’s stronghold and capital Nanjing. Mao deployed the Second, Third and Fourth Field Army to area.

In total, the Communists had about a million troops while the Nationalist government had slightly more than 700,000 troops. The Nationalist defense forces were led by commanders Tang Enbo and Bai Chongxi, while the PLA assault was led by Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping, and Liu Bocheng.

Realizing that the winds were in the sails of the PLA, some units of the Nationalist forces switched sides to the PLA. Those defections made it relatively easy for the PLA to go past Nationalist defenses along the Yangtze.

As more and more PLA troops made it to the Yangtze, the Nationalist forces’ situation became very bleak. Chiang’s troops were in disarray, forcing the general to order a retreat to toward Shanghai and Hangzhou. In just a few days of the campaign, the PLA managed to capture places like Wuxi and Changzhou en route to the prized target, Nanjing.

On April 23, Nanjing fell to the Communist forces. Four days later, the PLA captured Suzhou. And by early June, KMT-strongholds Hanyang, Wuchang, and Nanchang were firmly in the hands of the PLA. Also, Shanghai fell into the hands of the PLA in late May following the Shanghai Campaign that was launched on May 12.

Spanning from May 12 to June 2, the Shanghai Campaign saw over 150,000 Nationalist troops either captured or killed. The PLA force of almost 300,000 troops devastated the nationalist defenders, who tried to use scorch earth tactics so as to leave nothing behind for the communists. However, the general populace prevented that from happening. This meant that the communists captured Shanghai and its wealth relatively intact.

The poem written by Mao Zedong following the successful Yangtze River Crossing Campaign in 1949

Communist Victory and KMT Retreat to Taiwan

Following its humiliating defeat during the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign, the KMT retreated to Guangzhou and then Chongqing. Heavily outnumbered, the KMT had to fall back to Chengdu before finally sailing of to island of Taiwan on December 7.

Also known as the Great Retreat, the KMT’s exodus to Taiwan involved about two million ROC troops and other civilians and refuges. The island, which was held by Japan following the defeat of the Qing Dynasty during the First Sino-Japanese Civil War, reverted to the KMT after Japan’s surrender in World War II in 1945.

Two months prior to the KMT retreat, on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing.

To Chiang and his advisors, the retreat was originally meant to be temporary – Chiang believed that he would be able to regroup his forces and mount a large-scale offensive against the CCP, which at the time was mopping up pockets of small KMT resistance on the mainland.

It’s estimated that more than two million KMT sympathizers and followers were arrested across the mainland, and about 700,000 of them were killed during what the CCP termed as Campaigns to Suppress Bandits and Counterrevolutionaries.

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China (ROC).

The ROC proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the government. Chiang undoubtedly harbored real dreams of reconquering the mainland. And for many years, the plan for reconquest – i.e. “Project National Glory” (also known as Project Guoguang) – was carefully finetuned. However, the plan never came to fruition. CCP political and military growth in the decades that followed as well as its acquisition of nuclear weapons made the ROC’s dream of reconquering mainland China from the CCP ever more elusive.

Not only did the ROC lack the needed military might to pull of such a large-scale invasion of the mainland, but it also did not have the political support of the United States and its Western allies. Besides, the West at the time were busy dealing with the Korean War as well as stepping up their efforts to halt the spread of communism around the world. Initially, then-US president Harry Truman refused to be drawn into a conflict on behalf of the ROC in the Taiwan Strait. Regardless, that did not stop the US from taking a stand and vowing to protect Taiwan from an invasion by the PLA. As part of the US containment policy of communism, Truman ordered the deployment of US fleet to sail in between mainland China and Taiwan.

Therefore, Chiang and his government basically abandoned the reconquest project in the mid-1960s and resorted to focusing their efforts on modernization and economic liberalization of Taiwan, preferring to align with the West. However, it was not until 1972 that the body in charge of the Guoguang planning was abolished.

To this day, the ROC (Republic of China) government on the island of Taiwan continues to make claim of sovereignty over mainland China, Mongolia and some parts of India, Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bhutan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Fully aware that the use of force to reconquer the mainland is completely out of the question, the ROC hopes diplomacy and political maneuvering could be used to implement the peaceful reunification of China.

Conquest of Hainan Island

Known as the Battle of Hainan Island, the CCP’s campaign to capture the island of Hainan lasted from April 16 to May 1, 1950. The ROC fielded between 150,000 and 200,000 troops, while the PLA had about 100,000 troops. With some bit of support from the Hainan communist movement, the PLA was able to prevail over the ROC, and by May 1, the island was firmly in the control of the Communists.

Similar to Hainan, the islands of Wanshan and Zhoushan were capture by the PLA in 1950.

Legacy and Consequences

The Chinese Civil War had significant consequences for China’s political, social, and economic landscape:

• Communist Rule: The victory of the CCP led to the establishment of a socialist state under the leadership of Mao Zedong. The PRC implemented major political and social reforms, including land redistribution, collectivization, and campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
• Taiwan and Cross-Strait Relations: The retreat of the KMT to Taiwan led to the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC) government there. Taiwan remains a contentious issue, with both sides claiming to be the legitimate government of China. Cross-strait relations between mainland China and Taiwan have been marked by tensions, occasional conflicts, and a complex political status quo.
• Cold War Dynamics: The Chinese Civil War took place during the early years of the Cold War , with both the United States and the Soviet Union providing support to their respective Chinese allies. The victory of the Communist forces brought China into the Soviet sphere of influence, leading to geopolitical shifts in the region.
• Loss of Life and Displacement: The civil war resulted in significant loss of life and displacement of people. Estimates of the number of casualties vary, but it is believed that millions of people were killed or displaced during the conflict.

The Chinese Civil War fundamentally reshaped the political landscape of China, leading to the rise of the CCP and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, which continues to shape China’s trajectory and influence global dynamics to this day.

Questions & Answers

Below are some frequently asked questions about the Chinese Civil War:

When did the Chinese Civil War begin?

The war began around 1927.

When did the Chinese Civil War end?

The war ended in 1949, although no peace treaty nor an armistice was signed.

How many people died in the war?

The Chinese Civil War claimed the lives of several millions people. The KMT suffered a heavier casualty, with about 1.5 million in the second phase of the war (1945 and 1949) alone.

What were the phases of the Chinese Civil War?

Historians often break the Chinese Civil War into two phases: the first phase (1927-1937) and the second phase (1945-1949), with a shaky KMT-CCP period of peace between 1937 and 1945.

Why was Chiang Kai-shek opposed to forming a united front to tackle Japan’s aggression?

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was the head of the KMT and president of the ROC

Chiang of the KMT prioritized internal pacification before external resistance. This meant that he sought to get rid of the CCP first before tackling Japan’s aggressive stance. His intention was to appease Japan until China built strong military and economic strength. However, the Xi’an incident in 1936 would force him to align with the Communists to halt Japan’s incursions into China.

During Japan’s invasion and occupation of Manchuria, Chiang Kai-shek saw the CCP as the greater threat. Chiang refused to ally with the CCP, preferring to unite China by eliminating the warlord and CCP forces first.

What was the level of cooperation between KMT and CCP during World War II?

The level of cooperation between the KMT and CCP during World War II, more specifically, the Second Sino-Japanese War, was minimal. Fully acknowledging the military might of the invading Japanese forces, CCP forces, the PLA, chose not use conventional warfare; instead, Mao and his commanders resorted to guerrilla warfare. As a result, the PLA suffered lower casualties than KMT forces, who used conventional warfare. For long periods, Imperial Japanese forces were well-equipped and were able to overran KMT defenders in northern and coastal China.

It must also be noted that throughout the duration of the Second United Front (1937-1945), both the Communists and KMT intermittently fought against each other for territorial advantage, especially in areas not captured by the Japanese. This was evident in December 1940 when KMT’s leader Chiang demanded the CCP’s Fourth Army vacate Jiangsu and Anhui Provinces.

As fighting between the two parties intensified, both the US and the Soviet Union became worried that the shaky KMT-CCP alliance could derail efforts in the fight against Japan. US and Soviet envoys warned both parties how Japan was the only beneficiary of the civil war.

Whom did the Japanese surrender to after the Second Sino-Japanese War?

As Chiang’s KMT was the internationally recognized government of China at the time, Imperial Japanese forces surrendered to the KMT and not the CCP. However, in Manchuria, a previously occupied Japanese territory, Japan surrendered to the Soviet Union, a big ally of the CCP. This was because the KMT did not have any significant force in the area.

Similarly, in places where KMT’s troops weren’t present, Japanese troops were forced to surrender to Communist forces. The CCP were bent on staking their claim as the official representatives of the people of China. This development turned out to be a huge concern to not just the KMT but the U.S. and other Western nations.

How did the Second Sino-Japanese War prove ‘beneficial’ to the CCP in the long run?

The Second Sino-Japanese War ended up wreaking havoc on the military strength of the KMT. The Chinese nationalists suffered heavier casualties than the PLA during the war. As a result, the CCP was able to overwhelm the KMT when the Chinese Civil War resumed in 1945.

What attracted many Chinese, especially peasants in the countryside, to the CCP?

The biggest trump card the CCP had was its land reforms. Peasants across China joined the Communist cause because the CCP embarked on a land reforms aimed at alleviating the economic plight of the poor. The peasants had also grown frustrated of the rampant corruption among many government officials of the KMT.

Therefore, the landless and starving peasants in the countryside joined in large numbers to support the CCP in the civil war.

Why couldn’t the CCP mount an offensive against the ROC government after it fled to Taiwan?

With the ROC on the back foot in 1949, many historians have wondered why the CCP simply did not finish off Chiang’s forces as they settled on the island of Taiwan. For starters, the Red Army of the CCP did not have anywhere near the naval powers of the nationalist forces. Therefore, any naval battle at the time would have been disastrous for Mao’s CCP. A large-scale invasion of Taiwan would also have required strong airpower – something that Chinese Communist Party did not have at the time.

Furthermore, Washington, D.C.’s decision to remain steadfast in containing the threat of the spread of communism in the region meant that it had to back the Chiang’s government in Taiwan. Bear in mind, until the early 1970s, the US and the West saw the ROC as the legitimate representative of all of China.

Besides, the CCP’s immediate priority following its victory over the nationalist in 1949 was to consolidate its power on mainland China. This involved rooting out the vestiges of KMT systems and ideologies. Communist leaders quickly set about to rebuild the country which had been ravaged by decades of war. Chairman Mao simply did not have enough resources that could sufficiently pull off an invasion of Taiwan.

Despite the CCP having about three times the military personnel of the KMT at the time, Mao and the Communist leaders were aware that Chiang’s airpower – mainly fighter jets and anti-aircraft missiles supplied by the US – could prove devastating were they to invade Taiwan.

Finally, leaders of the CCP in 1950 had their attention drawn to the Korean peninsula as the Korean War (1950-1953) broke out. The PRC, in defense of communism, had to support North Korea’s war efforts against the capitalist and Western-backed South Korea.

After the death of Mao in 1976, his successor and the top brass of the CCP opted to tow the path of peaceful reunification with Taiwan.

What are some of the notable crises that have broken out in the Taiwan Strait since 1949?

Between 1949 and 1960, two major crises rocked the Taiwan Strait. The first, which happened in September 1954, saw make slight progress in the capture of islands in the strait, including Yijiangshan Island. The PRC also carried out bombardment of Kinmen and other smaller islands in the region. By March 1955, the bombardment had ceased as the US promised to defend those offshore islands.

The second crisis broke out in 1958 as both sides traded artillery bombardments. Again, the presence of US fleet in region sent strong warning to the PRC to cease its hostilities.

Since the 1990s, the major crises that have erupted in the Taiwan Strait have largely been non-military. In the mid-1990s, then-Taiwanese leader Lee Teng-hui made a trip to the US, where he was welcomed as the leader of Taiwan. The US President Bill Clinton dispatched two aircraft carriers to strait as way to show the US commitment to Taiwan.

In late summer of 2022, then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made an official trip to Taiwan. Pelosi’s visit was deemed by the PRC as a provocative action. The CCP leadership responded by carrying out military exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

Why did the ROC remain internationally recognized until the early 1970s?

Despite its defeat in 1949 by the CCP, the ROC remained internationally recognized as the legitimate government of China, although not recognized by the Soviet Union and other communist nations around the world. Even at the United Nations (UN), it was the ROC that was recognized.

However, all of that changed in 1971, when the UN decided to recognize the PRC as the legitimate government of China. Despite being a founding member of the UN and holding a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, Chiang’s ROC was expelled. Basically, the recognition that the ROC used to receive was transferred to Chairman Mao’s PRC.

Chiang with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in Cairo, Egypt, in November 1943

What is the relationship between Taiwan and the PRC like today?

With all hopes of using force to reconquer mainland China completely dashed in the mid-1960s, Taiwan and the ROC government pursued a path of economic growth and modernization. By the 1970s, it abandoned all plans to invade the mainland. And in the 1980s, considerable efforts were made by leaders of the former warring side to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Trade ties were established, and investment flowed between the two sides in the decades that followed. Then-Taiwanese leader Lee Teng-hui announced in 1991 the establishment of a special diplomatic tie with the PRC.

However, it must be noted that despite the relative calm that we have seen on the Taiwan Strait in the last few decades, the two sides never signed an armistice or peace treaty.

What accounted for the Communist victory in the war?

Despite having superior firepower in the initial stage of the war, the KMT eventually lost the war. In the second phase (1945-1949), the PLA was able to gather a lot of following, especially among the rural folks and peasants, simply because it branded itself as the having the best interest of the people. The fact that the KMT was rife with a corrupt public officials made the nationalist lose a lot of support from the general population as the war intensified. The CCP promised massive land reforms to lift the poor peasants out of their abject poverty.

Furthermore, the KMT suffered defeat in the war because it made a number of tactical mistakes on the battlefield. Unlike the CCP that deployed guerilla warfare against the Japanese, KMT forces practiced conventional warfare during the defense of China against Japan’s invasion. As a result, KMT suffered considerably more losses than the CCP. Those losses came back to bite the KMT in the rare when hostilities resumed in 1945. Basically, KMT forces had been weakened, numerically and logistic wise, by the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Another contributing factor to KMT loss in the Civil War was the governance style of Chiang. The KMT leader chose to have a very centralized government and refused to have widespread consultation among key interest groups in the country. As a result, many of those groups felt left out and chose to back communists.

The Communists in China received a great deal of support, militarily and financially, from the Soviet Union. For example, many of the captured military equipment of the Japanese following Japan’s surrender in 1945 were transferred to the PLA by the Soviets. Basically, the support the CCP received from the Soviets outweighed the one Chiang’s KMT received from the US and its allies. For starters the US was concerned about giving too much aid to a KMT government seen as corrupt.

Finally, the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War can be explained due to the strong leadership abilities of leaders like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. The messages that those CCP leaders put out to the public resonated with the poor peasants, who at the end of the day made a significant percentage of the population. The CCP portrayed themselves as the saviors of the nation and people so to speak. They cited how badly the economy was managed by Chiang and his ministers, with hyperinflation in KMT-held areas a common phenomenon.

What was the level atrocity committed by both sides in the Chinese Civil War?

The early stage of the war witnessed the KMT being the bigger perpetrator of atrocities. This was evident in the April 12 Purge (also known as the Shanghai massacre of April 12) in 1927. The leadership of the KMT in cohort with violent gangs carried out a violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party members and sympathizers in Shanghai. The infamous event, which came to be known as the White Terror, claimed more than a quarter of a million people, including women deemed ‘radical’ by the KMT. Those women were tortured and their mutilated bodies displayed in public as a scare tactic.

In 1941, as CCP’s forces were vacating the provinces of Anhui and Jiangsu, KMT forces ambushed them, inflicting several thousands of deaths on the Communists. The CCP were complying with orders from Chiang, who had demanded that the Communists leave those provinces. They were not expecting nationalist forces to attack them as they pulled out of those provinces.

Similar to the KMT, the communists committed a number of heinous acts, including the infamous Futian incident in 1930 which saw the execution of between 2300 and 3100 members of the Futian battalion. The commanders of the battalion had mutinied against Mao Zedong in protest against Mao’s purge of the Jiangxi Action Committee.

In some cases, the PLA imposed a military blockade on areas held by the KMT. One such blockade came during the Siege of Changchun in 1948. The blockade caused several tens of thousands of civilians to die of starvation in Changchun, Jilin Province.

Tags: CCP Chiang Kai-shek China Chinese Civil War Chinese Communist Party Cold War Communism Mao Zedong People's Republic of China Republic of China Second Sino-Japanese War Shanghai Massacre Sun Yat-sen Taiwan The Kuomintang Wang Jingwei World War II Zhou Enlai

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The Chinese Civil War in the 20th Century Essay

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The Chinese Civil War was one of the key conflicts in the 20th century and had a lasting impact on the development of the country and the lives of future generations of Chinese. This War was the third-largest conflict in history after World War I and World War II. The Chinese Civil War was also the most violent event in the history of this country. Beginning in 1927, the conflict between the Kuomintang (the Chinese Nationalist Party, KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) created a struggle that divided the country into two parts: the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China.

The War ended in 1950 and since that time China has not changed its political course or the leading party. Therefore, the significance of the Chinese Civil War for contemporary China lies in the change of the traditional way of political and economical development. The country was released from the control of the international warlords and imperialists. Analysis of the Chinese Civil War can help investigate the tendencies within the Chinese policy in the second part of the 20th century.

The Civil War was the key moment in the history of the country which changed the face of the country’s development. According to Xia, “interest groups, the media, and public opinion in China had no independent influence on foreign policy during the Maoist era (1949–1976), analysis of China’s elite politics is crucial in understanding how the policy was made during that time (Xia 2000, 5). After the end of the Chinese Civil War, two states arose on the international stage: The People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China. The Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China were the starting points of the new way of country’s development and, as the result, China became one of the most significant players in the world political stage.

The main ideological causes of the Chinese Civil War were the European influence on the country on the one hand and the spread of Communism on the other hand. Britain’s power and influence were a significant problem for China. Besides, at the beginning of the XX century, Qing, the last Chinese dynasty, did not have the power and was just a puppet of Japan (Findley and Rothney 2011, 200). According to Findley and Rothney, “during World War II, Japan tried to exploit China’s weakness by occupying the German positions on the Shandong (Shantung) Peninsula and presenting twenty-one demands, which would have given Japan far-reaching control” (200).

Many Chinese people were disagreeing with such a political situation; therefore, the revolutionary ideas had arisen around the country. Beginning in the 1890s, the revolutionaries started their struggle and in 1911 “fifteen provinces proclaimed their independence” (Findley and Rothney 2011, 198). The revolutionaries wanted to change the traditional system and to create a new republic. The country with more than 5,000 years old history of the monarchy would not transition to democracy or republic easily. Some of the researchers indicate that the ideology of the KMT was based on authoritarianism.

For instance, according to Caplan, “although Chiang’s regime was traditionally authoritarian, it never restored the oppression of the imperial era” (Caplan 2000, 436). A big part of the population was unable to comprehend the new ideas; as a result, the population was divided into two parts: people who supported the revolutionaries and those who wanted to save the traditional system. The new political ideas such as Marxism were spreading among the Chinese population. In 1921, the Chinese Communist Party was founded; one of the major figures among its members was Mao Zedong. In 1922, CCP united with another largest party the Chinese Nationalist Party to cooperate and join the forces against the imperialists.

The Chinese Civil War began in 1927 when KMT broke its alliance with the CCP. Plating says that General Chang Kai-shek considered the CCP as “Chinas “disease of the heart” (Plating 2006, 4). Chang Kai-shek supposed that if he would not stop the Communists they would take control over the whole country. As a result, in 1927, CCP and KMT started the most terrible and violent war in the history of this country (Plating 2006, 4).

For the Nationalists, communist activities seemed inappropriate and not effective. On the other hand, the Communists saw only one way of the country’s development: Marxism and Communism. In 1937-1945, during the Sino-Japanese War, the nationalists were fighting against the Japanese, while CCP was expanding its popularity among the huge part of the population. Plating indicates that it was a difficult time for the population and “the Chinese have no plan for rehabilitation, prevention of epidemics, restoration of utilities, establishment of a balanced economy and reposition of millions of refugees” (Plating 2006, 4).

The Communists offered better economic and protection for the rural parts of the country that we’re living in total poverty. Propagating the radical land reform, the Communists could gain more supporters among the rural population. Most of the citizens agreed with the ideas offered by the Communists and supported the CCP, believing that their ideas could change the system and improve the quality of life. Meanwhile, the KMT was making the attempts to change the situation and in 1926-1927 they spurred on the “Northern Expedition” to remove the foreign imperialists. For KMT, the Communists were seen as the same problem as warlords. As the new president of China, Chang tried to stop the Communists, using all possible resources. With the loss of members, the CCP started to lose their bases of power.

Meisner says that in 1934, Mao Zedong “had orchestrated the Long March which was to be a 6,000-mile walk through China, which started with 100,000 members and ended with fewer than 10,00 members completing the journey” (Meisner 1999, 3). The Communists wanted to involve more members and get more support from the population. Although their ideas about the economic and land reforms were supported by the rural population, they still did not have enough power and resources to take control of the whole country. This March changed the situation due to the great publicity. At the same time, the KMT continued to expand its member base.

However, on July 7, 1937, after the Japanese attack, the situation had been changed (Plating 2006, 4). The Japanese attack was put the “KMT-CCP conflict” on hiatus. Both parties did not have another option and, therefore, they joined again to organize the Second United Front. The doctrine of this organization included the statements that set about the abolishment of Sovietization by the CCP and the refusal of help from the USSR. However, the history of this union proved that these two parties were different and could not reach compromise. The main goals of this alliance were cooperation, national unity, and independence. The internal conflict was stronger than a will to cooperate against the imperial ambitions of foreign nations.

The Nationalists and the Communists used different approaches during the war against Japan in 1937-1945. The Nationalists suffered from the serious loss of the territory occupied by Japan. At the same time, the Communists were unable to take advantage of the Japanese invasion. The attempts of KMT to build the democratic government quickly failed and continued internal struggle weakened their positions. The forces of CCP were also growing at an alarming rate.

During the war against Japan, the CCP was able to overthrow the provisional governments and consolidate absolute power in the country. At the same time, the country had been involved in World War II and drew the involvement of the United States into the internal conflict. The United States provided massive military and financial support to help KMT to struggle against the Communists.

Reflecting about the future of China, the United Stated comprehended that policy of the KMT was more appropriate as the Nationalists were turned to democracy and based their policy of the liberal ideas, while the policy of the Communists “was concerned over the dangers posed by political fragmentation in China and saw in Germany, the Soviet Union, and even the New Deal in the United States a tendency for power (including power over the economy) to be concentrated in the central government – a tendency that they read as an anti-democratic trend in the modern world” (Esherick 2002, 416). Many people consider the CCP as the anti-democratic structure.

Thus, Hornsby indicates that “right from its earliest days as a fledgling terrorist organization, Mao’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was clearing land, setting up stages, and positioning the resultant spaces at the core of its political strategy” (Hornsby 2009, 82).

In 1939, both parties began to make the international alliances, breaking the terms of their agreement within the United Front (Findley and Rothney 2011, 203). The foreign intervention in the Chinese Civil War also included the support of the Soviet Union; however, they provided for the Communists whom they perceived as comrades, the representatives of the same ideology who could help the Soviet Union to spread Communism around the world. International support influenced the outcome of the Chinese Civil War. The Communists would have been unable to stand up against the Nationalists without the outside help (Yang and Chang 2010, 111).

The Soviet equipment and residents helped CCP provide success operations. At the same time, KMT gained resources from the United States and also got the equipment and financial help, because, for the United States, the KMT was “Chinese advocates of democracy since the time of Liang Qichao were most concerned with mechanisms to mobilize the people in defense of the nation, producing a notion of democracy in which the unity of the people consistently overshadowed any commitment to political pluralism” (Esherick 2002, 416).

In 1945, the United States attempted to rectify the conflict between two parties. General Marshall arrived in the country and tried to persuade KMT and CCP to arrange the agreement and reorganize the government. In the beginning, his attempts were successful; however, later, in 1946, both parties broke the terms of the agreement (Findley and Rothney 2011, 94). Although national unity and independence were the basements of both political ideologies in China, the parties wanted to unite people under their flags. After recognizing the impossibility of reconciliation, General Marshall went back to the United States, while KMT and CCP continued their war.

The last phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) was more successful for the Communists. They got broad support from the rural and poor classes which represented a large constituency, while the Nationalists were supported by the upper class. In October 1949, the CCP and its leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. It was a significant step in the KMT-CCP conflict. The birth of the People’s Republic of China initiated the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the new era in Chinese history. The Nationalists established the Republic of China in Taiwan with the capital in Taipei.

This democratic republic was established in 1912 on mainland China; however, during the Civil War this land was controlled by the Communists, and only in 1949 the KMT recovered this territory, declaring its independence. However, this event did not change the whole picture. The Nationalists got only this small territory, while the Communists got the whole country and their later seizure Tibet. Yang and Chang indicate that, as the result of the Chinese Civil War, “in the late 1940s and early 50s, the world witnessed a massive wave of political migrants out of Mainland China” (Yang and Chang 2010, 108).

Reflecting on the role of the United States and the Soviet Union in this War, it is possible to conclude that the United States could have provided much more help to the Chinese nationalists. The possible answer why they did not do it can be found in the possibility of the large-scale international war with the use of nuclear weapons. The Cold War started in 1945 and in 1949 the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb. This event ended the monopoly over the nuclear weapons of the United States. The shadow of the possible nuclear war was essential. In this context, the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 was the most appropriate solution, regarding the current situation.

The Chinese Civil War also known as the War of Liberation determined the way of country’s development in the second half of the XX century. Moreover, the outcome of this War still determines both the national and international politics of China. The major result of this long and violent military conflict is the birth of the People’s Republic of China. Due to the number of people involved in this conflict, the Chinese Civil War was the most massive one in world history. The victory of the Communist Party led to a significant change in the traditional political system of this country. However, not only China was influenced by this War.

This event caused the tendencies in world politics, making China one of the most significant players in the world political stage. Although Communism as the ideology failed in several countries, including the biggest one, the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party is still the only political party in China. Although nowadays, the CCP tries to change its traditional way, making its politics more appropriate and adequate to the current tendencies in the world, the main ideology did not have serious changes since 1949.

Many people can say that the Communistic regime in China is known as the violent and inhuman; the Chinese population does not have the rights and, additionally, the Communists were conquered, Tibet. Nevertheless, the current situation within the country’s economics shows that China demonstrates outstanding results. While the whole world suffers from the international financial crisis, China is one of the few economics that has positive results.

Reference List

Caplan, Bryan. “Autocratic Ghosts and Chinese Hunger.” The Independent Review , Vol. IV, No. 3 (Summer 2000): 431–438.

Esherick, Joseph W. “Edmund S. K Fung in Search of Chinese Democracy: Civil Opposition in Nationalist China, 1929-1949.” China Review International , Vol. 9, Issue 2 (2002): 416.

Findley, Carter, and John Alexander Rothney. Twentieth-Century World . US: Cengage Learning, 2011.

Hornsby, Adrian. “Twenty Years after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, in Which the Chinese Army Shot Dead Hundreds of Protecting Civilians the AR Considers the Square’s Recent History.” The Architectural Review . Vol. 226, Issue 1352 (2009): 82.

Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After: a History of the People’s Republic , 3rd ed. New-York: The Free Press, 1999.

Plating, John D. “Cannon, Egg, Charlie and Baker: Airlift Links between World-War II and the Chinese Civil War.” Air Power History , Vol. 53, Issue 3 (2006): 4.

Xia, Yafeng. “ China’s Elite Politics and Sino-American Rapprochement, January 1969–February 1972. ” Journal of Cold War Studies , Vol. 8, No. 4 (2006): 3–28.

Yang, Dominic Meng-Hsuan and Chang, Mau-Kuei. “Understanding the Nuances of ‘Waishengren’: History and Agency.” China Perspectives , No. 83, 2010: 108-122.

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Schoolshistory.org.uk

History resources, stories and news. Author: Dan Moorhouse

How did the Chinese Communists win the Civil War?

Why did the communists win the civil war.

Following the Second World War the Communists in China, who had been fighting in coalition against the Japanese, held roughly 1/4 of Chinese land and 1/3 of the population. The Communists had a good relationship with the Soviet union and through this were able to secure the arms that had been confiscated from Japanese troops at the end of the war and aid from the Soviet Union. This was a reasonably strong position from which to re-open the Civil War.

This gave the communist forces a powerful military base from which to launch attacks. They were though heavily outnumbered and the Nationalist government received support from the US. How then, were the Communists able to seize control?

Communist Policy was critical in gaining the support of the peasants. They promised Land Reforms that would give the peasants land. This was hugely popular amongst the impoverished peasant class in China and led to huge numbers of peasants volunteering for service during the Civil War: 5.4 million were mobilised for the Huaihai Campaign alone.

Tactically the Communists were very astute. In 1947 they were well aware that their main force was outnumbered and outgunned. Following the Long March , they adapted tactics and trained for a new method of fighting. They adopted a policy of not attacking the main Nationalist Forces and were willing to give up land in order to preserve the bulk of their fighting force. In doing so they could pick off weaker targets, cause logistical and supply problems for the Nationalists whilst continuing to build up their own support within the peasant classes. The Long March was partly responsible for this success. This was aided by the massive rise in unemployment in Nationalist controlled areas at this time.

In June of 1947 the communists launched a counter offensive against the Nationalist army. They successfully defeated the KMT New First Army. Now the communists had a large array of tanks and heavy artillery at their disposal. They put this to good use in 1948. They launched an attack south of the Great Wall that cut off Nationalist troops from their supply bases in Xi’an. They then secured the South East Central section of China, from where they were able to launch offensives against the remaining Nationalist armies. By the end of January 1949 most of China was in the hands of the Communists. Over a million men of the Nationalist army had been killed and the nationalist Capital city, Nangjin, was under threat. By April the Nationalist government had fled to Taiwan. The Communists had defeated them.

What were the main reasons for this victory?

• Leadership. The Communists had a well thought out plan and knew how to gain the support of the people.
• Tactics. The Nationalist tactics played into the hands of the Communists who were able to make the most of the position they found themselves in at the end of the Second World War.
• Support from outside. The Nationalists received funding from America but didn’t put this to particularly good effect: much of the weaponary being captured by the Communists at a relatively early stage. The Communists received military aid and guidance from the Soviet Union which was measured, realistic and effective.
• The People. In most parts of China the Communists were able to win the suport of the majority of the local population. This was a massive advantage when advancing into territories.

Source: Mao speech, August 1945

During the past eight years the people and army of our Liberated Areas, receiving no aid whatsoever from outside and relying solely on their own efforts, liberated vast territories and resisted and pinned down the bulk of the Japanese invading forces and practically all the puppet troops. Only by our determined resistance and heroic struggle were the 200 million people in the Great Rear Area [5] saved from being trampled underfoot by the Japanese aggressors and the regions inhabited by these 200 million people saved from Japanese occupation. Chiang Kai-shek hid on Mount Omei with guards in front of him — the guards were the Liberated Areas, the people and army of the Liberated Areas. In defending the 200 million people of the Great Rear Area, we protected this “generalissimo” as well and gave him both the time and the space to sit around waiting for victory with folded arms. Time — eight years one month. Space — an area inhabited by 200 million people. These conditions we provided for him. But for us, he could not have stood by looking on. Is the “generalissimo” grateful to us, then? No, not he! This fellow has never known what it is to be grateful. How did Chiang Kai-shek climb to power? By the Northern Expedition, [6] by the first period of co-operation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, [7] by the support given him by the people, who had not yet seen through him. Once in power, Chiang Kai-shek, far from being grateful to the people, knocked them down and plunged them into the bloodbath of ten years of civil war. You comrades are familiar with this segment of history. During the present War of Resistance the Chinese people again defended him. This war is now ending in victory and Japan is on the point of surrender, but he is not at all grateful to the people. On the contrary, thumbing through the records of 1927, he wants to act in the same old way.[8] He says there has never been any “civil war” in China, only “bandit suppression”. Whatever he likes to call it, the fact is he wants to start a civil war against the people, he wants to slaughter the people.

Source: Report made by Mao, 25th December, 1947

In seventeen months of fighting (from July 1946 to November 1947; December figures are not yet available), we killed, wounded and captured 1,690,000 of Chiang Kai-shek’s regular and irregular troops — 640,000 killed and wounded and 1,050,000 captured. Thus we were able to beat back Chiang Kai-shek’s offensive, preserve the main territories of the Liberated Areas and go over to the offensive. Speaking from the military aspect, we were able to do this because we employed the correct strategy. Our principles of operation are:

1. Attack dispersed, isolated enemy forces first; attack concentrated, strong enemy forces later.

2. Take small and medium cities and extensive rural areas first; take big cities later.

3. Make wiping out the enemy’s effective strength our main objective; do not make holding or seizing a city or place our main objective. Holding or seizing a city or place is the outcome of wiping out the enemy’s effective strength, and often a city or place can be held or seized for good only after it has changed hands a number of times.

4. In every battle, concentrate an absolutely superior force (two, three, four and sometimes even five or six times the enemy’s strength), encircle the enemy forces completely, strive to wipe them out thoroughly and do not let any escape from the net. In special circumstances, use the method of dealing crushing blows to the enemy, that is, concentrate all our strength to make a frontal attack and also to attack one or both of his flanks, with the aim of wiping out one part and routing another so that our army can swiftly move its troops to smash other enemy forces. Strive to avoid battles of attrition in which we lose more than we gain or only break even. In this way, although we are inferior as a whole (in terms of numbers), we are absolutely superior in every part and every specific campaign, and this ensures victory in the campaign. As time goes on, we shall become superior as a whole and eventually wipe out all the enemy.

5. Fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not sure of winning; make every effort to be well prepared for each battle, make every effort to ensure victory in the given set of conditions as between the enemy and ourselves.

6. Give full play to our style of fighting — courage in battle, no fear of sacrifice, no fear of fatigue, and continuous fighting (that is, fighting successive battles in a short time without rest).

7. Strive to wipe out the enemy through mobile warfare. At the same time, pay attention to the tactics of positional attack and capture enemy fortified points and cities.

8. With regard to attacking cities, resolutely seize all enemy fortified points and cities which are weakly defended. Seize at opportune moments all enemy fortified points and cities defended with moderate strength, provided circumstances permit. As for strongly defended enemy fortified points and cities, wait till conditions are ripe and then take them.

9. Replenish our strength with all the arms and most of the personnel captured from the enemy. Our army’s main sources of manpower and matériel are at the front.

10. Make good use of the intervals between campaigns to rest, train and consolidate our troops. Periods of rest, training and consolidation should in general not be very long, and the enemy should so far as possible be permitted no breathing space.

Mao Zedong: China 1930-1976

Global Security  – The Chinese Civil war. Detailed page.

Suite 101  – article about the war between the Nationalists and the Communists.

Interactive Map  – showing the way in which the Chinese Civil War developed.

US Military Academy  – website dedicated to the campaigns of the Chinese Civil War

Experience Festival  – a selection of links to articles about the Chinese Civil War.

News Player  – a number of vidoes showing footage of eventas during the Chinese Civil War.

Wikipedia  – article about the Chinese Civil War

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Chinese Revolution

The chinese civil war.

The Chinese Civil War started, in many respects, with the Shanghai Massacre and the collapse of the First United Front in 1927. The main phase of the Chinese Civil War , however, is generally regarded as the period spanning late 1945 to October 1949. After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalists agreed to peace talks and an abortive ceasefire. But by the start of 1946, the two were again fighting for control of China. The Chinese Civil War culminated in the CCP’s capture of Beijing, where its leader Mao Zedong declared the formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nationalist generalissimo Jiang Jieshi was forced to retreat to Taiwan, where he established an alternative government called the Republic of China (ROC). The civil war inflicted major suffering on China’s civilian population, already exhausted and economically ravaged by decades of revolution, warlordism and conflict with the Japanese. The war caused millions of casualties, collapsed the economy through hyperinflation and corruption, and displaced millions of refugees. The CCP secured victory in 1949 but like the Republicans of 1912, they inherited a divided, unstable and economically depleted nation.

With the Japanese surrender in August 1945, most observers believed the CCP and Nationalists would revive their civil war. In late 1945 foreign intermediaries, particularly the Americans, tried to broker peace talks between the two groups. In late August 1945 Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai attended peace talks with Jiang Jieshi and other Nationalist leaders in Chongqing. Mao and Zhou attended at the urging of the Soviet Union and were accompanied by US diplomat Patrick Hurley. These talks were notable for their civility and frequent shows of goodwill between Mao and Jiang Jieshi. At one function in Chongqing, Jiang raised a toast and declared that he hoped “we can now go back to the days of 1924”. At another dinner, Mao even exclaimed: “Long live President Jiang Jieshi!”. The two men were also photographed together smiling. But beneath this polite veneer, the Chongqing talks were insincere and unproductive. Both sides were manoeuvring behind the scenes and buying time for their military forces to recover and regroup. The United States was promising to support a coalition government while increasing shipments of military supplies to the Nationalists.

After three weeks of negotiating Mao and Jiang announced a bilateral pact, agreeing to suspend hostilities and form an all-party government. As expected, the pact did not last long. Fighting between the CCP and Nationalists soon flared up again in Manchuria, an area at this time controlled by the Soviet Red Army. As Soviet leader Joseph Stalin played both the CCP and Guomindang  to his own advantage, US general George Marshall forced Jiang’s government to agree to a 15 day ceasefire, which gave the beleaguered CCP a lifeline. Jiang had negotiated with Moscow to allow Soviet troops to occupy Manchuria, until he could mass enough troops there to counter any threat from the CCP. The Russians held to this agreement but offered the CCP’s Red Army training, weapons and supplies before withdrawing. This support helped transform communist guerrilla fighters in Manchuria into a more conventional military force. George Marshall continued to push Jiang for further negotiations but was frustrated by the generalissimo’s attitude, so returned to the US in January 1947. American president Harry Truman later noted the “selfish interest of extremist elements, equally in the Guomindang as in the Communist Party, are hindering the aspirations of the Chinese people”.

The Civil War had a significant impact on the Chinese people. The historian Jonathan Fenby suggests that “hyperinflation [during the Chinese Civil War] undermined everyday lives and ruined tens of millions”. Hampered by a poor taxation base, increased military spending and widespread corruption, the Nationalist government’s deficit skyrocketed. The Sino-Japanese War also caused government revenue to shrink, forcing the Guomindang to release large amounts of paper money not backed by financial reserves. The result was hyperinflation: a rapid rise in prices and a deterioration in the value of currency. Historian Michael Lynch writes that “in 1940, 100 yuan bought a pig, in 1943 a chicken, in 1945 a fish, in 1946 an egg, and in 1947 one third of a box of matches”. By 1949 hyperinflation was approaching the levels seen in Weimar Germany in 1923, with some Chinese observed hauling their money in carts. A thriving black market emerged and crime increased. Foreign aid supplies were hijacked and sold, reconstruction of industry was halted and unemployment rose. The behaviour of the Nationalist army only increased dissatisfaction with the government. Nationalists troops, the majority of whom were poorly treated conscripts, mutinied or deserted in large numbers. Soldiers also engaged in rape, looting and other acts of brutality against the civilian population. This unpopularity grew further when Jiang repeated a tactic he had previously used against the Japanese, ordering the diversion of the Yellow River to split enemy forces. The outcome was around 500 villages flooded and 400,000 people displaced.

The CCP, on the other hand, was winning the propaganda war. While Nationalist forces were able to capture the communist soviet in Yan’an in March 1947, the CCP still controlled much of northern China. By September 1947 the civil war was being fought on two fronts: the huge Manchurian theatre in the north and the triangle of Shandong, Anhui and Henan in east-central China. In late 1947 the communists captured the cities of Shenyang and Changchun. The Red Army laid siege to Changchun for 150 days, a tactic designed to starve out GMD forces inside the city – but the siege caused 160,000 civilians to die of hunger, while another 30,000 died when they were trapped between the communist lines and the city walls. In his book The Tragedy of Liberation , historian Frank Dikötter  describes the casual attitude of both communists and Nationalists when it came to the civilian loss of life. “After decades of propaganda about the peaceful liberation of China,” Dikötter writes, “few people remember the victims of the Communist Party’s rise to power”. While statistics vary, it has been suggested that up to 2.5 million people died during the 1945-1949 phase of the Civil War. Several historians suggest the death toll for the entire Chinese Civil War period (1927-49) exceeded six million.

“There is a sense in which the Chinese Civil War has not ended; no formal peace treaty or agreement has ever been made. The two Chinese states that emerged from the civil war, the PRC and Taiwan, have followed very different paths… but each side continues to claim that it alone is the legitimate government of all China. At the start of the second decade of the 21st century, the issues over which the civil war had been fought have still to be resolved.” Michael Lynch, historian

In late 1948, with CCP forces increasing their grip on China and closing in on Beijing, Jiang Jieshi called for the reopening of peace talks. Appealing to the United States and the Soviet Union for mediation, Jiang found little support, while Mao refused his offers. The climax of the war came in early 1949 when the Nationalist general Fu Zuoyi was forced to surrender Beijing. The Red Army was met by cheering crowds as they marched into the city, while at the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Jiang Jieshi’s portrait was replaced by an image of Mao Zedong. One after another cities fell to the CCP. On October 10th 1949, the 55-year-old party leader addressed the nation from Tiananmen Square, declaring that “the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China is founded today”. In the weeks after this momentous declaration, the Red Army chased Jiang across the country, from Guangzhou to Chongqing to Chengdu. Finally, on December 10th 1949, the generalissimo  fled by aeroplane to Taiwan, his departure marking the end of the Nationalist era in China.

Jiang Jieshi left China with around 500,000 loyalist soldiers and two million civilian refugees. He was still unwilling to accept defeat. In Taiwan, Jiang established the Republic of China (ROC). He remained president of this republic until his death in April 1975, his rule exceeding a quarter of a century. Jiang’s Taiwanese government was bankrolled by gold, silver and banknotes worth hundreds of millions of US dollars. Much of this was snatched from banks and government coffers as the Nationalists prepared to flee China. Millions of dollars worth of art and artefacts were also confiscated, from buildings like the Imperial Palace, and taken to Taiwan, where they remain today. Jiang maintained his claim as the rightful ruler of China. He declared the ROC to be China’s legitimate government in exile, further widening the political split between the mainland and Taiwan. Many western nations refused to acknowledge the CCP as the rightful rulers of China for decades after 1949. No peace treaty was signed by the CCP and Guomindang, so technically the civil war continues today; it is in hiatus rather than a state of conclusion.

1. The Civil War between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalists can be traced back to 1927, however, it usually refers to the struggle for China between the end of World War II and October 1949.

2. The Americans brought Mao Zedong and Jiang Jieshi together for peace talks in Chongqing in 1946 but their commitment to a unified China was short lived and fighting quickly resumed.

3. Life during the Civil War was severely impacted by economic problems including hyperinflation, mass unemployment, inadequate reconstruction of industry and large numbers of refugees.

4. By early 1949 Beijing had fallen to the CCP and as other major cities across China fell, the CCP declared victory by proclaiming of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949. The ‘liberation’ of China, however, resulted in millions of civilian causalities at the hands of both sides.

5. Jiang Jieshi fled to Taiwan and set up the Republic of China, maintaining that he was the legitimate leader of mainland China. His regime was bankrolled with riches taken from the mainland. He remained president of the ROC until his death in April 1975.

© Alpha History 2018. Content on this page may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use . This page was written by Rebecca Cairns. To reference this page, use the following citation: R. Cairns, “The Chinese Civil War”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/chinese-civil-war/. This website uses pinyin romanisations of Chinese words and names. Please refer to this page for more information.

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Chinese Civil War summary

Learn about the chinese civil war, its causes, and the outcome.

Chinese Civil War , (1945–49) Military struggle for control of China waged between the Nationalists (Kuomintang) under Chiang Kai-shek and the communists under Mao Zedong . During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), China was effectively divided into three regions—Nationalist China under control of the government, communist China under the control of Japan, and areas occupied by Japan. Each was essentially pitted against the other two, although Chinese military forces were ostensibly allied under the banner of the United Front. After Japan’s defeat at the Potsdam Conference (1945) until late 1946, there was a race between the Nationalists and communists to control vital resources and population centres in northern China and Manchuria, although unsuccessful negotiations for a peaceful settlement continued during this time and into early 1947. The Nationalists had initial success, but the strategic balance turned in favour of the communists during 1947 and into the first half of 1948, after which the communists had a series of decisive victories. The fall of the Nationalist-held Nanjing on April 24, 1949, marked the beginning of the disintegration of the Nationalist government, and on October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. At the end of 1949, virtually all of mainland China was under communist control, and the Nationalists had retreated to Taiwan. During the war, more than two million soldiers died or were wounded in combat, and some five million civilians died as a result of combat, starvation, and disease.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Chinese Civil War, 1945-1949

Introduction, general overviews.

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Chinese Civil War, 1945-1949 by Harold Tanner LAST REVIEWED: 30 November 2015 LAST MODIFIED: 30 November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791279-0031

For the Allies and for Japan itself, the Japanese surrender in August 1945 signaled the arrival of peace. For China, it marked the resumption of the civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT) and Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The conflict began with deployments and military clashes as each side tried to position itself to control North China and Northeast China (Manchuria). The military struggle took place in the context of an international diplomatic contest in which the Soviet Union and the United States each tried to advance their interests in China while avoiding any military involvement themselves. While the Soviets and the Americans each offered limited military assistance to their Chinese protégés, they also pushed them into negotiations, first at Chongqing from August to October 1945, and then from December 1945 through January 1947, in Chongqing and in Nanjing under the auspices of General George Marshall. Both the Communist and the Nationalist leaders engaged in “talking while fighting,” trying to use the dynamic relationship between negotiations and combat in order to maximize gains both at the negotiating table and on the battlefield. By the summer of 1946, it was evident that the negotiations had failed and that the contest between the two parties would be settled by force. While General Marshall continued his efforts at negotiation until January 1947, full-scale civil war broke out, first in China south of the Great Wall, and then with a resumption of hostilities in the Northeast. The military conflict was accompanied by severe economic problems and by intense internal social and political struggles, both in the rural areas and in the cities. The military situation developed rapidly. In the autumn and winter of 1948–1949, the Communists, no longer simple guerrilla forces, defeated Chiang’s armies in three major campaigns: the Liao-Shen, Ping-Jin, and Huai-Hai campaigns. By the end of 1949, Chiang was forced to withdraw to Taiwan. Because the Chinese Civil War had military, political, and social dimensions, and because it unfolded in the context of the Cold War and with the involvement of both the Soviet Union and the United States, there is a vast array of literature that at least touches on the subject. The aim of this bibliography is to focus on the scholarly literature on the civil war itself, while touching on at least some of the major works dealing with the political, social, and particularly the diplomatic context in which the war took place.

Those new to the study of this particular period of Chinese history will want to get a bird’s-eye view of the Republican period (1911–1949) in order to understand the historical context in which the civil war occurred. Lary 2007 provides a good overview of the Republican period, including the civil war. Eastman 2002 focuses more closely on the civil war period and will also initiate the student into the politically charged business of explaining why the civil war ended as it did—an issue which pervades the English-language literature. Pepper 1986 , though now somewhat dated, provides a concise overview of the war itself. For readers of Chinese, Wang 2000 and Zhu and Tao 2000 together provide a treatment of all aspects of the civil war years. Graduate students and other specialists will also find their extensive bibliographies useful.

Eastman, Lloyd E. Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937–1949 . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Overview of the political, economic, and military history of the Republic of China from 1937 to 1949. Concludes that the fundamental reasons for the Kuomintang (KMT) defeat were weaknesses deeply embedded in the regime itself, rather than betrayal by the American government. First published 1984.

Lary, Diana. China’s Republic . Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139167253

A recent textbook introduction to the entire Republican period, including discussion of the civil war. A good starting point for those who need to put the civil war years into context.

Pepper, Suzanne. “The KMT-CCP Conflict 1945–1949.” In The Cambridge History of China . Vol. 13, Republican China: 1912–1949—Part 2 . Edited by John King Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker, 723–788. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521243384

An overview of the political, economic, diplomatic, and military dimensions of the civil war. Pepper notes that while observers easily recognized the weaknesses of the Nationalist government and army, they failed to understand the strengths of the Communists.

Wang Chaoguang. Cong kangzhan shengli dao neizhan baofa qianhou . Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 2000.

Draws on a wide spectrum of archival and secondary sources in Chinese and in English to describe in great detail the domestic, international, and military facets of what the author sees as a competition between two visions of China’s future from August 1945 through July 1947.

Zhu Zongzhen, and Tao Wenzhao. Guomindang zhengquan de zongbengkui he Zhonghua Minguo shiqi de jieshu . Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 2000.

A comprehensive and multifactor historical analysis of the process and causes of the Nationalist Party’s collapse, covering the period from July 1947 through September 1949.

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Summary of The Chinese Civil War (1927–37 and 1946–49)

• Even after the overthrow of the Chinese government, Manchu Dynasty , in 1911 China was still exploited by foreign powers.
• The Chinese Civil War fought between the Communists and the Nationalists was to restore control over China.
• It formed two parts, starting in 1927 , separated by the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 , and started again in 1946 after the war with Japan was over.
• 1.1 Socio-economic factors
• 1.2 Political weakness and the influence of foreign powers
• 1.3 The overthrow of the Manchu dynasty
• 1.4 The rule of Yuan Shikai
• 2.1 Political weakness: regionalism − the warlords (1916−28)
• 2.2 The May Fourth Movement
• 2.3 Attempt to unify China: the First United Front
• 3 Immediate causes of the Chinese Civil War: the GMD attacks on the CCP
• 4.1 The Jiangxi Soviet
• 4.2 Division within the CCP
• 4.3 GMD attempts to exterminate the CCP
• 4.4 The Long March
• 4.5 Key events of the Long March
• 5.1 Setting up base areas
• 5.2 The organisation phase
• 5.3 Defending the bases
• 5.4 The guerrilla phase
• 5.5 Protracted war
• 5.6 Seizing power
• 6.1 Why was the CCP able to survive the first stage of the Chinese Civil War?
• 7.1 The impact of the war on the GMD
• 7.2 The impact of the war on the CCP
• 8.1 Failure of the USA
• 8.2 Initial victories of the GMD (1945−47)
• 8.3 CCP on the offensive (1947−48)
• 8.4 Collapse of the GMD resistance
• 9.1 Strengths of the CCP
• 9.2 Jiang Jieshi's Errors
• 10.1 The USA
• 10.2 The USSR
• 11.1 For China
• 11.2 For Asia
• 11.3 For the USSR
• 11.4 China's relations with the USA and the West

Long- term causes of the Chinese Civil War

Socio-economic factors.

• Peasants under the rule of the Manchu Dynasty were poor, worked on land, lived a hard life, and paid all the taxes.
• Their population grew by 8% but the land cultivated increased only by 1% in the second half of the 19th century, and this imbalance caused famines.
• Peasants, often driven to the cities by their poverty, had to pay up to 80% of their harvest to landlords, and usually struggled with unemployment and debt due to cheap Western technology.

Political weakness and the influence of foreign powers

• China's destabilised economy was exploited and humiliated through Western imperialism after the mid 19th century Opium Wars and the great Chinese empire had been "carved up into spheres of influence."
• China had been forced to sign unequal treaties, maintain extra-territorial courts for foreigners who disobeyed Chinese laws, saw inflation, corruption, and financial chaos from imperialist powers.
• Large portions of the tax revenue did not reach the central government as provisional governments were corrupt.
• In 1864, the first political reform and religious movement was shut down after the regional armies killed millions of Chinese rebellions.
• Even the Chinese educated and elite in the Self-Strengthening Movement were divided on how to modernise China.
• China had lost the war with Japan in 1895, and lost land to Japan in the Russo-Japanese settlement in 1904−5).
• There was a widespread and popular anti-Western feeling, which started the Boxer Rebellion in 1899, but without modern weaponry, any anti-foreign revolt was futile.

The overthrow of the Manchu dynasty

• Chinese government felt increased tension when the death of the Emperor and succession of two year old Pu Yi in 1908, alongside the ever-growing sensation of imminent 'Westerinisation.'
• Prince Chun ruled in regent, his incompetence saw the dismissal of Jiang Jieshi, and he increased taxation, contributing to socio-economic downturn.
• In 1911 , the dynasty was overthrown in a revolution known as the Double Tenth and a republic was created.
• Dr Sun Yixan , who had been in exile in the USA during the revolution, was to become the first president of the new republic in Nanjing.
• In an attempt to over-throw the rebellion, the imperial government tried to use the Northern Army general, Yuan Shikai , only to be double-crossed. In February 1912, Pu Yi was abdicated.
• Despite this revolution, there was no establishment of democracy and former imperial officers held their positions.
• Historian Michael Lynch argues that the revolution was essentially a revolt by the provinces against the center government; "a triumph for regionalism."

The rule of Yuan Shikai

• Yuan Shikai was military dictator from 1912 to 1915. His military dictatorship was the key obstacle in uniting China.
• Sun's party reformed to become the Guomindang (GMD) in 1912 .
• To win the political battle for China, a military was required; a lesson learnt by the GMD and the Chinese communists.
• In an attempt to undermine the influential Yuan Shikai's rule, Sun tried moving him from his power base in Beijing to Nanjing.
• The GMD were a regional power when Shikai refused, and the republicans were not ready to face resistance from Yuan.
• The 'second revolution' against Yuan failed in 1913, and Sun fled to Japan.
• The republicans created regional assemblies, which Yuan abolished and alienated provisional powers, and tax revenues.
• However, Yuan's ultimate mistake was when he declared himself Emperor in 1916. He lost support from the military and died soon after.

Short-term causes of the Chinese Civil War

Political weakness: regionalism − the warlords (1916−28).

• After the abdication and death of Yuan, China lost the final degree of unity.
• China broke up into smaller provinces controlled by warlords which lasted between 1916 and 1928.
• The warlords ran their areas independently, collected taxes, had their own laws and currencies.
• The Chinese were highly embarrassed by this, and the peasants suffered.
• Internal state of anarchy, division, and regionalism and provincialism was to pay for the cause of the chinese civil war

The May Fourth Movement

• Led by students in 1919, and in response to the Treaty of Versailles, a mass demonstration was held in Beijing, against the warlords, traditional culture, and the Japanese.
• China had joined the Allies in a "rebirth" as an independent nation inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.
• Imperialism was perceived as the main cause for China's problem.
• China's GMD party had grown stronger during the warlord period.

Attempt to unify China: the First United Front

• Both the GMD and the CCP wanted a unified China and took up a united front to fight the warlords in 1923.
• Sun Yixan's third principle, 'the People's Livelihood,' otherwise known as socialism, convinced Cominterm that this front could be trusted.
• Though he had been educated in Moscow, and found funding from the USSR to train GMD officers, Jiang became increasingly anti-Communist which nearly broke the front.
• The GMD and the CCP went on a Northern Expedition (1926−8) to crush the warlords, which was a success.
• The GMD announced it was a legitimate government and situated the new capital in Nanjing.

Immediate causes of the Chinese Civil War: the GMD attacks on the CCP

• The tension between the GMD and the CCP was the last of the tension in China and their alliance was of convenience.
• Their success was as a result of the CCP promise of land to the peasants and GMD ambitions.
• Jiang was sympathetic to the landlords and middle classes but began to expel all communists from the GMD due to communist support.
• The 'White Terror' in April 1927 was Jiang's peak attack. Jiang turned the powerful 'workers' party army' under Zhou ENlai against the CCP, 5,000 communists were shot.
• Jiang's 'purification movement' killed around 250,000 people, including communists, trade unionists, and peasant leaders.
• By 1927, the CCP were nearly destroyed.

The course of the war

The jiangxi soviet.

• The CCP retreated to Jiangxi, which became known as Jiangxi Soviet.
• Mao Zedong's writing suggests that the White Terror was proof that the United Front ultimately doomed.
• Mao also believed that the GMD and Cominterm had the wrong strategy for China; it should be peasant based.
• Mao said "The peasants are the sea; we are the fish. The sea is our habitat," which shifted the ideological orthodox interpretation of Marxism to Maoism.
• His tangent ideology was successful with the results of recruitment found in the Jiangxi Soviet.

Division within the CCP

• Both the CCP and the GMD suffered from 'internal factionalism' during this period of the civil war.
• Revolution carried out by the peasants,
• Guerrilla warfare, and
• Land reform.
• Li Lisan "misinterpreted" commands and attacked the Jiangxi Soviet in what was thought as a global end of capitalism in the Great Depression.
• His attacks failed due to the parties influence in rural areas.
• Lisan was dismissed from leadership in January 1931.

GMD attempts to exterminate the CCP

• Between 1928 to 1934, Jiang failed to carry out Sun's Three Principles and his support (the rich and landlords) were of no help to his ineffective government.
• In 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria.
• Still trying to destroy the Communists, Jiang initiated the 'Five Encirclement Campaigns;' circling the reds, cutting off supplies and resources.
• Mao's strategy, in a letter to Lisan in 1921 was: 'The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy halts, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats; we pursue.'
• After Lisan, he was replaced with 28 Moscow graduates known as the 28 Bolsheviks with the influence of Cominterm.
• Mao did not like these "inexperienced men."
• The first 3 campaigns were between December 1930 to September 1931 who were all defeated under Zhou Enlai.
• The CCP's knowledge of the area and support of local peasants helped.
• Zhu De was involved in the fourth encirclement campaign, using the same tactics forcing back the GMD in 1933.

The Long March

• The Fifth Encirclement Campaign saw a force of 800,000 men, air cover and artillery, as a result of German advice.
• It was successful at Ruijin in 1934, and instead of surrendering Mao decided to break the GMD's lines and set up a new base.
• This was successful on the 19th of October 1934, when the CCP trekked 9,600km to Shaanxi.
• It took 368 days, 90% of the 90,000 communists died, and they passed inhospitable territory.

Key events of the Long March

• The 28 Bolsheviks led the CCP to Xiang River, which was strongly defended by the GMD.
• 50,000 attempting to cross the river died - they were "sitting ducks" for Jiang's forces.
• In January 1935, the CCP captured the town of Zunyi using Guerilla tactics.
• At this time, the 28 Bolsheviks were discredited as a result of the disaster at Xiang River.
• Mao became leader.
• At Zunyi, Mao declared war on Japan, led the Red Army towards Sichuan and met with 40,000 other communists.
• Jiang met Mao along the western provinces of Yunnan and Tibet, the GMD destroyed all the boats at Yangtze River, attempting to disrupt Mao's rout.
• Mao deceived the nationalists by sending units 136km further along, tricking the GMD and crossing another bridge.
• The CCP covered 134km in 24 hours two weeks later, and came across Dabu River.
• Local people built a bridge to help the CCP and the GMD should have blown the bridge but this would have caused local outcry.
• Jiang's forces removed the planks, stopping the CCP.
• According to the CCP, 22 volunteers threw grenades to take out the machine-gun ready GMD and let the rest of the Red Army cross.
• The success here led to a massive boost in morale, encouraging members of the GMD to switch sides.
• With only 10,000 left, Mao met with 45,000 other men at Sichun under the command of Zhang.
• They quarreled on the next move of te he CCP, and split forces, Zhang taking Zhu De.
• The GMD attacked Zhang's army, and Zhu De fled to meet with Mao.
• Mao crossed the deadly Songpan marshes, 3,000 men died across the 400km region.
• After marching 9,600km, fighting 15 major battles, Mao arrived at Shaanxi province to form the Shaanxi Soviet in October 1935.
• A new based was formed in the city of Yan'an.

Mao and revolutionary warfare

• Not trying to defeat GMD, but impose revolutionary ideology onto Chinese people.
• Maoism would reconstruct all of society, economy, and government.
• Nationalism involved maintain the status quo.
• Mao believed peasants were central to revolution; his priority was to persuade and support them with communist cause.

Setting up base areas

• Mao would set up base areas to organize and educate peasants who would accept the new taxes and justice system.
• Base areas were remote and difficult for the GMD to interfere with.
• Part of 'Eight Rules of the Eighth Army' was to respect everyone - gained support with peasants.

The organisation phase

• Once one base was up, CCP leaders sent out to other villages to set up more bases.
• Aim to take over countryside, isolating cities, slowly taking control of China.

Defending the bases

• Mao organized 'hit and runs' as there was good knowledge of terrain and support from locals.
• GMD tried to hunt down CCP, drawing them to hostile areas, but guerrilla tactics usually prevailed.
• Enemy became demoralised and word down and any attempt to destroy CCP (looting villages/massive attacks/etc) only increased hostility and improved CCP status.

The guerrilla phase

• Communists can survive by retreating like in the Long March to new bases or create new bases.
• This made new guerilla fighters.

Protracted war

• Mao knew this would lead to a longer war, however as the number of guerillas increased, the number of attacks increased.
• Balance eventually fell in favour of guerillas.

Seizing power

• Guerillas joined together to form convention army in the 'open or mobile phase'.
• CCP in last stage of guerilla warfare when second civil war broke out (1946).
• When the CCP were in power, consolidation occurred; removing remnants of the 'old regime.'

End of the first stage of the Chinese Civil War – the Second United Front (1937)

• Long March essential for Mao to become unchallenged leader even though Jiang Jieshi still determined to defeat CCP.
• China was invaded in 1931 by Japan (Jieshi made this deal), taking over Manchuria.
• Jieshi appealed to League of Nations, as CCP was a greater threat; called the Japanese "a disease of the skin while communists were a disease of the heart."
• Jieshi attempted to resist Japanese in Shanghai 1932, truced later. This led to an anti-Japanese sentiment.
• Mao called for another 'United Front' to fight Japanese; all agreed including northern warlords.
• It was the Comintern and not Mao who ended up pushing the alliance between CCP and GMD as Stalin was worried about Japanese expansion.
• 1936, Jieshi was the only leader in China who could effectively fight them.
• Jieshi was kidnapped by warlords, and was released on Cominterm orders after 13 days, forcing the front.

Why was the CCP able to survive the first stage of the Chinese Civil War?

• Long March ensured CCP survival with a defensible base in Yan'an; propaganda victory for CCP; won support for claim to fight Japanese.
• Mao became leader who consolidated the group of revolutionaries.
• Mao offered to join a front with GMD won him popularity.
• GMD's decision to deal with Japanese after CCP lost support.
• Poor treatment of peasants by GMD degraded their popularity.
• GMD failed to implement Sun's Three Principles.

The Sino-Japanese War

The impact of the war on the gmd.

• GMD gambled on USA defeating Japan, sending best troops to Yan'an, demoralising the army.
• Jieshi lost tax revenue as Japan occupied land; he printed more money causing high levels of inflation, hurting the middle class - the natural GMD supporters.
• Corrupt GMD army, low moral, ill treatment, and conscription that alienated peasants.
• Japanese control ports and key land routes; limited supplies despite American aid.
• Military failures, internal faction, and inflation caused discontent - Jieshi simply increased repression.
• GMD only controlled territory around the capital and areas in the south.
• CCP had light losses with guerrilla tactics, the GMD bore the brunt of Japanese attacks and had been damanged physically and psychologically.
• GMD lost support for 'sitting back' and waiting for the Americans to win the war.

The impact of the war on the CCP

• Mao: "our fixed policy should be 70% expansion, 20% dealing with the GMD and 10% resisting the Japanese."
• March 1945, communists had liberated 678/914 country towns, introducing: land reform; village schools/soviets; reducing taxes; abolishing debt.
• James Sheridan: the reason CCP achieved enthusiastic backing of peasants was "by meeting the local, immediate needs of the peasants through reformist and radical social polices by providing leadership for the defence of peasant communities against the Japanese. In this fashion the communist won peasant confidence and the process began the transformation - the modernisation - of rural China."
• Women treated as equals for first time in Chinese history.
• CCP gained support as egalitarians.
• During Yan'an blockade in 1939, CCP became self-sufficient; taxing goods and holding back inflation.
• Jack Gray: "by 1945 about 40 per cent of their basic needs were supplied by [the garrison system]".
• "Mass line" meant polices were taken from the people.
• Overall successful in removing communist factions and pro-Russian groups.
• CCP had good military leadership with international reputation - single largest campaign of the Sino-Japanese War that had a brutal retaliation from the Japanese; "kill all, burn all, loot all" policy.
• Mao used guerrilla assaults with propaganda to promote them as real nationalists.
• Mao said Jiang was nothing more than a puppet of the Western imperialists - fed the long-held anti-foreign and anti-imperialist popular feeling in China.

Second phase of the Civil War (1945–49)

• CCP powerful enough to exit guerilla tactics and engage in conventional fighting.
• Polarisation of international political context in Cold War meant China could not be an internal affair, it was part of a larger Soviet-American effort to establish post-war power.
• Both super powers wanted stable China, weakened Japan, and a coalition GMD-CCP government.

Failure of the USA

• General Marshall got the CCP and GMD to agree on: preparing to set up a coalition government, temporary council, and a united Army.
• By 1946 no less, both CCP and GMD were moving troops to Manchuria; outcome would determine leader of China.
• By this point: CCP had 1 million army, GMD had 4 million army and heavy weaponry.

Initial victories of the GMD (1945−47)

• CCP initially defensive as GMD have more troops and better equipment.
• Japanese surrender in August 1945, Red Army secure important industrial region.
• Yalta Conference February 1945, USSR agreed to invade Manchuria following Germany's surrender.
• Soviets did invade, but CCP already in control, mutual assistance and CCP given Japanese weapons.
• Despite new weapons, CCP was forced out of cities - December 1945, Mao reintroduced policy of creating bases outside of cities.
• Mao killed in battle

CCP on the offensive (1947−48)

Collapse of the gmd resistance, what were the reasons for the communist success, strengths of the ccp.

• Soviet troops in Manchuria gave PLA forces training
• Supported by peasantry who feared revenge
• Used propaganda to win support
• Had a good reputation at controlling the struggle against the Japanese
• Mao’s personality cult, inspired confidence
• Carried out guerrilla warfare and began conventional warfare in 1948
• Were able to capture transport links to isolate GMD forces in cities

Jiang Jieshi's Errors

What was the role of foreign support in the final outcome.

• The Americans had economic and strategic interests in China, and they had supported the GMD from the first phase of the civil war.
• USA provided Jiang with almost $3 billion in aid and large supplies of arms throughout WWII.
• At the beginning of the second stage of the civil war, the Americans transported GMD forces by sea and air to the north of China, and US troops occupied Tianjin and Beijing to hold them until the GMD were ready.
• Some historians believe that more military commitment from USA may have 'saved' China from communism.
• Americans were held responsible by Jiang for pressurizing him to agree to truces at critical times during his war on the CCP.
• Americans' mere presence gave Mao excellent anti-GMD propaganda.

Results of the Chinese Civil War

• After civil war, CCP consolidated its control in China
• CCP pursued key ideas they had initiated in Yanan
• One of key legacies of Chinese Civil War is continued authoritarian rule by CCP
• China remains a single-party state in which individual rights and freedoms are suppressed
• In 1989, when young protesters on streets of Tienanmen Square, Beijing, were forcibly dispersed with guns and tanks, the battles of the war were used to justify the actions of the state
• Mao's victory led to globalization of the Cold War, which spread from its seedbed in Europe to Asia
• Asia was now a region in which the superpowers would struggle for control and influence
• Communist victory inspired insurgencies in Indonesia, Malaya, Indochina, and Thailand
• Communist victory also led to the first 'hot war' of the Cold War-- the Korean War (1950-1953)

For the USSR

• Although CCP's victory should have been viewed as a victory for the spread of communism and for the USSR, Stalin feared Mao as a rival for the leadership of the communist world, and he had not wanted the Cold War to spread to Asia
• Jiang's GMD would have recognized disputed border territory along frontiers in Manchuria and Xinjiang as Soviet
• Fundamentally, Stalin did not view Maoism as 'genuinely revolutionary' and did not agree with Mao's 'hybrid' ideology, which was a mix of traditional Chinese culture and Marxism
• Mao became convinced that Stalin planned to create a divided and weak China, which would leave the USSR dominant in Asia
• Mao saw Stalin's policies as rooted in self-interest rather than true revolutionary doctrine
• Nevertheless, once CCP had won the civil war, Mao visited Moscow in 1950. This produced the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Alliance: the first treaty between the USSR and China
• USSR and Soviet press praised Mao and the new People's Republic of China (PRC), excited about their victory. To the US, the USSR-China alliance was 'Moscow making puppets out of the Chinese'
• Such good relations between USSR and China prompted a change in the construction of China: traditional buildings were pulled down for Soviet-style constructions and Soviet scientific technology was prioritized over Chinese technology
• Sino-Soviet relations chilled again during the Korean War, however
• Soviets gave material assistance to the one million Chinese troops engaged in battle, but despite this support for PRC intervention in the Korean War, Mao bitterly complained when the Soviets demanded that the Chinese pay for all weapons and materials they supplied
• After death of Stalin, Sino-Soviet relations worsened dramatically

China's relations with the USA and the West

• Mao's victory led to much anxiety in the US, and seemed at the time to shift the balance of power in the Cold War in the USSR's favor.
• Many saw the Communists' victory as inevitable; nevertheless, as the Cold War intensified and McCarthyism took hold in the USA, state officials were accused of having 'lost' China.
• Stalin was now seen as having been the mastermind behind Mao's CCP.
• USA failed to understand the different types of communism or that there was increasing tension and hostility between Mao and Stalin.
• USA also refused to recognize the PRC as a legitimate state.
• USA backed Jiang Jieshi and the Chinese nationalists, who had fled at the end of the civil war to the island of Taiwan.
• Mao's victory was a key reason for the passing of a vast new military budget to fund the struggle against the spread of communism, and also led USA into Korean War and conflict over Taiwan
• However, by end of 1960s there was a radical change by Americans and communist Chinese in their policies and strategies towards each other... this period of dialogue became known as 'ping pong diplomacy'.

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Home Lessons Modern History Chinese Civil War Lesson Plans & Classroom Resources Political Causes of the Chinese Civil War

Political Causes of the Chinese Civil War

The Chinese Civil War is one of the most significant events in modern Chinese history, shaping the country’s political landscape for decades. Understanding the political causes that led to the outbreak of the war is essential in comprehending the history and politics of modern China. This modern history lesson plan focuses on the Political Causes of the Chinese Civil War, from the 1911 Revolution to the unification of China in 1928.

The PowerPoint provides an overview of the significant figures, such as Sun Yat-sen, Yuan Shi-kai, and Chiang Kai-shek, and the key events that led to the Chinese Civil War. These events include the First World War, the May 4th Movement, the rise of the Communists, and The Long March. The lesson is delivered using a PowerPoint presentation that effectively communicates the content, including visual aids and concise, easy-to-understand language.

Student engagement is crucial in this lesson plan, and it is achieved through a variety of activities. The lesson plan includes a short film that visually represents the topic. Additionally, the class engages in open discussions, which can enhance critical thinking and analytical skills. Comprehension questions also provide a way of assessing student knowledge retention and encouraging deeper thinking.

Ultimately, the lesson plan aims to enhance students’ understanding of the political context leading to the Chinese Civil War. By providing insights into the causes and effects of the political situation in China during that period, the lesson encourages the students to think critically and develop a comprehensive understanding of historical events. The skills learned during this lesson on the “Political Causes of the Chinese Civil War” can be helpful for future historical research and analysis, allowing students to build a solid foundation of knowledge for their further studies in the subject.

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DP History at NIS

Nis – inspiring international mindedness, personal excellence, creative thinking, the chinese civil war 1927 – 1949.

1. The causes of the Chinese Civil War

This extract is from Michael Lynch’s book,  China from Empire to People’s Republic 1900 – 1949:   The Chinese civil war part one  This extract is from  Mao  by Michael Lynch:  The formation of the United Front The readings below come from  Causes, Practices and Effects of Wars  by Keely Rogers and Jo Thomas:  Long term and short term causes Long March Impact of the Japanese

ATL skills: Thinking Skills 

1. Using your knowledge of the period of Chinese History from 1911 – 1927 answer the question “What caused the Chinese Civil War” in pairs by using the Thinking Routine: generate – sort – connect – elaborate

2. Switch your visible thinking with another pair and give them some specific feedback on their ideas. Use a different colour sticky note to give your feedback.

3. Read the following pdf about the causes of the Chinese Civil War. Use the Thinking Routine: Connect – Extend – Challenge to help you to understand it.

The Causes of the Chinese Civil War

ATL Skills: Communication

Complete the Essay scaffold  to address the title: Examine the causes of the First Chinese Civil War in 1927.

2. The Course of the First Chinese Civil War (the end of the first United Front 1927 – the start of the second United Front 1937)

Read the following section from the textbook:  The Course of the Chinese Civil War – Jiangxi Soviet and Long March

Key Events:

The Jiangsi Soviet 1927 – 1934 also known as The First Red State in China:

Michael Lynch The Jiangxi Soviet

• Crucial in Mao’s rise to power
• Preparation for a Communist State  Jung Chang – Jiangxi Soviet
• Guerilla warfare used very successfully against Chiang Kai Shek:  Jung Chang – Guerilla Warfare
• Brutal rule of the local population by the CCP leadership

Invasion of Manchuria by Japanese 1931

• Japanese established Manchukuo with Pu Yi as leader
• 1937 Japanese left Manchuria and attacked Beijing (start of 15 year war)

The Long March 1934 – 35

The Long March – Encyclopaedia Britannica

Michael Lynch The Long March

• Important for Mao’s rise to power
• Rebuilding of CCP after attacks by GMD
• Part of future party ‘mythology’
• Important turning point in the Civil War

Rise to Power of Mao – Authoritarian and Single Party State Leaders

The Long March – Causes, Practices and Effects of War

The Yanan Soviet 1935

• Rebuilding of the CCP

Mistakes made by Chiang Kai Shek

• Failed to implement Sun Yat-sen’s Three Prinicples
• Failed to deal with the Japanese
• Poor treatment of the peasants

Leadership, ideology and policies of the GMD and CCP  1911 – 1937   

1. work in pairs take one large sheet of paper divide it into two with a timeline in centre and CCP events on one side, GMD on other and common events in the middle

2. make a timeline to show the leadership changes and the key events of the time period including both united fronts summarize the ideology, summarize the policies for both Ideology and policies give specific examples.

3. The Second United Front 1937 – 1945

Michael Lynch The Xian Incident 1936

4. The Fifteen Year War between Japan and China 1931 – 1945

What was the impact of Japanese aggression on the domestic struggle for power?

15 Year War Manchuria Lynch

15 Year War Origins Lynch

15 Year War Sino – Japanese Lynch

15 Year War WW2 Lynch

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/pacificwar/timeline.htm 

5. The Second Chinese Civil War 1946 – 49

The Chinese Civil War resumed after the surrender of the Japanese. Make a table to show the key events in each of the three phases of the civil war and how they impacted the war.

Civil War 1946 -9

6. Why did the CCP win the Chinese Civil War in 1949?

Causes, Practices and Effects of War – Why did the CCP win the Chinese Civil War in 1949?

Why did the CCP win the CCW in 1949? Lynch

7. How significant was foreign intervention in the Chinese Civil War?

Look at the role of these three foreign powers during the CCW 1927 – 1949 by completing the table below:

The Causes and Effects of the Chinese Civil War, 1927-1949

Seton Hall University eRepository @ Seton Hall Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

2002 The aC uses and Effects of the Chinese Civil War , 1927-1949 Jennifer Lynn Cucchisi Seton Hall University

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.shu.edu/dissertations Part of the Asian History Commons, Military History Commons, and the Political History Commons

Recommended Citation Cucchisi, Jennifer Lynn, "The aC uses and Effects of the Chinese Civil War , 1927-1949" (2002). Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs). 2361. https://scholarship.shu.edu/dissertations/2361 THECAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR, 1927-1949

BY JENNIFER LYNN CUCC!flSI B.A., PACE UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK CITY , 1997

A THESIS SUBMITIED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENf OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ASIAN STUDIES AT SETON HALL UNIVERSITY

SOUTH ORANGE, NEW JERSEY 2002 THE CAUSFS AND EFFECTS OF TIIE CHINESE CIVIL WAR, 1927·1'49

TIIESIS TITLE

Jennifer L. Cuccbtsi MONTH, DAY, YEAR

F.dwln p ·Wah Leung,

MENTOR (FIRST READER) <:!,J,/,,J-2.A:-11. 7 G�rt-Ma�os, Ph.D EXAMINERSJ.;.� (SECOND READER) Sbi,eru Osuka., Ed.D

EXAMINER (TiilRD READER)

EXAMINER (FOURTH READER) <7.Jll 2... /h"ilC) G�; �at�� Ph.D

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT

THIS THES[S IS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFlll.MENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR TIIE MASTER OF ARTS DEGREE AS SPECIFCED FOR MAJORS IN THE DFPARTMENT OF ASlAN STlIDIES AT SETON HAU. UNIVERSITY, SOlITH ORANGE, NEW JERSEY. Contents

2 Introduction

3 Chapter 1-TheThree Fathers of Modem China 4 Dr. Sun Yat-sen 5 Chiang Kai-shek 9 Mao Tse-tung 12 The Endless Dedication of the Great Revolutionaries 15 Summary 17

4 Chapter 2- The Chinese Civil War 19 China After the Collapse oflmperialism 22 The "Presidency" of Yuan Shih-kai and the Warlord Era 23 Chiang Kai-shek and the Establishment of the Nationalist Govenunent in China 28 The History of Conflict Between the KMT and the CCP 29 Sununary 34

5 Chapter 3- The Power Struggle Between Chiang Kai-shck and Mao Tse-tung 37 Chiang Kai-shek's Rise to Power 38 Mao Tse-tung in the Early Days of the CCP 40 Chiang Kai-shek and the Young Marshal 42 The Sian Incident 44 U.S. Intervention 47 Mao's Revolution 49 Where Chiang Went Wrong 51 Summary 53

6 Chapter 4- The Second Sino-Japanese War 55 Toe United States and Asia During WWII 56 The Devastating Results of the Japanese Invasion on China 60 Japanese Reaction to their War Crimes 62 The KMT and the CCP During the War 64 The Communist Growth During the War 66 Summary 69

7 Conclusion 72

8 Bibliography 75 Preface

This thesis is a study of China's civil war between the Kuomintang (KMf) and the

Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and its effects on the country and its people. This was a turning point in Chinese history, which resulted in the establishment of Communism in

China. General Chiang Kai-shek's dedication to this civil war cost him the respect of the

Chinese people and helped lead to his exile to Taiwan . The Sino-Japanese War (1937-

1945), however, was the main factor in Chiang's defeat, for while Chiang Kai-shek's army was busy fighting the Japanese, the Chinese Communist Party was building in strength and popularity.

In this thesis, I intend to:

(1) Present a background of China after the collapse of the imperial system.

(2) Objectively present the events of the Chinese Civil War as they occurred.

(3) Discuss the events leading up to the downfall of the Kuomintang, as well as the

reasons for the Chinese Communist Party's success in China.

The research methods that I used include literary sources such as biographies, autobiographical accounts and periodicals.

This thesis is divided into chapters, and intends to be in a mini-textbook format.

Chapter 1 discusses the three men who are ultimately responsible for China's political system of today, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung. While Dr. Sun wished to instil] democracy into China, he did not have a strong enough military backing and was kept out of power by the warlords . He did, however, open the door for the later

ii fonns of government that will fo1low in China, such as nationalism and communism.

Chiang Kai-shek was responsible for bringing nationalism and order into China, but was

later defeated by Mao Tse-tung who was responsible for instituting the communist

government in China.

Chapter 2 deals with China after the collapse of imperialism , including the invasion of

the warlords and the brief presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai. It also discusses the history of

the tension between the KMf and the CCP, which will be covered in further detail in

The final chapter discusses the Sino-Japanese War and its effects on China's political system focusing on Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT' s downfall.

I would like to extend my gratitude to those who helped make this work possible. I would like to thank my husband Timothy Mount, as well as my parents, stepparents and grandparents for their help and support and especially my daughter Drew for her patience. I would like to thank Dr. Shigueru Osuka for his support and for believing in me and I also thank Dr. Marcelline Jenny for being an inspiration to me. Finally, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my mentor Dr. Edwin Pak-wah Leung for having faith in me and for his tremendous assistance in this project. He is the reason I took such a vast interest in the topic. I sincerely appreciate the time and effort that he put into reading this work and the end results would not have been the same without his help.

iii Introduction

The Civil War in China from 1927 to 1949 was a result of the fall of the monarchical system in 1912. Without a structured fonn of government, the country was in chaos.

Warlords, military men who controlled specific regions of China, were vying for power and had taken over the country. Obviously the lack of structure caused economic problems in China as well as distress among the Chinese people . While Dr. Sun Yat-sen, an essential figure in the fall of the Imperial government, strove to find a solution to this growing problem, he did not have the military power to back up any of his plans. His plan was to instill democracy into China, yet he died before he could accomplish this.

After his death, one of his followers and head of the Whampoa Military Academy which

Dr. Sun had opened, General Chiang Kai-shek, decided to continue carrying out his plans to institute nationalism into China. By this time, an opposing political party had started gaining popularity in China: communism. Chiang had witnessed a Communist fonn of government when he had trained in the Soviet Union and did not agree with it, his mission became keeping it out of China. Chiang's persistence towards fighting the

Communists certainly did not make him popular with the Chinese people. They had just witnessed twelve years of fighting among the warlords and a provisional president who had tried to tum the country back to a monarchy and now they were ready for peace and structure. Although Dr. Sun had formed a United Front between the two parties in 2

August 1922, Chiang still did not trust the Communists and felt ifhe did not stop them,

they would grow and take over China. Thus, in 1927, he attempted to purge all the

Chinese Communists and was successful in murdering many. However, the future head

of China, Mao Tse-tung, survived these attacks and became instrumental in the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP). He would eventually win control and institute a Communist

There are many factors as to why Chiang Kai-shek lost control of China. The main factor was the Japanese invasion of China beginning in 1937, known as the second Sino­

Japanese War. From this stemmed many additional factors, such as a poor economy, rising inflation, and decreasing confidence in their leader among the Chinese people.

Chiang also failed to address many issues during his rule such as land and other necessary refonns. Part of this was due to his focus on fighting the Communists. This focus also led the Chinese people to start losing interest in Chiang, saying that he should be fighting the Japanese instead of the Communists. However, historical hindsight proves that Chiang was correct in fearing the Communist takeover, although it is not unlikely that his preoccupation with this did cloud his judgment when fighting the

Japanese, leading to great atrocities such as the Nanking Massacre . Earlier intervention by the United States and the Soviet Union during the war, however, may have prevented some of the devastation caused by the war as well. One question remains whether or not the Communists would have taken over when they did if the war had not occurred. It is not probable, for while the war was occuning they had the opportunity to grow, which they most likely would not have been able to do under different circumstances. Another question is whether or not China would have been better off under Chiang Kai-shek' s and 3 the KMT's rule than Mao and the CCP. While Mao fonned not a true Communist government, but more of a totalitarian dictatorship , Chiang ordered innocent people, women and children, to be executed during the Communist purge. H he had not been focusing on keeping the Communists out of power than perhaps there would have been more of an indication of what he was capable of, whether it be good or evil, yet his paranoia, although not completely unwarranted, seemed to lead to his downfall.

While all three men seemed went about it in different ways, each of them wanted to work towards bettering China's future. While Dr. Sun did it purely out of patriotism for his country, Chiang and Mao seemed to have their own interests in mind as well. 4

The Three Fathers of Modern China

Three men arc primarily responsible for modem China. One worked towards freeing

China of imperial rule, one tried to instill democracy into China and the other began the

Communist form of government that is still prevalent in China today. In 1911, Dr. Sun

Yat-scn, who headed the Republican Revolution, overthrew the monarchy. He struggled unsuccessfully to bring a full-fledged democracy into China until his death inl925. In

1926 General Chiang Kai-shek took it upon himself to instill nationalism into China and attempted to destroy communism. By 1949, Chiang was overthrown by Mao Tse-tung, who brought communism into China along with numerous refonns. These three men were all drawn by a common goal-they all struggled to do what they felt was best for

China's future. Their lives became dedicated to China. Dr. Sun was a medical doctor who ended up dedicating his life to fighting for democracy in China . Chiang fought for

China so that communism would not be dominant in the country. Mao was a Communist who had been brought up reading the Confucian Classics. Once in power he ruled China by the strict ideology of communism-although it was not full-fledged communism.

Each of these men felt that they were certain what was right for China-and also what was the wrong political ideology for the nation . They were all struggling to become great leaders of China. They were not only struggling to bring ideologies into China, but also to rid China of its current policies. The main thing that all of these men had in common, is whether or not they were Communist, democratic, or Nationalist, they all had a 5

Nationalist sentiment, for they were fighting for the best interest of China. To get a better idea of what the three men had in common, it is important to look at the ways they all took control of the Chinese government and some of the major steps that they took while in power.

Dr. Sun Vat-sen

Sun Yat-sen was born in 1866 to a well-off peasant family in Tsui-heng Village. As a young boy Sun studied the Confucian classics and helped on his parents' fann.1 By age eleven, Sun wanted to join his brother where he was working in Hawaii , but his parents felt this was too young. One year later, in 1879, Sun went to Hawaii to be with his brother and began to study at the Iolani College. It was there that Sun began to take an interest in Christianity. In 1883 Sun's brother Sun Mei sent him back to China, fearful that the West was corrupting him with it's religious teachings2• Soon after he returned to

China, in 1884, Sun's parents arranged a marriage for him to a girl named Lu Szu. 3 He would later have three children with Lu, but was not home often, for he soon became embroiled in revolutionary activity. China was still under the monarchical system of the

Chi 'ing Dynasty and Sun felt that the Imperial system was no longer right for China.

This was after several revolts against the government in the last century China, including the White Lotus Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion . Dr. Sun was deeply influenced by

Western democracy and felt it would be the right political policy for China. Sun

I Jeffrey Barlow, Sun Yat-.sen, (New York: Chelsea House 1987). 27. 2 Ibid. 33. 1 Ibid. 35. 6

graduated from medical school in Hong Kong in 1893, but his concern over China's fate

took precedence over his career.

Dr. Sun began his revolutionary actions in 1894. This is the year that the Revival of

China Society was formed-Dr. Sun was often given credit as being the founder,

however it has been written that Yang Ch'u-yun was the organization's true founder and

party head for approximately five years.4 The purpose of this society was to overthrow

the Manchus, who controlled the government, because they were unable to protect China

from foreigner invaders such as the Japanese5• This was proven by China's loss of

territory to Japan in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. In fact an oath was taken by the

twenty members which said:

I, so-and-so, of such-and-such a province and district , swear to overthrow the Tartar slaves (Manchus), restore China to the Chinese, and establish a democratic government. If I am double-minded, may God examine and judge me! 6

In January of 1885, the Revival of China Society set up their headquarters in Hong Kong .

Unfortunately this initial revolution was unsuccessful and resulted in the death of Sun's longtime friend, Lu Hao -tung. Lu was the man who had designed the national flag of the

Republic of China and Sun later remarked sadly that he was "the first man in the history to die for the Republican cause".7

After his first revolt failed Dr. Sun was exiled. After ending up in London, trying to escape from danger, Dr. Sun was kidnapped by officials of the Ch'ing Embassy in

4 Chun-tu Hsueh, Revolutionary Leaders of Modem China, (New York: Oxford University Press , 1971), 102. ' Edwm Pak-wah Leung ed., Historical Dictionary of Revolutionary China, 1839-1976, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992) 368-9. • John C.H. Wu , Sun Yat-sen: The Man and His Ideas ( Taipei : Taipei Commercial Press, 1971), 84. 7 lbid. 86. 7

London for plotting against the monarchy.8 He was held for twelve days before being released on October 23, 1896. While he was being held captive Dr. Sun devised the

Three Principles of the People.9 This was the ideology which China's revolution was based on and they principles were nationalism, democracy (or people's rights) and socialism (or people's Hvelihood).'? Dr. Sun was released when a friend received an anonymous note from a servant in the house where Dr. Sun was being held.11 When the friend, Sun's old teacher Dr. James Cantlie, could not convince the British government to release Sun, he brought the story to the London newspaper The Globe. They printed the story with the headline "Chinese Revolutionary Kidnapped in London" and as a result Dr.

Sun was released on October 23, 1896.12 This article was an embarrassment to the

British government, whose Chinese Embassy had kidnapped a medical doctor from

China. The kidnapping worked towards Sun's advantage in that he became popular overnight from the newspaper article and people pitied him for his ordeal.

Dr. Sun continued his revolutionary activities throughout 1911 when the Republican

Revolution which caused the downfall of the imperial system occurred.13 The revolution was said to be divided into three major stages: the first was from 1894-1900 and included

Sun's implementation of the Revive China Society in Honolulu in 1984 and in Hong

Kong in 1895; the second stage was from 1901-1905 and included the establishment of the Chinese United League by Sun Yat-sen and Huang Hsing; and the third stage was the militant stage led by Huang Hsing.14 In October of 1911 the Ch'ing emperor ordered a

81..eung, 500. 9 Barlow, v. 10 Leung, 412-413. 11 Barlow, 50. 12 Ibid. 50. 13 John King Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800-1985, (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 141. 14 Leung, 346-347. 8 military man by the name of Yuan Shih-k'ai to overthrow Dr. Sun and the revolution.

Yuan than told Dr. Sun that he would support the revolution and not squelch it, but only if he were given the presidency," Thus on March 10, 1912, after Dr. Sun had only presided over the Republic for six months, Yuan Shih-kai was named the president of the republic.16 For the remainder Yuan's rule until his death in 1916, Dr. Sun remained politically ineffective, for his attempts would be stifled by Yuan.

After Yuan died, Dr. Sun continued to try to tum China into a true democracy. In

October of 1919 Dr. Sun converted the Chinese Revolutionary Party into the

Kuomintang, (KMT), also known as the Nationalist party.17 On January 26, 1923, Dr.

Sun signed the Sun-Joffe Manifesto with Adolf Joffe of the Soviet Union which outlined

Sino-Soviet relations:

1- It is not possible to carry out Communism or the Soviet system in China at the

2- The Soviet government reaffirms it's earlier announcement of September 27,

1920, regarding the renouncement of special rights and privileges in China.

3- A mutual understanding is reached with regard to the future administration and

reorganization of the Chinese Eastern Railway .

4- The Soviets disavow any imperialistic intentions or policies in Outer

Mongolia.18

1� Fairbank, 162. 16 Ibid. 17 Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modem China 6'� ed.• (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000), 485. Jg Ibid. 521. 9

Dr. Sun also received aid from the Soviet Union as the result of this treaty, and they sent out an advisor to help reorganize the KMT. This is also the time period that Chiang Kai- shek was sent to the USSR for three months to undergo military training.19 Although Dr.

Sun made many important changes in China, he never truly presided over China for after the death of Yuan Shih-k'ai because the warlords overran China. Dr. Sun had no military power until the reconstruction of the KMT. He than planned the Northern Expedition, which was a military strategy to gain China back from the warlords. Dr. Sun never got to see his plan in action. He died before the Expedition in 1925.20 His dream was left unfulfilled.

Chiang Kai-shek

When Dr. Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the dream of having a democratic government seemed to die with him. Dr. Sun had died a broken man who had worked his entire life for a dream that was not fulfilled. The Communist Party arose in 1921. This meant that there was now political competition in China, and even though Nationalism was still preferred without a leader, it was very possible for things to lean towards Communism or towards warlord.ism since the country had been ridden with warlords since the death of provisional president Yuan Shih-kai in 1916. One person who did not want to see

Communism prevail was General Chiang Kai-shek-the man who Dr. Sun had placed in charge of the Whampoa Military Academy which he had founded in 1924. Chiang had spent three months training in the Soviet Union and did not believe that Communism was

19 Ibid. 521. 10Ibid. 523. 10 appropriate for China. Chiang had an advantage over Dr. Sun in that not only did he have an ideology for the state, thanks to Dr. Sun, but he also had the military force to back it up. Chiang implemented Dr. Sun's Northern Expedition-a strategy to remove the war1ords from power and gain control of China. This was to be launched in July of

1926. 21 Chiang was successful in ridding most of the warlords from China, but some refused to leave, thus Chiang left them in power to avoid problems. Chiang was probably unsuccessful in getting rid of all of the warlords because he developed and utilized his plan too quickly. There was no time for planning a strategy, he simply used his military power to take the whole of China back fonn the warlords regardless of whether or not some had to be left in place.22

By 1927, Chiang not only saw the warlords as a threat to China, but also began to question the actions of the Communists. Under the precept that if the Communists were not destroyed, they would destroy the Nationalists, Chiang ordered a Communist purge on April 12 , 1927. The purge began in Shanghai , then spread to Nanking, Hangchow,

Foochow, and Canton among other places. 23 This purge of the Communists marks

Chiang's fear of other ideologies gaining dominance in China. The result of this purge was the end of the KMf -CCP United Front.

By October 1928, Chiang Kai-shek became the president of the Nationalist government in Nanking.24 Chiang spent the next twenty-one years trying to keep

Communism out of China. His actions started with the purge of 1927 and lasted until the end of his rule in 1949. He had seen communism in the Soviet Union and knew that it

21 Ibid. 525. 22 James Sheridan, China in Disintegration: The Republican Era in Chinese History 1912-1949, (New York: The Free Press, 1975), 205. 23 Hsu, 528. II was not right for China-perhaps he knew it could mean the end of traditional Confucian va]ucs.

Chiang Kai-shck was born on October 31, 1887 in Chikow, into a peasant family and his father died when he was only 9 years old, so Chiang was raised by his mother." His mother taught him to devote himself to the nation: " She impressed upon my mind that to be merely a dutiful son does not fulfill the exacting conditions of the principle of filial piety ; the principle demands also an unflinching devotion to the cause of the nation."26

This directly follows the Confucian belief that the family structure was directly related to national leadership.27

Chiang was brought up believing Confucian values. He finished reading the

Confucian Canons by the time he was only nine years old. 28 He would eventually try to bring the old system of Confucian values back into China during his rule. In 1934

Chiang began the New Life Movement which was represented by the slogan " li -yi-Jien­ ch 'ih '', 29 These were the principles of behavior which were taught by Confucius and they meant "propriety, justice, honesty, and sense of self respect".30 The New Life

Movement included a set of guidelines for the people to follow which were called the eight principles:

1- Regard yesterday as a period of death, today as a period of life. Let us rid

ourselves of old abuses and build up a new nation.

2- Let us accept the heavy responsibilities of reviving the nation.

2-4 Leung 508. 25 Keiji Furuya, Chiang Kai-shek: His Ufe and Times, (New York: St. John's University Press, 1981) 3. u Ibid. 6. 27 Charles 0. Bucker, China's Imperial Past: an Introduction to Chinese History and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975) 57. 211 Brian Crozier, The Man Who Lost China, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), 33. 29 Ibid. 165. 12

3- We must observe rules and have faith, honesty and shame.

4- Our clothing, eating, living and traveling must be simple, orderly, plain and

5- We must willingly face hardships. We must strive for frugality.

6- We must have adequate knowledge and moral integrity as citizens.

7- Our actions must be courageous and rapid.

8- We must act on our promises, or even act without promising".

These principles were profoundly Confucian in content. Chiang wished to bring old virtues into the new system. By 1949 Chiang was forced into exile in Taiwan to make way for a new system that would eventually condemn Confucian values.

Mao Tse-tung

Mao was born in Shao Shan to a peasant family in 1893.32 As a youth Mao often helped with the farm and kept up with his Confucian studies.33 He did not like reading the classics, however, and soon dropped out of school". He was influenced as a young child by a primary school teacher. This teacher was considered radical because he did not believe in Buddhism and wanted to convert temples into schools and bring China out of the past-Mao respected this man and agreed with his ideas.35 As an older youth Mao witnessed the struggles of the peasant class under the imperial system. In fact, in the

30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 166. 32 Hsueh 395. n Edgar Snow , Red Star Over China (New York: Random House , 1968), 134. 13 early 1900's there was a flood in Changsha which resulted in a famine . This caused the peasants to complain to the government. The result was the decapitation of many peasants-often their heads were put on poles in the middle of the town as an example to others.36 Mao witnessed this and stated that "I felt that there with the rebels were ordinary people like my own family and I deeply resented the injustice of the treatment given to them."37 By this time Mao was not yet opposed to the imperial system in

China.38 It was not until 1911 that Mao began to rebel against the Manchu government for its poor treatment of the peasants.39

In 1911, Mao moved to Changsha and enrolled in the Hunan First Normal School ."°

After graduating in 1918. Mao was a library assistant to Ll Ta-chao, a founding member of the CCP.41 By 1919 Mao had taken an interest in Communist Russia and had read

Communist literature while he was in Peking.42 Mao attended the first meeting of the

CCP in 1921. He was also one of the Communists who survived Chiang Kai-shek's purge of 1927. Until 1949 Mao spent his time devoted to building up the Communist

Party. During the Sino-Japanese Invasion of 1937 Mao got the opportunity to expand the

CCP. While Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists were fighting the Japanese, Mao built up the CCP at their base in Yenan. He had already orchestrated the Long March from

October of 1934 to October of 1935 to raise Communist esteem and prestige."3 By the

l4 Ibid. 134. 35 Ibid. 136. 36 Stanley Kamow, Mao and China: A Legacy of Turmoil (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 29. 37 Ibid. 31 Ibid 30. 39 Snow 146. �Leung 248. 41 Ibid 214. 42 Snow, 155. 43 Leung, 236. 14

end of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) Mao had built up the CCP enough to overtake

Mao Tse-tung gained control of China in 1949. This began a new era in Chinese politics-the Communist era . The Chinese Civil War had exhausted the people of China and they had little faith left in nationalism, the KMT, or Chiang Kai-shek. The Sino-

Japanese War had left the country in devastation------the economy was poor and many

Chinese were left dead or homeless. With Mao and the Communist Party in charge, many reforms began to take shape. Mao began to implement a lean-to-one-side policy in

China, which stressed importance on Sino-Soviet relations. Mao stated that this meant

'The Chinese people must lean either to the side of imperialism or to the side of socialism. There can be no exception. There can be no sitting on the fence; there is no

third path. ,,44 Part of this policy was to appeal to the Soviet Union in order to get financial assistance. In 1950, Mao, after being denied assistance from the United States, requested financial aid from Russia, who granted China a $300,000,000 loan."5 This money was used for the reforms which were about to begin. In 1950, a marriage refonn was put into place stating that manied men were no longer allowed to � concubines- this was the beginning of monogamous marriages in China. Mao started land refonns in

1950, which was his attempt to mobilize the peasants to work together. This land refonn effort had three stages. The first stage was to take the lands back from the landlords and re-distribute it among the peasants. This ended in 1953 with the introduction of cooperatives, which is a piece of land owned and worked by a group of farmers who all reap the benefits. By 1958, Mao had instituted communes in China. These were farms

44 Hsu, 661. 45 Snow, 26. 15

that were state owned, but operated by a group of fanners, and at the head of a group was

the commune leader who was a party official. This was also the beginning of the Great

Leap Foiward-Mao's plan to increase China's economy. The problem of The Great

Leap Forward was that the peasants exaggerated their output numbers to please and

impress the great chairman. The peasants did not keep their share of the food, as they

had been required to do earlier, and as a result, a great famine ensued. For this, Mao was

forced to step down as state chairman. These failures show Mao's eagerness to get rid of

the traditionalism in China's culture and bring about a Communist society. Mao

struggled to implement a true Communist system in China until his death in I 976.

The Endless Dedication of the Great Revolutionaries

Dr. Sun dedicated his entire life to dismantling the monarchy and attempting to instill

democracy into China. Chiang worked to unify China from the warlords and to make

sure that nationalism continued to prevail over communism. Mao strove to dismantle the

KMT and bring communism into China. These three men were all driven by a common

goal despite different affiliations-they all wished to do what they believed was best for

China. The question still remains among historians regarding the legitimacy of whether

or not these power struggles were done for the good of China. Dr. Sun was a medical

doctor-an educated man who had seen first hand the workings of democracy and also

the problems of the imperial system. But Chiang had only witnessed a Communist

system for 3 months and in that short period of time he had formed a severe bias of communism. Chiang felt that Communism was so wrong for China that he attempted to 16

have all the Communists killed in 1927. Mao was born into a poor peasant family. He

was brought up on the Confucian classics as were most Chinese at this time, however he stated that he did not enjoy them.46 Mao began to neglect the classics and read other books which held his interest, such as Charles Darwin's Origin o/Species.47 So although

Mao was at the first meeting of the CCP in 1921, he was raised to follow the beliefs of

Confucius, like most Chinese. Although Mao stated that he always disliked the

Confucian classics, that is all historians today have to go by. While Mao says that he paid no attention to the classics, he followed the principle of "a good scholar wiH make an official" to an extent.48 Even though he dropped out of First Middle School because he did not like the curriculum, he educated himself by reading works such as Darwin,

Adam Smith, Mill, Rousseau, and Montesquieu on a daily basis.49 This pattern of self- education continued into adulthood.

All three of these men were raised by Confucian ethics because of the time period they were living in. Although Mao later formed an attack on Confucianism , he started out by studying it. Sun read the classics as a boy and continued with a formal education. He however, strayed from strict Confucianism when he became a Christian in Hong Kong in

1885.50 Soon after was when Sun made his decision to become a medical doctor. This was his way of serving his country after his revolt was unsuccessful. He then continued his quest to remove the monarchy from power with the motive that it was what was best for the people of China. Although Dr. Sun had converted into Christianity, Confucianism held a high precedence on doing what was the best for the people-especially within the

"'Snow, 134. 47 Ibid. 144. u Tien-wci Wu, Un Biao and the Gang of Four : Contra-Confucianism in Historical and Intellectual Perspective (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), 19. 17 govcmment.51 Chiang also was brought up a Confucian, but later converted to

Christianity when he married a Christian woman.52 Chiang was influenced not only by

Dr. Sun, whom he had worked under at the Whampoa Academy, but also by the NAZI party.53 This was the basis for Chiang's fascist-type group known as the "Blue Shirts", who were to carry out the New Life Movcment.54 Chiang proclaimed his sense of loyalty and Nationalism towards Mainland China until the day he died even though he had been exiled to Taiwan in 1949. He ruled in Taiwan until his death in 1975.55 His will, which was dated March 29, 1975, stated:

Just at the time when we are getting stronger, my colleagues and my countrymen, you should not forget our sorrow and our hopes because of my death. My spirit will always be with my colleagues and my countrymen to fulfill the Three people's Principles, to recover the mainland, and to restore our national culture. I have always regarded myself as a disciple of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and also of Jesus Christ.56

In retrospect, the sense of Nationalism that the three men possessed undoubtedly comes from their upbringings in Confucianism and China's monarchical past. Although

Mao launched the Criticize Confucius campaign during the Cultural Revolution , he too was educated in the classics as a child.57 Even though he professed that he did not enjoy them, Confucianism shaped most Chinese people's lives at the time of Mao's youth.

'9 Snow, 144. '°Tein-wci Wu, 33. 51 Hucker, 56. 52 Crozier, 4. 53 Ibid. 11. 5'Ibid. 11. ,s Leung, 519. '6 Crozier, 15. "Tien-wet Wu, 7. 18

Confucianism most likely influenced Mao as a child, as well. All three men wanted the collapse of the imperial system. Sun and Chiang were drawn profoundly to the idea of utilizing Confucianism without a monarchical system. A different force, the Communist system, drove Mao. This system would have collided with Confucian views. Yet Mao and Chiang both ruled over China even when the Chinese people were not happy with them, and for a long period of time-much like the emperors of the imperial past. Each of these men was driven by a certain ideology, which they adhered to until their deaths.

Chiang fought against the CCP even when it did not look as though it would be possible for them to take over, but he always viewed them as a threat. Dr. Sun continued to work for a democracy in China even though he was not able to take control from the warlords.

Mao built up a victorious army out of what started out as a vast minority. These men faced extreme adversity and still continued to dedicate themselves towards China. Dr.

Sun had been kidnapped for his revolts and continued his revolutionary actions after his release. Chiang was run out of China while struggling to keep Nationalism in the nation.

Once in Taiwan in 1949, he continued to rule by a Nationalist government. Mao made endless errors by trying to instill communism in China, and was removed from the position of state chairman as a result. He still continued to bring reforms into China and struggled to regain power of China before his death in 1976. While Mao's ideology varied from Sun and Chiang's, these men all had the common goa1 of bringing a

Nationa1ist sentiment into China. Their Chinese upbringing and education also influenced a11 of them to dedicate their lives to China. These men are all responsible for the China of today. 19

The Chinese Civil War

Chinese Imperialism crumbled in 1912 due mainly to the Chinese revolutionary Dr.

Sun Yat-sen. Sun had visited the West as a young boy and realized that the democratic system would be a more appropriate system of government for China than the imperial system. He strove the crush the imperial system and to build a new democratic government and by 1911, his dream partially came true. The imperial system soon collapsed. However, directly after the collapse, the Chinese government ordered a military officer named Yuan Shih-kai to crush Dr. Sun's plan for the Republic of China

(what the new democratic government would be named) and Yuan began his task. Once

Yuan encountered Dr. Sun, however, he did not defeat him, but offered to bargain with him. He offered to let Dr. Sun's new Republic survive if he could be named the

President. Dr. Sun, having left with either the choice of his Republic being crushed or having this military officer take the presidency away from him, had not choice but to oblige Yuan. Once Yuan was named president, the Republic had very little chance to survive. Yuan did not care about the Republic of China (ROC), but about his own position of power. Yuan attempted to turn China back into a monarchy, however the people rebelled and Yuan was forced to tum the government back to the ROC. Having failed as a president and having failed at realizing his dream of being king, Yuan died in

1916. Dr. Sun's dream of having a fully democratic government in China seemed to be impossible to realize so the Kuomintang or KMT, was fonned. It was to no avail, 20 however for after Yuan died, China had no central government . Dr. Sun still had hopes of being the president of the PRC however he did not have any military strength and the warlords began to over-run China, each trying to ultimately gain total control of China.

In 1925, Dr. Sun died, his dream left unrealized, but he would be remembered forever as being the father of modern China.

In 1926 a man named General Chiang Kai-shek, who had been named head of the

Whampoa Military Academy by Dr. Sun, resolved to wipe the warlords out of China.

Chiang would do this in the name of Dr. Sun, for he too believed that Nationalism was the appropriate fonn of government for China.58 Chiang began what was known as the

Northern Expedition and eventually conquered most of the warlords in China. Those that he did not conquer, he made deals with that agreeing they would stay only in their own designated territory and not cause him any grief and in tum he would allow them to live .

By this time there was talk of Communism in China and Chiang, who had spent time in

Russia during military training, did not approve of the communist system and felt that it was completely wrong for China. He became vehemently opposed to Communism in

China. So opposed, in fact, that in 1927 during the Northern Expedition, Chiang stopped at the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) base and to their surprise began a mass slaughter of the communists. 59 Thousands of communists were killed. When Chiang returned, he became the new president of China.

As president, Chiang's main objective was to keep the communists out of power.

From 1927 until 1949 China spent much of their time and energies on an ongoing civil war between the CCP and the KMT. The outcome of the civil war seemed inevitable,

51 Leung, 507. '9 Ibid. 21

with the KMT being the stronger of the two parties and the CCP still keeping much of it's

activity underground. The CCP had fewer members and were not supported by the

Chinese government. In 1937 however, the Japanese attacked China, which changed the

course of China's priorities-the situation had been forthcoming with the Mukden

Incident of 1931, which sparked sour feelings between the two powers. Chiang could no

longer focus all of his attentions on suppressing the CCP for he had to assure that the

Japanese did not take over China. He did however still continue to use some of his

energies on fighting the CCP, which later worked against his favor for many Chinese felt

that he did not focus enough on fighting against the Japanese. Under the leadership of

Chiang, the KMT fought against the Japanese invaders. Since their base was on the coast

in Nanking, although the wartime capital was Chungking, they were more vulnerable to

the attack than were the communists who were in their inland base of Yen an. 60 While the

KMT was busy fighting the Japanese military, the CCP was building in strength and

number. People were fleeing from the coast in great numbers so it became fairly easy to

encourage them to join the CCP. By 1945 the war was over. Members of the KMT were

exhausted from the fighting. China's economy was crushed, as were people's opinions of

the leadership of the KMT. People felt that if Chiang would have fought more against

the Japanese and less against the CCP that much of the devastation caused by the war could have been avoided. After the war, the KMT and the CCP picked up where they had left off before the war except now the CCP had grown and the KMf was left weakened as a result of fighting the Japanese. By 1949 the CCP took advantage of the

KMT's weakened state as well as a few blunders that they committed during some of the

60 Hsu Long-hsucn and Chang Ming-kai, History of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945, trans. Wen Ha­ hsiung (Taipei: Chung Wu Publishing Co., 1971), 17. 22 major battles between the two, and overthrew the Nationalist government. Chiang Kai­ shek and the KMT were exiled to China and Mao Tse-tung became the new ruler of the newly formed Communist government of China . The Japanese invasion had taken its toll on China not only economically, but politically and culturally as well. Some historians and Chinese believe that if the Japanese had not invaded that the KMI' may have still been in power for at least twenty more years, if not currently.

China after the collapse of Imperialism

Dr. Sun Yat-sen is considered by many historians to be the father of modern China, for he was responsible for the collapse of the imperial system which had prevailed in

China until 1911. His failed attempt at establishing a true democratic government in

China was due mainly to China's past-China which had been ruled by a monarchy during it's entire history was not ready for the Western concept of democracy. Aside from crushing the imperial system, Dr. Sun's attempts at reforming China were not all in vain for he was also responsible for forming the Nationalist party or the KMT, born out of the Chinese Revolutionary party in 1919, which would remain the official government of China until 1949. After the crumble of the imperial system in 1911, Dr. Sun established the Republic of China in Nanking. Unfortunately, Dr. Sun did not go unopposed and while he was forming the Republic, the emperor of China wished to squelch his revolution, knowing that it could be detrimental to the monarchy. The head of the Northern Anny, Yuan Shih-kai, was sent by the emperor to squash Dr. Sun's revolution. Instead, however, Yuan, a power hungry man, gave Dr. Sun the choice of 23 having his new government crushed or making Yuan the provisional president. Dr. Sun did not possess an mi1itary power himself and knew that Yuan's armies would crush their revolution, thus he had no choice but to agree to let Yuan become provisionaJ president of the Republic of China in 1912.61

The "Presidency" of Yuan Shih-kai and the Warlord Era

During the period that Yuan Shih-kai was president of the Republic, China saw many changes. Dr. Sun, who had been originally named president of the republic, continued his vocation as a revolutionary and fanned the Nationalist party in 1912. In anattempt to placate the revolutionary Dr. Sun, Yuan named him the director of the railways and requested that he design a national railway system; this served as a twofold plan for not only was Dr. Sun now out of the way, but his confidence in Yuan as president of the

Republic was increased.62 However, Dr. Sun soon saw that Yuan was not fit to be president of China. With the imperial system dissolved, Dr. Sun had tried to institute

Western fonns of politics in China. On January 28, 1912, a Senate was established in

Nanking, however by January 10, 1914, Yuan Shih-kai was successful in having the deputy chairman Sung Chiao-jen assassinated, and abolished the Parliament, fearful that it would become dominated by Nationalists who would try to remove him from power.63

Instead, Yuan installed his own military men into the positions of Foreign Affairs,

61 Ian P. McGreal, ed. Great ThinUrs of the Western World : the Major Thinkers and the Philosophical and Religious Classics of China, India , Korea and the World of Islam, (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995), 138. 62 Ibid. 476. 63 Leung, 503. 24

Internal Affairs, War and Navy, knowing that they would not betray him.64 By 1913, Dr.

Sun had staged a revolution against the government of Yuan Shih-kai, attempting to remove him from power, yet he failed and was forced into exile.65

By taking on the position of president, Yuan had become the first non-monarchical leader of China. Dr. Sun and his supporters, namely Huang Hsing and Yang Ch'u-yun among others, had created the Republic.66 They had been responsible for the crumbling of the monarchy and in it's place had tried to instill a democratic government. A

Proclamation had been drafted by the revolutionaries in 1900 and had originally consisted of the following reforms:

1. Moving the capital to a central location such as Nanking in order to be able to

control international affairs and to be accessible to other provinces.

2. Establish a constitutional central government headed by a well-liked president.

3. To set up a Council composed of representatives from several provinces

4. To set up an Advisory board constituted by Foreign Ministers, as well as

establishing self-governing provincial governments governed by a native of the

province, who would be selected by the Central government.

5. Equal rights in China in the areas of railway development, mining, industries and

6. To increase the salaries of state officials as an incentive for them to rule the

government mora1ly.

"'Hsu, 475. ,s Leung, 352. "Chun-tu Hsueh, Revolutionary Leo.ckrs of Modern China, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 142. 25

7. To adopt the American and European system in regard to civil and criminal law and

abolishing the past methods of using torture to obtain confession to a crime.

8. To refonn the education system in China and add special training and examination

in areas of study such as literature, politics and law. 67

Although this Proclamation was sent to the imperial government of China but never

imposed, it contained the principles that later led to Dr. Suns' ideology for national

reconstruction, the Three People's Principles-nationalism, livelihood and democracy.68

This was the basis for the newly formed Republic when Yuan forced his way into the

presidency. Aside from being a military man with no knowledge of presiding over a

country, Yuan had forced himself into the position of ruling a government that was

recovering from the collapse of the old system. In addition, he was now also expected to

rule the government using Dr. Sun's ideologies-ideologies which he neither came up

with on his own, did not seem to fully comprehend, nor did he believe in them. Yuan had taken the position of president to further his own political power, not to ensure the success of Dr. Sun's Republic. Yuan, as did many men in China, had always dreamed of becoming the leader of China-the problem, however, was that dream entailed him being the emperor, not the president. By 1913, Yuan had decided that he wished to re-establish the imperial system in China. He betrayed the Republic which he had sworn not to demolish in 1912 in return for his presidency, and dispelled the KMT.69 On February 13 ,

1912, Dr. Sun and Yuan Shih-kai agreed that Yuan could take the position as president based on the following conditions: (l} Nanking would remain the capital, (2} Yuan would

'7 Ibid.117-7. 61 Edgar Snow, Tht! Other Sidt! of the River: Rt!d China Today, (New York: Random House, 1961), 39. 26 come to Nanking to assume his presidency and (3) that Yuan would observe the provisional constitution draftedby the provisional parliament.70 Yuan had already dispelled the Parliament and now he had betrayed the very Republic that he was named president of. In 1915 claiming that the people wished to see the return of the monarchy,

Yuan had re-established the imperial system. By January 1916, Yuan Shih-kai was inaugurated as emperor of China. 71 This was not acceptable for the people or other military members of China, who had become enthralled with the idea of democracy and did not wish to see imperialism return to China. By March of the same year, revolutionaries, as well as his own military, forced Yuan to dissolve the monarchy.P

Along with attempting to tum the government of China back into a monarchy, Yuan also made many other disastrous moves during his tenn as president. His government was financed mainly by loans, thus the time of his death, China was in financial ruins.

Other countries were wary of Yuan Shih-kai's leadership abilities and cut back on relations with China. Perhaps Yuan's most irresponsible decision during his presidency was to accept as list of demands from Japan, known as the Twenty-one Demands. World

War I had just begun and Japan wanted to have more rights in China. The Japanese minister ordered that Yuan agree to demands, including the following: more economic rights for the Japanese in Manchuria and Mongolia ; partial control (along with the

Chinese) of the iron and coal industry in China; an agreement that China would close their ports and islands to other foreign powers; the right for Japanese police and economic advisors to be stationed in northern China; and commercial rights in the Fujian

69 Fairbank. 174. 70 Hsu, 474. 71 Jonathan Spence , The Search for Modem China, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990), 286. 72 Snow, 38. 27 province.P Although Yuan altered some of the conditions, he did agree to the demands.

As a result, his own popularity waned and China suffered. Yuan's choice of government officials would also have a detrimental effect on China's future. By choosing all of his military associates to run the government beside him, Yuan was almost fully responsible for the chaos that followed after his death. Yuan's military comrades began to compete for the leadership of China, one or two of them presiding over each province, and thus began the eleven-year long period of warlordism in China.

After Yuan's death in 1916, Vice-president Li Yuan-huang took over as president of the Republic. However, there was question to whether or not Li was the legitimate successor, for there had been two different constitutions during Yuan Shih-kai's presidency-according to the original constitution of 1912, Liwas the successor and this prescription ultimately prevailed.74 This caused internal strife among the other military members who had served with Yuan Shih-kai and eventually chaos ensued. During the course of the next eleven years, China turned back to imperialism in Peking, declared war on Germany in 1917 and took out further Joans to support their military during the war.75

Dr. Sun still continued his plight to take back control of China, but did it in exile for he had no military power to back him up against the warlords. On March 12, 1925 Dr. Sun whose last words were said to have been ''peace, struggling... save China," died a broken man. 76 Little did he know that he would forever after go on to be known to many

Chinese and non-Chinese alike, as the father of modem China.

73 Spence, 286. 74 Hsu, 482. 15 Ibid. 483-4. 76 Ibid. 486. 28

Chiang Kal-shek and the Establishment of the Nationalist Government in China

General Chiang Kai-shek was responsible for establishing the first Nationalist government of China in 1925 in Canton. Two other Nationa1ist governments were then established in Wuhan and Nanking in 1927. Dr. Sun had also established a republican government in Canton in 1921, however a democratic society was not practical in China and the Nationalist government was not operable until Chiang Kai-shek removed the warlords after Dr. Sun's death. The Nationalist government was the first true government that China had possessed after the collapse of Imperialism. Dr. Sun Y at-sen formed the Republic of China in 1912, however in order for it to not be crushed Dr. Sun was forced to let the Yuan Shih-kai become the president of the newly formed republic."

The Republic only lasted until the death of Yuan Shih-kai in 1916, where-upon the warlord period began and lasted until it was crushed by Chiang Kai-shek's Northern

Expedition in 1926-1928.

The Nationalist government was problematic from the start. To begin, it was the first true government that China had possessed since the chaos of the warlord years. Although it was a we1come change for the Chinese people, the government still had to deal with the problems that had been left behind by the destructive warlords such as a poor economy and a lack of modernization. The country was still plagued by warlords in certain regions and also by corrupt politicians. China was also constantly in danger of being invaded by outside forces such as Japan, who had previously defeated China in the first Sino­

Japanese War of 1894-1895. The problem was aggravated further when the Manchurian warlord and leader of the Manchurian anny General Chang Hsueh-liang, (the Young 29

Marshal) moved his troops from Manchuria into Northern China, leaving Manchuria vulnerable to invasion.78 Japan had possessed interest in occupying Manchuria for almost three decades. Positioning their troops in Manchuria would be advantageous to them for one because the territory possessed rich mineral resources and agricultural products and also because they would be stationed directly between the two other great powers of China and Russia-this would give them the benefit of keeping the other countries militaries in check.79 The main issue, however, that would end up leading to the downfall of the KMT was the internal struggle of the two dominant political parties in

China-the KMf and the CCP.

The History of Conflict Between the KMT and the CCP

By 1922 Dr. Sun intended to tum the KMT into a party dictatorship resembling that of the Soviet Union.80 He received help from the Soviet Union, financially and militarily and he had even admitted Communists into the Nationalist Party. This was done under the intent of assimilating the communists into the KMT. In August of 1922 the founder of the CCP, Ll Ta-chao, became the first communist member to join the KMT-this begins the first United Front between the CCP and the KMT.81 In 1924 Dr. Sun appointed the military General Chiang Kai-shek to be the head of the newly formed

Whampoa Military Academy. Chiang along with other members of the Chinese military were sent to Russia to receive military training. While over in Russia, Chiang was able to n Ibid. 122. 78 Hsu, 545. 79 Ibid. 80 Fairbank, 210. 30 observe the ways of communism and ascertained that it was not a proper political system for China. When Dr. Sun died in 1925, Chiang took it upon himseJf to rid China of the turmoil which had plagued China for 9 years-the warlords. In 1926, he planned the

Northern Expedition to terminate the warlord's power. His plan was broken down into three steps: the first step would be going along the Hsiang River to Changsha, then into

Kiangsi and finally into the Fukien Province-Wuhan, Nanking and Shanghai were to be next if the first three steps were successful.82 The Expedition proved to be successful and by December of 1926 the Nationalists controlled the seven provinces of Guangdong ,

Hunan, Hupei, Kiangsi, Fukien, Guangsi and Kuichou.83 By March of 1927 the

Nationalists controlled Shanghai and Nanking. Having gained so much territory so quickly made Chiang realize that the warlords were not as much of a threat as originally anticipated. By April of 1927 Chiang decided to try to remove the remaining threat to the

KMT--the Chinese Communist Party. Starting on April 12 the Nationalist military, under

Chiang's orders, began a massacre on the Communists. This atrocity began in Shanghai and spread to Nanking, Hangchow, Foochow, Canton and several other smaller cities.84

Thousands of communists were ki1led. This, obviously, marked the end of the First

United Front between the CCP and the KMT.

Mao Tse-tung had been active in the Communist party from the beginning of it's establishment in 1920. A young Mao had gained interest in communism while working in Peking University 's library, alongside of the founder of the CCP, Ll Ta-chao.85 Mao attended the first meeting of the CCP. While Mao leaned towards communism, his

81 Leung, 506. 12 Spence, 344. 83 Ibid. 348. M Hsu, 528. 31 interest in fighting against nationalism became persona] in 1929 when a Nationalist killed his adopted sister, Mao 2.ejian. 86 The Nationalists inflicted another tragedy upon Mao in

1930 when his estranged wife and mother of their two sons, Kaihui, was tortured and killed by a NationaJist in Changsha in 1930.87 While the KMf was taking care of government matters, Mao was busy strengthening his party. Mao started to lean towards mobilizing the poorer classes of China, the peasants namely, and promised them a brighter future. He believed that they would be able to fight and win a revolution. He focused his efforts on learning about the peasants and their conditions. He became aware of their plights and their needs-in fact, he turned himself into what could be perceived as a caring leader. Mao began to launch refotms such as the marriage law of 1944. This would later be to Mao's advantage when the people began to lose faith in the KMT who had not made the refonns they had promised, opposed to Mao and the CCP, who had already instituted important amendments.

Since the KMT had a longer history and a stronger base than the CCP, the communists felt that they needed to do something to boost the morals of the party members. By 1934

Mao had orchestrated the Long March which was to be a 6,000-mile walk through China, which started out with 100,000 members and ended with fewer than 10,000 members completing the journey88. The purpose of the march was not only to boost esteem of the party members but also to gain public attention and support-and it was successful in doing just that. The trip, even going through the dangerously mountainous region of

Southern China, took only a year to complete. The Long March also succeeding in

u Hsueh, 378. 86 Ross Terrill , Mao: A Biography. (New York: Simon and Schuster. 1980), 126. 81 Ibid, 126-7. 32 gaining prestige for Mao-not only in the eyes of his foJlowers, but in the eyes of other

Chinese, as well as raising his own self esteem. In fact, Mao commenting on the fact that the journey started out with 100,000 people and less than 10,000 survived said that he assumed that "death did just not seem to want him."89 Although the Long March did seem to achieve great publicity, the Nationalist party was still continuing to grow at a rapid rate. This was due to the increasing threat of Japanese invasion, which encouraged

Chinese to band together and show support for their country-this sentiment was greatly promoted by the KMT and was greatly to their advantage.90 China stayed in a civil war- tom state until the Japanese invaded China in 1937. The two parties were forced to collaborate and created a Second United Front in order to concentrate their efforts on fighting against the foreign invaders. The Second United Front was based on a doctrine which outlined the positions of the CCP during the Japanese invasion:

L The CCP will struggle to fulfill completely Dr. Sun's Three People's Principles,

which best answers China's needs today.

2. The CCP will abolish the policy of sabotage and Sovietization which aims at the

overthrow of the KMT government, and will stop the forcible confiscation of the

holdings of landlords.

3. The CCP will abolish all existing Soviets in favor of democratic government, so as

to achieve unified political administration through-out the country.

4. The CCP will abolish the name and insignia of the Red Army , which will be

reorganized as the National Revolutionary Army and is to be subject to control by

13 Maurice Meisner, Mao's China and After: a History of the People's Republic 3"' ed., (New York: the Free Press, 1999). 33. 19 Terrill, 35. 90 Leung, 354. 33

the Military Commission; it is ready to march forward and fight the Japanese at the

While the CCP had initiated the decree stating their position during the war, they were

not doing it entirely out of being faithful to fighting for China. Mao knew that Chiang

would not completely give up his battle against the CCP, even during a time of adversity.

For the CCP to make their loyalty towards fighting the Japanese public, it would gain support for them and would ultimately serve in making the KMT looking Jess loyal towards the cause of fighting the Japanese, than were the Communists.

The Second United Front proved to be unsuccessful in keeping peace between China's two political powers. By 1939 the parties had begun to make international alliances, which violated the terms of the United Front.92 By 1941, the Nationalists launched a full- blown attack against the Communists by destroying part of the CCP' s New Fourth

Anny.93 Not only did this violate the United Front, but it made the public lose yet more faith in the Nationalist government, whom they felt were not putting enough effort into fighting the Japanese. By this time, the Japanese had already ravaged the capital of

Nanking in December of 1937, killing anywhere from an estimated number of 260,000 to

350,000 innocent Chinese civilians and causing mass land destruction as well.94 Many

Chinese felt that the carnage caused by the Japanese was the fault of Chiang K.ai-shek who did not employ his troops against the Japanese threat which had ensuing since 1931, until 1936. Chiang, however, did have good reason for holding back his troops. He

'1 Hsu, 588. 92 Hsu, 590. 93 John King Fairbank, The United States and China. 411t ed., (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 297. 34 knew that all the inroads from Japan to Northern China must be blocked before his troops were deployed-the Japanese army was much stronger than the Chinese army and

Chiang was fully aware of that.9S His troops, however, got tired of waiting and in

December of 1936, in what is known as the Sian Incident, Chiang was kidnapped by the leader of the Manchurian army, the Young Marshall, who attempted to talk Chiang into disregarding the civil war and focus on fighting the Japanese. Chiang was released on

Christmas Eve of the same year and although the outcome of the discussions that took place while Chiang was in containment is unknown, it is assumed that Chiang agreed to make some sort of temporary peace with the CCP, for in 1937 the Second United Front was fonned96•

After the collapse of the imperial government, China faced decades of turmoil. Dr.

Sun worked to remove the hnperial government from China and had instituted a new, democratic form of government in its place, only to be removed from the presidency by

Yuan Shih-kai. Under his leadership, China faced great economic hardship and adversity as well as being subjected to Yuan's dream to recreate the imperial system in China.

Once Yuan's dream was crushed and he died in 1916, the warlords ruled China, causing further economic hardship and distress. Dr. Sun, who had created the Republic of China, but had never truly been able to control it, died in 1925. By 1926, General Chiang Kai-

94 Iris Chang , The Rapt! of Nanlcing: tne Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 4. ,s John Hunter Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937-1945: the Politics of Collaboration, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 42. 35 shek devoted himself to ridding China of the warlords and carrying out Dr. Sun's dream of a Nationalist society. The Nationalist government was China's first true government after the collapse of the monarchy. Although it grew out of adversity, the Nationalist government managed to stay in power more than 20 years. Chiang Kai-shek spent his time as head of the government trying to keep the CCP out of power. Many Chinese felt that Chiang spent too much time focusing on the CCP and not enough time tending to the problem of foreign invaders. While it was true that Chiang did hold his troops back from fighting the Japanese, he did it in the best interest of his military. He knew that they were not capable of defeating the Japanese. He also was so determined against keeping the communists out of the government that he still focused his energies on fighting them during much of the Sino-Japanese War. His fears eventually became true when the communists took control of the Chinese government in 1949. Ironically, the KMT had a tremendous advantage over the CCP before the Japanese invasion and although Chiang directed much of his energy towards keeping the communists out of power, chances are good that they would not have been a threat before the war. The CCP was a small party and the KMT had full control over the government. The Sino-Japanese War left the

KMT weakened from fighting and strengthened the CCP that was gaining members while the KMT were in combat. Whether or not the KMT would have maintained power had the Japanese not attacked remains a long-standing question among historians. The war ended in 1945 however the effects of the war weakened the Nationalist government, further enabling the communists to take over in 1949. After the war, not only was much of China left destroyed, but the economy was devastated, as well as were the Chinese people. They had put their faith into the Nationalist government and they felt as though

96 Ibid, 43. 36

Chiang Kai-shek had Jet them down. While the people were Josing faith in the KMf, they were gaining interest in the CCP, desperately searching for a change for the better.

Internal chaos between rival political parties and powers prevailed in China until 1949 when the Conununists took over. Under the rule of the Communists China would still experience a great deal of chaos, but the China's thirty-eight year history of serious civil wars as a result of conflicting political viewpoints had finally come to an end. 37

The Power Struggle Between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung

"Only through unity can we save our country and our people.'"' Clduo"--

General Chiang Kai-shek was one of the most powerful presidents in Chinese history.

He had been a prominent Kuomintang figure in the early 1920's and was appointed the head of the Whampoa Military Academy on May 3, 1924. In 1926, he launched the

Northern Expedition, which was a plan to take China back from the warlords and to make the KMT the dominant power in China. To ensure this he arranged a purge of the communists in Shanghai in 1927. He appointed himself president of China in 1928 and was referred to as Generalissimo , which was used as a term of respect. Chiang ruled

China for twenty-one years constantly facing opposition from the Chinese Communist

Party (CCP), namely Mao Tse-tung who was instrumental in forming the Fourth Red

Army in April of 1928. While the two political powers were battling for control the

Japanese began to invade China. They began their attacks in 1931 with the September

181h Mukden incident , however a full-scale war did not break out until 1937. The Sino-

Japanese War began in 1937. The war not only meant a loss of millions of Chinese lives, but it also opened the door for the growth of communism in China. The target areas for the Japanese invasion were the coastal regions including Nanking. This meant that there was a tremendous influx of people fleeing to inner China, which is where the communist base was-the communists were stationed in Yenan. Some historians claim that this is why the communists were able to take power so easily, while others claim that Chiang 38

Kai-shck had actually already lost his power on September 18, 1931, during the Mukden

Incident. Presumably Chiang spent too much of his efforts on the internal war and not enough on the foreign invaders. When asked by the Chan Hsueh-liang, head of

Manchuria, what to do about the foreign attacks, Chiang replied: •• In order to avoid any enlargement of the incident, it is necessary to maintain the principle of non-resistance."98

Chiang's military plans including getting rid of the internal problems before battling foreign invaders. It is possible that this led to his downfall. Mao Tse-tung was waiting patiently, while the CCP's population grew. He had a plan to use 100% of the

Communist energy and resources to take power from the KMf when they were at their most vulnerable.

Chiang Kai-shek's Rise to Power

General Chiang Kai-shek held the presidency of China from 1928 to 1949. Chiang was a KMT member who worked very closely with Dr. Sun Yat-sen-the father of

Chinese Nationalism. Dr. Sun had chosen to send some of his military officers to the

USSR for military training and since Chiang was an intelligent and capable officer, he choose him. Chiang went to the USSR in 1923, where he trained for approximately four months. He returned to China at the end of 1923, with the impression that communism was not right for China. Chiang felt that communism went against Chinese tradition. He was able to take the presidency for one simple reason--he possessed military power and was able to save China from the warlords who were over running the country. In order to

97Govemment Information Offi.ce,eds. .Aphori.rm.t of President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China, 1974), 74. 39 do this he formed a carefully outlined strategy to wipe the warlords out of China. This was known as the Northern Expedition and it was executed in the fonn of a three-part plan. The first part of the plan was to recruit young officers from all over China who wou1d be dedicated to the internal struggle of power between the KMT and the CCP---thc revolution. The next part of Chiang's plan was to build an army out of these men. The third part of the plan was to lead armies to Central and North China to take China back from the wertords". Chiang intended to first wipe out Wu Pei- fu , who contro1led the

Hupci and Hunan regions, then he wanted to move on to the Shanghai and Nanking regions controlled by Sun Ch'uan Fang. Finally Chiang was to move down to the Peking region which was controlled by the Manchurian Chang Tso-lin. During the Northern

Expedition, on April 12, 1927100, Chiang Kai-shek moved to the base of the CCP in

Shanghai, and ordered all of the communists killed-without the exclusion of any women and children who happened to be in the way. Approximately 5,000 Chinese communists were killed during this purge. The remaining Communists fled to the mountainous areas surrounding Shanghaiua _ Wang Ching-wei, the head of the KMT, threw Chiang Kai- shek out of the KMT claiming to the communists that the purge was purely Chiang's idea and not his own. Despite this atrocity, Chiang was able to take over with relative ease and appointed himself the president of China in 1928. Dr. Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, however Chiang Kai-shek had managed to realize his dream of using military power to take China back from the warlords. Chiang was following Dr. Sun's famous 3 Stage

Theory which consisted of the military stage, tutoring the people on democratic ways,

"Crozier, 145. 99Fwuya, 171. LOO Leung, 507. LOI Sheridan, 246. 40

and finally to create a constitution. Up until this point the warlords had been controlling

China and before this, Yuan Shih-k'ai had used his military power to persuade Dr. Sun

Yat-scn to make him president of the new Republic of China. Yuan was a selfish

president who failed to effectively rule the country and attempted to tum China back to

the imperial system that it had tried so hard to get away from.

Mao Tse-tung In the Early Days of the CCP

One of the survivors of the purge of the communists was a man who had been a

member of the CCP from the beginning-Mao Tse-tung. Mao was a library clerk at Peita

(Peking University) during the Intellectual Revolution in China in late 1919-early 1920.

He worked next to the chief librarian, Professor Li Ta-chao, who was a professor of

political science at the University. Li Ta-chao was one of the earliest Chinese communist

converts. He also created the Marxist Research Society. The main purpose of this

institution was to translate Marxist teachings into Chinese to make communist thought

accessible to the public. Mao was a young, impressionable man at the time and also

happened to be non-communist. However, he was exposed to Li's discussions and his

lectures on a daily basis and soon began to take an interest in them. Professor Ll became

Mao's mentor and under his influence Mao became a communist. Mao was a member of

the CCP when Chiang Kai-shek tried to purge China of the communists. Mao, in fact,

was very instrumental in rebuilding the communist party after the purge and after many

defeats at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek. Mao joined forces with a Communist military

officer by the name of Chu Teh. The two men realized that the creation of a Red Army would be necessary for the communists to succeed. The Red Anny originally consisted 41

of the groups of Communists who had fled from Chiang Kai-shek's murderous attack, as

well as a small number of units under Mao. By 1929, however, this small army had

turned into largest and most well trained Communist army in China102• Mao's strategy

was to use guenilla warfare. In order to do this. he had to mobilize the peasants of the

land and seek their approval--the guerrillas would be working among them and they

needed the peasants cooperation. The Communists were still facing tremendous

opposition from Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. In 1934, the KMT tried to remove the

CCP from their base in Kiangsi, which had been their home for seven years 1°3• Kiangsi,

also known as the Koviet Republic was the first communist territory in China. The Fifth

Encirclement Campaign of the KMT called for the extermination of the Red Anny-as a

result of the battle of Kuanchang alone 4,CXX> Communist soldiers were killed and 20,000

were injured104• As a result of this tragedy for the communists, Mao orchestrated the

Long March. It was set to begin on October 16, 1934. The march was approximately

25,000-li or6 ,000 miles long-from Kiangsi to Shensi105• 100,000 Red Anny soldiers and

dozens of women pushed past Chiang Kai-shek's military barrier. Part of the strategy of

the Long March was to establish a rural base to promote guerriJla warlare. Mao also

stated that the significance of the Long March was that it was "the first of its kind in the

annals of history, that it is a manifesto, a propaganda force, a seeding machine."106 There

was only an 8% success rate of the marchers-most were simply not strong enough to

make the march. Some were killed and some simply could not walk any further. The march started with over 100,000 people and only 8,000 actually completed the journey.

102 Ibid. 247. IOJ Hsu, 559. 104 Leung, p.237. 42

They settled on the border region of Yenan. Although it seemed as though the communists had met their defeat, Mao still felt that the Chinese Communist Party wou1d be making a comeback soon.

Chiang Kai-shek and the Young Marshal

Chang Hsueh-Hang was the warlord leader of the Manchurian army. The Manchurian anny was instrumental in the anti-Communist campaign during the late 1930's. Chang was also known as the Young Marshal, following suite of his father, Chang Tso-Jin who was referred to as the Old Marsha]. Chang graduated from the Military Institute when he was twenty years old and went on to become commander of his father's brigade of guards107• The Young Marshal fought during the Northern Expedition led by Chiang

Kai-shek. Chang Tso-lin returned to Manchuria in 1928, after having ruled over Peking and was bombed to death by the Japanese. The Young Marshal succeeded his father after a struggle for power between other warlords. He then, in 1929, joined forces with Chiang under the agreement that if he supported Chiang he would continue to preside over

Manchuria. Meanwhile, as outlined in the Japanese Tanaka Memorial , the Japanese were looking to use Manchuria as a base in order to penetrate the rest of China-if they were

1 to take over the world, they believed they had to get through China first og. They had also always been very interested in Manchuria's vast farmlands and mineral resources.

The Young Marshal had a grievance with the Japanese, for they had killed his father; thus

105 Han Suyin , The Morning Deluie: Mao T:setung and the Chinese Revolution (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1972), 270. 106 Leung, p.238. 107 Ibid. 33. 43

he was cager to get vengeance. He was however, under the orders of Chiang Kai-shek

and Chiang wished to avoid confronting the Japanese for as long as possible. Thus, on

September 6, 1931, Chang issued the following statement: "In order to avoid furnishing

the Japanese with any pretext for aggressive action, we must not allow ourselves to be

provoked into fighting with them even under circumstances which are humiliating and

intolcrable."109 Twelve days later on the evening of September 18, 1931, the Japanese

bombed Mukden, although they claimed that the Kwantung Anny actually planted it. By

the next morning the city had been taken over by the Japanese. The Japanese occupied

four more Manchurian cities by September 2111• Chiang Kai-shek chose not to fight the

Japanese at the point of the Mukden Incident, for he knew that his army could not defeat

the Japanese and he did not want to waste all of their energy on Manchuria. Chiang had

the Young Marshal, who was in Peiping, pull his troops out of Manchuria. This paved

the way for a full-fledged Japanese take over. The Mukden Incident is often considered a

day of great humiliation for the Chinese-a day that their troops stood back at the orders

of their president, and let the Japanese penetrate Manchuria.

Chiang had other things in mind for many of his troops-he had some on reserve to

fight the CCP if necessary. By this time, Chiang was absorbed in pursuing and destroying the communist army. While the Japanese were conquering Manchuria, the

Manchurian army was pursuing the communists, at Chiang's orders. The Manchurian army had become exhausted and homesick by the end of 1936 and the Young Marshal pleaded with Chiang to let them return home, but to no avail. While Chiang believed that the communists must be destroyed before they destroyed the KMT, Chang felt a strong

1°' Crozier, p.147. 109 Furuya, 314 44 need for unification of China=especially during a foreign invasion 1 io. In his defense, however, Chiang did arrange a meeting with one of his advisors to be set in Vienna, discussing the idea of the Communists and the Nationalists working together against the

Japanese at the end of 1935111• That meeting produced no results and was Chiang's soul attempt at the unification of the two powers until he was forced. The Manchurians no longer wanted to fight the communists and they no longer wanted to listen to Chiang, who they felt was essentially fighting the wrong war-that against his own people, instead of the foreign invaders. The Young Marshal did not wish to disappoint his own army, for they looked up to him, so he defied Chiang and brought them towards home.

On December 10 , 1936, Chiang tried to take Chang Hsueh-liang's position away and replace him with Chiang T'ing-wen112• Chang was not to be gotten rid of so easily, however.

The Sian Incident

In the middle of 1936, the Communists secretly contacted Chang Hsueh-Jiang. The

Young Marshal willingly told the Communists to send representatives to Sian where he would meet with them. Chiang was not extremely vexed to learn of these arrangements, for he had long been searching for a way to eliminate Chang--as he had been opposing

Chiang's anti-Communist policy for far too long. The Young Marshal was, however, very anti-Japanese, not only because he had lost his father at the hands of them, but because of the loss of much of China as well. He knew that wasting their efforts fighting

l tG Ibid. 260 111 Crozier. 178 45 the Communists would make his anny too weak to fight the Japanese113• The

Communists wanted to stop this civil strife and fight the Japanese and were trying to get

Chang to convince Chiang to do the same. Chang's pleas had fallen on deaf ears. The

Communists did not realize that Chiang also knew that the Japanese were China's worst enemy-but he did not feel that China was ready to fight a winning battle. Chiang also had the constant fear that the Communists were going to tum on him. His suspicions were soon going to prove true.

On December 8 Chiang flew to Sian to speak with Chang Hsueh-liang. The issue was still divided-Chiang wished to commence war against the Communist army, while

Chang had joined forces with the Communists and was ready to fight the Japanese.

Chiang was obviously not looking to make an alliance with the Communists--he had already sent approximately 15,000 members of the Blue Shirt regiment, led by his nephew Chiang Hsiao-hsien, to Sian to arrest suspected Communists114• In response to this the Blue Shirts were disarmed by the Communists while they were sleeping and many of them were arrested, while others were killed. On December 12, 1936, at

5:00am, Chiang Kai-shek was in his room at Lintung. He was dressing after his morning exercise and heard noises, which he recognized as gunfire115• Sensing danger, Chiang, wearing only a nightshirt and a robe, left out of the back of his cabin with two of his guards, into the bitter cold air and falling snow. In an effort to escape, Chiang scaled a wall and fell thirty feet into a moat, injuring his back and losing his dentures116• Chiang and his bodyguards made it up the mountain behind the hotel, where gunfire erupted.

112 Sven Hedin , Chiang Kai-shelt:: Marshal of China (New York: Da Capo Press, 1940), 102. 113 Furuya, 508 114 Crozier, 182 115Furuya,p.512 46

Many of Chiang's bodyguards were killed by the troops of General Yang Hu -ch'eng, the

Pacification Commissioner of Shensi. Sun Ming-chiu, Chang Hsueh-Hang's bodyguard who had led the troops to fire at Chiang's hotel, was also the man who found Chiang.

Chiang challenged Sun to shoot him, however the young man refused and simply responded, "We only ask you to lead our country against Japan.?'" Captain Sun then proceeded to carry Chiang down the mountain on his back, for Chiang was not wearing shoes and his feet were bleeding from climbing.

Chiang was then taken to the office of General Yang Hu-ch 'eng, where Chang presented him with a list of eight demands. These demands included ending the civil war immediately and adopting the policy of armed resistance against Japan, and to safeguard the people's rights to join patriotic movements and express political freedom'P. The two captors, Chang and Yang, read Chiang's diary and realized that he did have every intention of resisting the Japanese forces. Seeing their mistake, the men apologized to

Chiang and when they asked him what they could do for him, he responded that they should return him to Nanking'!", Inthe meantime, Mayling Soong Chiang, Chiang Kai- shek's wife, had written a letter to Chang Hsueh-liang urging him to return Chiang safely.

She went on to say how his actions could seriously harm any unification relations and that she was sure that Chang did not wish to harm Chiang120• Chiang was still not released. Instead, the vice-chairman of the CCP, Chou En-lai was sent to have a conference with Chiang. He arrived in mid-December. Ch'en Li-fua, a close associate of

116 Crozier, p.182 117 Ibid. 183 111 Ibid. 183 119 Ibid. 186 no General and Madame Chiang Kai-shck, Genual Chiang Kai-shek: The Account of the Fortnight in Sian when the Fate of China Hung in the Balance (New York: The Book League of America, 1937), 69. 47

Chiang Kai-shek. was also at the meeting. He spoke of the four points that would allow the KMT to unite with the CCP-these were as follows:

1. The Chinese Communist Party should observe the Three People's Principles. 2. The Communists should obey the orders of the Generalissimo. 3. The Red Anny should be abolished; and 4. The Chinese Soviet organization should be abolished, yet under a special treaty with Yenan the Communists could have their own autonomous government as part of the Chinese local government structurc121•

Chou En-lai agreed to these tenns with the understanding that Chiang would then agree to fight the Japanese. On Christmas Day, December 25, 1936, Chiang Kai-shek was driven back to Loyang and then flown back to Nanking. Chiang presumably put his disagreement with the Communists aside for the good of the war and in 1937 the KMT and the CCP came together to fight against the Japanese.

U.S. Inte"ention

With the defeat of Japan at his back, Chiang was now determined to keep the

Communists from growing. The CCP had grown in size while the Nationalists were fighting the Japanese. They occupied 175 counties -before the war, they controlled only

116.121. The KMT still outnumbered the CCP greatly, with approximately 3 million forces. The Communists totaled approximately 1 million. In the meantime the

Communists were trying to regain power in the Japanese occupied areas. Chu Teh, commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Anny (PLA), asked the Japanese commander-in-chief to surrender to the Communists--Chiang Kai-shek had requested that the Communists not take action with the areas under Japanese occupation and this

111 Crozier, 187 48

angered him 123• The Nationalists then required American aid to help them get to the

aforementioned areas as quickly as possible. The Americans willingly obliged. They not only flew Chiang's troops to the occupied areas, they also ordered the Japanese forces to surrender to Chiang, and not to the Communists. Chiang wished to resolve his problems with the CCP, so in August of 1945 he invited Mao to have a conference in Chungking- the Nationalist wartime capital. More importantly, the Americans, who were now helping the Chinese, wished to intervene in the situation between the two powers before a full-fledged civil war broke out. Finally, after being invited to Chungking three times, and receiving U.S. assurance that he would be safe, Mao finally agreed to attend the conference. This would be the first meeting of the two great powers. During the meeting, both men remained amicable and civil. Chiang intended for this meeting to result in the CCP surrender, thus when Mao tried to make him an offer saying that he would only employ approximately 20-24 divisions if the KMT cut their power down to

120 divisions, Chiang refused 124• Chiang strongly believed that he had earned the right to have complete control of China-he was the president and Mao's attempts to compromise with him were condescending. Chiang was also more than likely aware that Mao would not honor his dea1 and planned to mobilize as many of his troops as he possibly could, despite any agreement they may have made. Thus, the meeting in Chungking produced no results.

After this failure, the Americans created the Marsha]! Mission on December 20, 1945-

-as they did not wish to see strife break out in China. Th.is was for the simple reason that the Cold War was going on and they did not wish to sec the Russians given a chance to mlbid. 620 m Ibid. 620 49

expand into a weakened China.125 The mission involved sending General George C.

Marshall to China to try to help China become a unified nation. Marshall was replacing

Ambassador Patrick Hurley, who had gone to Chungking for the negotiations previously

and had returned unsuccessful.P' The two groups did, however, manage to reach a cease fire agreement on January 10, 1946 at the urging of Marshall-the KMT was obligated to oblige Marshan, for they were receiving aid from the United States. The agreement was to the Communist's advantage for they were not militarily prepared for a civil war.

Marshall was very optimistic about the re-unification of China. Unfortunately. however,

Chiang and Mao did not show Marshall's enthusiasm and soon pulled out of the agreement. Both men felt that Marshall was simply hindering the progress that they could have been making in their own struggles to power. In January 1947 a defeated

Marshall returned to America. Before he left, he bid the Chinese a final farewell, insisting that the United States would no longer be of assistance to them.

Mao's Revolution

With Marshan gone, Mao and Chiang resumed their conflict. Chiang was able to take back the Communist base of Yenan by March of 1947. He felt that the end of

Communism was less then a year away. Mao, in the meantime, had been building up an agrarian revolution and was ready to fight. 127 Although the Communists did not have the vast armies of the KMT, they had a well-trained and relatively welJ-rested regime, versus

124 Hsu, 622 Ill Leung, 257 126 Roxane Witke., Comrade Chiang Ch 'ing (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1977), 195. 50 the Nationalists who had just gotten done fighting the Japanese. Perhaps this strategic timing was one reason that Mao would ultimately succeed. Another reason that the

Nationalists would meet their demise was the catastrophic results of three of the major internal battles. In 1947, the Communists advanced into Manchuria.123 While Chiang probably should have concentrated more on the more powerful areas of central China , he instead utilized 500,000 of his 3 million soldiers for this battle alone. He lost approximately 470,000 soldiers in Manchuria. The next major battle between the

Communist and Nationalist armies was also the largest. This was the Battle of Huai-Hai and it lasted from November 6, 1948-January 10, 1949.129 This was Mao's effort to destroy the KMT troops that were north of the Yangtze River, for if he defeated those forces, it would leave a clear path to the KMT's power bases in Nanking and Shanghai.

Mao's attack was successful-the communist forces managed to crush the Nationalist army, as well as capturing General Tu Yu-ming, the commander-in-chief of KMT

Hsuchow Bandit Suppression Headquarters. 130 Within five days, approximately 500,000

KMT troops were captured or killed. The weather was also working against the

Nationalist army-it was bitter cold and snowing outside and the tanks and other armaments of the KMT were not functioning properly. This left the KMT troops wide open for guerrilla attacks. The KMT was badly defeated during this battle, as well as during the last major battle at Tientsin-Peiping. Chiang Kai-shek had nothing else to do but resign.

127 Stuart R. Schram. ed., Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings /912-1949 (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1997),xxvi 121 Alain Bouc, Mao Tse-tung: A Guide To His Thought (New York: St. Marin's Press, 1977), 74. 129 Leung, 13. 130 Ibid. 14 51

Where Chiong Went Wrong

There is a lot of speculation over what mistakes Chiang Kai-shek could have eluded during his presidency that would have avoided the Nationalist defeat in 1949. It is possible that Chiang's tardiness in retaliating against the Japanese troops caused the war to get blown out of hand. However, the issue remains that Chiang may have been secure in the fact that if the Chinese were to have fought the Japanese in 1931 they would have faced a bitter defeat. The issue of whether or not the assault at Nanking could have been avoided if Chiang took immediate action remains a mystery. The Japanese War definitely set the stage for the communist take over. The Communists were able to wait in the wings and grow stronger, while the Nationalist army was forced to use their power to fight the Japanese. China's economy was also devastated by the costs of war and the rising inflation as a result. The fact also remains that many of Chiang's troops, inc1uding the Manchurian army led by Chang Hsueh-liang, were dissatisfied with the way Chiang was handling the Japanese invasion-Chang's severe discontent actually led him to take the drastic measures that he did in the Sian Incident. Chang felt that Chiang was spending too much time fighting the Chinese Communists, who were made up of his own people, instead of the foreign invaders-who during the course of eight years took over IO miJJion Chinese lives. Chiang did predict the attack of the CCP correctly however. It became a fulfilling prophecy-if he were to put more effort on the Japanese perhaps the war would not have been so disastrous, thus leaving the road for the CCP to take over, dosed. On the other hand, Chiang was a very bright individual and a shrewd leader, thus 52 his assessment that the Chinese were not ready to fight the Japanese even by 1936 and win, was more then likely accurate.

Aside from the war and the economic factors that helped give the Communists the advantage, there were other points to consider. The one important mistake that Chiang made was that he spent so much time and effort on battling with the CCP that he failed to meet the needs and necessities of the people. Any social refonns that had been previously considered. such as the Principles of People's Livelihood, which was the policy that promoted the equal distribution of land and regulation of capital, were never put into practice.131 There was tremendous economic devastation in China and policies of reform were not put into play quickly enough. Chiang had also managed to Jose the support and respect of the people after the war due to the poor way in which the

Nationalist officials conducted themselves when they returned to the conquered areas of

China. 132 They were rude and disrespectful to the people-they surely did not show the support that they should have for people who had just been through the atrocities that these citizens had faced. The people had shown their loyalty to Chiang while he had spent more time on the civil war than fighting the outside invaders who would eventually disrupt their lives and they felt betrayed by this insolent behavior. Another factor, which was only partly Chiang's fault, was the absence of aid from the Americans during the war. They offered immediate assistance after the war, however it is possible that both advisors, Hurley and Marshall gave in too quickly. By abandoning the Chinese Marshall opened the gates for the Communists to attack; however, Chiang himself was at fault for not accepting his help. Although historical hindsight, as well as Chiang's own insight,

131 Hsu,642 m Ibid, 641 53

can almost assure that Mao would not have honored any agreement that was made

between the two powers anyway-especially when he was at an advantage after the war-Chiang should have also sensed this advantage and planned according)y.

It is ironic that the same man who once said "only through unity can we save our country and our people," lost his power while trying to destroy the opposing political party in China.133 What Chiang wanted was not unification, but assimilation. He did not want the two parties to work together. Chiang's objective was for the KMT to be the dominant political party in China. There had been several attempts at a United Front between the CCP and KMT, but they did not produce any permanent results. Chiang

Kai-shek spent his 21 years as president of China trying to ensure that the KMT would be the dominant political party in China. He did not necessarily try to instill democracy into the Chinese people as Dr. Sun Yat-sen had-instead he was more interested in the downfall of communism, which he felt was wrong for China's future. Chiang tried to purge China of the communists and when that did not work, he became obsessed with fighting them. Even when faced by a foreign aggressor, Chiang still remained determined to resolve the internal struggle first. The result was the rebellion by Chang

Hsueh-Jiang who felt that Chiang was wrong in pursuing the Communists when the

Japanese were pervading through China's walls. It is possible that by Chiang's tardiness in attacking the Japanese invaders, he made his own downfall inevitable-although the

Japanese had been defeated, the war had left the KMT susceptible to a Communist attack. 54

While the Nationalists had been fighting the Japanese, the CCP was growing as result of their inland base, which was far from the battleground. The war left behind a China who was had not been totally decimated. but weak from economic strife, military exhaustion, and anguished, frustrated civilians. Still, following the war, Chiang succeeded in capturing the Communist base of Yenan. Enraged Mao Tse-tung took this opportunity to advance his annies. Chiang Kai-shek responded poorly by dedicating too many of his troops to the cause, and lost more then I million men in the major battles between the

CCP and the KMf. Knowing that Chiang and the Nationalist army were at their most vulnerable, Mao broke through the troops at the Yangtze River, and ultimately took power of China, forcing Chiang Kai-shek to resign. Chiang's 21 years as president of mainland China ended at the hands of the CCP. After 1949 he fled to Taiwan and continued his presidency there. Japanese invasion of China enabled the Communists to defeat the Nationalists and take over China.

133 Aphorisms, 14 SS

The Second Sino-Japanese War

The second Sino-Japanese War occurred from 1937-1945. It is also referred to as the

Chinese War. It also opened the way for the CCP to defeat the KMT during the Chinese

Civil War. Many observers feel that if the Japanese had not attacked the Chinese during this time, that the KMT would have stayed in power for a much longer period of time.

The Japanese invasion created tremendous devastation in China. There arc many factors that contributed to this. There had been an impending threat of Japanese attack since

1931, when the Japanese occupied Manchuria and created the Puppet State of

Manchukuo. By 1937, the Chinese army still was not fully prepared for the Japanese invasion, for Chiang had been preparing his army to fight the civil war against the CCP.

Chiang held the Manchurian Anny back from fighting the Japanese with the thought that if the Japanese army took-over Manchuria, it would not be as fatal as it would be if the

CCP took power. By 1936, the Manchurian army had lost faith in Chiang and the Sian

Incident occurred on December 12, 1936, as an attempt to force Chiang into putting aside the civil war and fighting the Japanese. This ended on December 25, 1936 and Chiang must have agreed to put aside the civil war, for the attack on the Communists ended and

Chiang began to concentrate on fighting the Japanese in 1937. In the same year, the

Second United Front between the KMT and the CCP was formed.

The Japanese ravaged China at an alarming speed. By 1937, a number of Chinese territories were invaded, including Shanghai and Nanking, where an estimated 200,000 56

people were massacred. The Chinese continued to fight the Japanese alone until 1941.

Although it is doubtful that the Chinese had a strong enough anny to defeat the Japanese

military under nonnal circumstances, they were constricted further by the fact that

Chiang Kai-shek held back 400,000 of his best troops in case the Communists attacked.

In 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Chinese were no longer in the war

against the Japanese alone, for now the United States had a vendetta against Japan as

well. The two powers formed an alliance and by 1945, the Japanese were defeated and

the war was over.

The United Stata and Asia during WWII

Up until 1941, the United States had an isolationist policy-they did not get involved in

the affairs of other countries unless it was to their own benefit. On December 7 , 1941,

the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Some observers believe that the Japanese bombed

Pearl Harbor because they wanted to conquer the Philippines and it was under American

protection. Pearl Harbor boasted the largest U.S. fleet, the Pacific Fleet. The Japanese

seemed to be under the belief that by bombing Pearl Harbor the U.S. might either comply

with their wishes or at least be so devastated that they would not be able to rebuild for at

least six months. This would have given the Japanese sufficient time to attack the

Philippines, unintenupted by the U.S. The United States were aware that Chinese were in the middle of a war with the Japanese, so they enlisted their help. The two allied powers joined to fight the Japanese. The two began to conduct strategies on how to defeat this military superpower, whose motto was ''war is the father of creation and the 57 mother of culture." 134 The first allied strategy against the Japanese was known as the

CBI (China, Burma, India) Theater of War, effective Jaouary 5, 1942.135 Chiaog Kai- shek was the commander of the operation and the United States sent General Joseph

Stil1well to the wartime capital of Chungking, to serve as Chiang's military advisor.

Stillwell was born in 1893 and was a graduate of West Point military Academy. By the time of the war, Stillwell had already been in China for several years, serving as a language officer. Although Stillwell had spent many years in China and spoke Chinese, he was said by a Chinese critic to have "lacked real knowledge of Chinese culture , politics, the aspirations of the Chinese and the ability to evaluate these." 136 General

Stillwell served Chiang for fifteen months and although in When Tigers Fight, Dick

Wilson stated that Stillwell did not serve Chiang to the best of his ability perhaps because, "his heart was not in serving a commander he could not admire," Stillwell did issue some commands that Chiang chose not to follow .137 Stillwell had been put in China as Chiang's military advisor, not to make decisions. Perhaps this misunderstanding along with the stubbornness of both men, contributed to their eventual dislike for each other.

While China had put Stillwell in China to help them fight against the Japanese. In 1942-

3, the United States also began to help China economically. They provided China with approximately 500 million dollars worth of much needed assistance. By this time, the

Chinese economy had been greatly depleted, due to the expenses of the war. The assistance helped sustain China through the remainder of the war. While the United

States did not send any formal troops into China to fight, they sent a group of one

IJ.4 Dick Wilson, When Tigers Fight (New Yorlc Viking Press, 1982), 8. mHsu,601. 136 Wilson, 193. ll7 Ibid. 58 hundred air force pilots to assist the Chinese military. These men were known as the

"Flying Tigers," and while they originally only aided the Chinese by airlifting soldiers and materials, they later began to assist in fighting the Japanese on Chinese soil.

Another big step that the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took to help China during the war, was to ask them to become one of the major superpowers in the world, known as the Big Three, made up of the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain. The

Chinese accepted and it became known as the Big Four. The conditions of the Chinese admittance were that any unequal treaties between the United States and China since

1843, would be lifted and that the Chinese would be on equal footing with the United

States. This equality, however, would later be broken when President Roosevelt went behind China's back in February of 1945 and held the Yalta Conference . The Yalta

Conference was a Big Three conference, which was initiated to try to find a way to end the war.138 During this conference, the United States asked the Soviet Union to help them fight the Japanese, knowing that they would need their assistance to end the war quickly. Russia agreed to help the U.S. in fighting the Japanese on two terms. These were: (I) they would fight only after the Germans collapsed or surrendered, and (2) in return Russian wanted back the special privileges that they had held in Manchuria before the Japanese took them away in 1905.139 Because they knew that having the Russians on their side would expedite the Japanese defeat, the United States agreed to these conditions, unbeknownst to the Chinese. This was a direct contradiction to the agreement of the Chinese addition to the Big Threo--the agreement that the Chinese would be on equal footing with the United States.

IJI Leung, 471. 119 Ibid. 472. 59

The United States' efforts to assist the Chinese became strained when relations between Chiang and Stillwell began to sour. Chiang began to tire of Stillwell's caustic remarks and Stillwell began to resent Chiang for ignoring his military advice. Stillwell also resented Chiang because he was retaining 400,CKX) of his best troops, in case of a

Communist attack. Stillwell did not understand this and felt that Chiang should put all of his forces towards fighting the Japanese. Each man was looking out for his own countries' best interest. Chiang felt that it was in his best interest to be prepared for a

Communist attack, while Stillwell wanted to sec as many Chinese troops fight as possible, knowing that it would help the U.S. military end the war more quickly. By 1944 tensions between the two were at a high. Stillwell publicly referred to Chiang as

"Peanut," a derogatory term Stillwell used to describe the shape of Chiang's head.140

Conditions deteriorated even further when President Roosevelt approved the request that

Stillwell become in charge of American and Chinese forces on July 4, 1944 . ..,., Chiang agreed to the situation on the fo1lowing conditions: (1) that he received a clear definition of Stillwell's authority, (2) noninclusion of the Communist troops in his command, and

(3) complete control and distribution of the lend-lease by Chiang. 142 During the same year, Chiang asked Roosevelt to recall Stillwell. By September of 1944, President

Roosevelt sent a mediator to China to assess the situation between the two men. The mediator was the former Secretary of War, Patrick 诃㐀 Hurley listened to both sides of the situation and reported back to Roosevelt. He suggested that President Roosevelt recall Stillwell back to the United States or risk losing Chiang and China. On October

18, Stillwell was recalled back to the United States.

On April 12, 1945, United States President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, died after a Jong illness. His successor was Harry S. Truman. While Roosevelt had wanted to end the war as quickly as possible not only for the sake of ending it, he also wished to because he knew that he was dying. Truman took over right where Roosevelt left off and called the

Potsdam Conference between Stalin, Churchill and Truman to be held on July 17, 1945.

Just one day before, Truman had found out that construction of the American Atomic

Bomb had been completed and tested in Los Alamos New Mexico. An ultimatum was then issued to the Japanese, as a result of this conference and was known as the Potsdam

Declaration. It was issued on July 26, 1945 and demanded that the Japanese issue an

" unconditional surrender or prompt and utter destruction."143 The Japanese were not aware of the creation of the A-bomb and did not take the threat seriously. They failed to respond to the ultimatum. As a result, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The United States had planned two bomb attacks-the first on

Hiroshima and the second on Nagasaki. If the Japanese surrendered after the first bomb was launched, the U.S. would not detonate the second. Two days after the first bombing, the Japanese failed to surrender, thus the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 8,

1945. The next day, the Japanese surrendered and by August 14, the surrender was made official and the war was over.!"

The Devastating Results or the Japanese Invasion or China

The Japanese invasion of China was sparked by the 䄀 Polo Bridge Incident, in mHsu, 604. 143 Ibid. 609. 61

July of 1937. On the evening of July 7, 1937, there was an exchange of fire between the

Chinese and the Japanese on the Marco Polo Bridge . After the fire, a Japanese soldier

was said to be missing. The Japanese wished to enter the bordering city of Wanping and

requested permission to search for his missing man, however, permission was denied.

The next night, the Japanese attacked and occupied Wanping. ••s It has never be.en

determined who started the fire on the night of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

Observers opinions range from the Japanese, to the Chinese, and some even say that

Chinese Communists began the fire on the Japanese to initiate the war, which would later

prove to be beneficial to the Communists in terms of gaining control in China. Kao

Tsung-wu, the Chinese born, Japanese educated, Asian Bureau Chief of the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, stated that he felt that neither the Japanese, nor the Chinese fired the first

shot in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident-that instead, it was Communist Chinese, "firing

from a b1ind spot," to initiate the war.146 That is one possible theory, although Kao deplored the Communists, thus he probably would have liked nothing more than to believe that the Communists were at fault for the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

On December 13, 1937, the largest atrocity during the Chinese War was committed by the Japanese military in Nanking. This was the day that Nanking fell to the Japanese, in a bloody massacre. In a world where Hitler was about to commit genocide in Germany, the Japanese military were ruthlessly ripping through Nanking, senselessly pulling innocent Chinese � ilians out of their homes and murdering them. Within weeks, a conservative estimate of, 150,0CX} Chinese civilians were killed. Also during this time, many Chinese women were also forced into sexual slavery . It was believed that between

144 Spence, 483. 10 Leung, 254. 62

1932 and 1945 approximately 200,000 women and girls across Asia and Pacific Islands were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Military.147 Why the Japanese military used such brutal force to take-over Nanking is unknown. It is said that during the 1930's many Japanese military leaders believed that Japan could conquer all of mainland China in three months, thus when they did not, it may have sparked their rage creating the tremendous animosity shown when they arrived in Nanking.148 An estimated

1,578,000 to 6,325,000 Chinese were killed during the Japanese invasion, the majority consisting of civilians.1-49

Japanese Reaction to their War Crimes

Up until 1995, the Japanese government denied Japan's brutal behavior during the

Sino-Japanese War and World War II. The brutality of the military was not taught in textbooks, nor was a formal apology ever received for their actions. In August of 1995, the Japanese Prime MinisterTomiichi Murayama, expressed regret over Japan's war crimes. During his "heartfelt apology," Murayama stated that Japan had ''through its colonial rule and invasion, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations."150 To many Chinese, this did not seem an adequate apoJogy-it was too little, too late. The Japanese had went for fifty years without issuing an apology or even acknowledging the atrocities that they had

1� Boyle, 185. 147 Kate BcddaJI, "Lawmaker asks Congress to Call for Formal Japanese Apology for WWII.era Sex Slaves," Agence France Pruse 25 July 2001. I. 143 Chang, 33-4. 14' Ibid. 216. tso Sheryl WuDunn, "Japanese Apology for War is Welcomed and Criticized," New York Times, 16 August 1995, 3. 63 committed in Asia during the Sino-Japanese war and this was not acceptab1e for many who had suffered at their hands. Still as late as 1995, many Japanese felt that an apology was not necessary. A 55-ycar-old Japanese banker stated, •• I don't think we need to apologize at an, because we have no evidence that those things occurred. I believe politicians are apologizing without making solid investigation and without seeking the truth."ISI This is coming from a man who was around eight years old during the

Massacre and who probably did not understand, nor in all probability hear about what was going on. The Japanese government kept this and other war crimes they committed. out of textbooks and schools, thus many Japanese were probably shocked to find out that it was true. Many Japanese believed what they had done to the Chinese and felt that it was time to issue an apology. A 58-year-old businessman, Kenichi Kobayashi said, "it was a war of invasion and I believe an apology was right. We have done bad things to the Asian people and I think we should have apologized earlier."152 Perhaps the Japanese who felt that Japan did not owe China an apology were too shocked to believe that it was true-or perhaps they were too proud. No further mention of the issue was mentioned until another six years later, when apology was issued in 2001 by Premier Junichiro

Koizumi, who expressed his regret over the Japanese war crimes while visiting the World

War TI memorial outside of Beijing .153

UL Ibid. 152 Ibid. 64

The KMT and the CCP during the War

There had been an impending threat of Japanese invasion in China since 1931, beginning with the Mukden Incident, September 18, 1931. During the Mukden Incident,

Japan was threatening to take over Manchuria, virtually unopposed by Chiang Kai-shek and his military forces. Chiang seemed to feel that it was more important to keep the

Communists out of power than to lose Manchuria, which could later be recovered. to the

Japanese. By 1932 the Japanese had conquered and occupied Manchuria and replaced it with the puppet state of Manchukuo . They put P'u-i, China's last emperor (who was only a child at the time of his abdication in 1912) in the position of emperor and stated that they were simply occupying Manchuria in order to protect the integrity of the territory.

In fact, Japan and Manchucuo signed the Japan-Manchukuo Protocol, recognizing the independence of Manchukuo. In reality, however, the Commander-in-Chief to the

Kwantung Anny was put in charge of all affairs and P'u-i was powerless. 154 The

Japanese, in fact, were using Manchukuo to their own advantage.

After 1931, tensions continued to build between China and Japan. By the Marco Polo

Bridge Incident of 1937, the Chinese had no choice but to fight the Japanese. On July 19,

1937 Chiang issued a statement saying that it was time to fight the Japanese.155 The

Second United Front was formed between July and August of 1937, as a result of the

Japanese invasion. The Communists issued a written decree, known as the Communist

Manifesto, stating their complete and utter compliance with the United Front. By 1939,

m ''Chinese Happy over Japanese Apology, but Jiang Blunt." Agtmee France Presse, 9 October 2001, I. 154 Leung, 246-7. 155 Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang Ming-kai, History of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 (Taipei: Chung WuPublishingCo, 1971), l. 65 however, both parties had violated the agreements of the United Front by making international alliances and by 1941 the Nationalists launched a full-scale attack on the

New Fourth Anny. In 1941, the United States became involved with China, attempting to utiJize them to fight the Japanese and noticed that the civil war was standing in China's way of fighting the Japanese military. Late into the war, the U.S. attempted to help rectify the situation.

While in China to access the situation between General StiJlwel1 and Chiang, Hurley's job was also to mediate relations between the KMI' and the CCP. Hurley flew to Yenan to have a conference with Mao Tse-tung. Mao, who was impressed with Hurley's effort, was agreeable to Hurley's requests that the two parties get along for the sake of China, during the war. On November IO, 1944, Mao wrote a letter to President Roosevelt stating that, "It has always been our desire to reach and agreement with President Chiang

Kai-shek which will promote the welfare of the Chinese people. Through the good offices of General Hurley we have sudden seen hope of realization."156 While Immanuel

Hsu writes that Mao said this to show, "his appreciation of the American effort," it is more likely that Mao was using this to gain the respect of the Americans, as well as the

Chinese people, as he had done with the Communist Manifesto.157 After the war, this would benefit them, for the people had lost all faith in the Nationalist government and were looking for a system of government that would put China back into order. Mao had been using Communist propaganda to gain support since the Long March in 1934, where the Communists were chased out of their base of Kiangsi, by the Nationalists, and marched 6,000 miles to Shensi. This was done not only because they were driven out of

U6 Spence, 606. 157 Ibid. 66

their base, but to instill self-esteem in the members of the Communist party and also to

gain prestige in the public eye.

In December of 1945, the United States made one final attempt to rectify the situation between the KMT and the CCP in China. Hurley had resigned in November of 1945, due to his inability to create peace between China's two opposing political forces. On

December 20, 1945, General George C. Marshall went into China to take over where

Hurley had left off. Initially, Marshall's mediation produced positive results. A cease- fire agreement was announced on January 10, 1946, and between January 10 and January

30, the Political Consultative Conference was held to discuss issues such as reorganizing the national government, and the establishment of a constitutional govemment.158 On

February 25, 1946, the Communist forces had agreed to integrate into a unified national army, however, soon after these agreements were made, both parties broke the terms of the egreement.P" Both parties attempted to gain control of Manchuria and by the end of

June 30, 1936, full-scale war had begun between the KMT and the CCP.160 On January

8, 1947, George C. Marshall aborted his mission to unify China and returned to the

United States.

The Communist Growth During the War

Mao Tse-tung used the period of the Japanese invasion to the Communist's advantage.

He was using this time to train the Communists vigorously and prepare for their growth.

The Communists had the advantage over the Nationalists-their base was located in

1" Leung, 257-8. ISt Ibid, 258. 67

Yenan, thus they were inland and did not have to fight because the Japanese were

attacking the coastal regions of China first. The Communist party in China was also

growing since many Chinese were fleeing from the coast to the interior. By this time

Mao had constructed a secret policy to take power from the Nationalists while they were

at their most vulnerable. His plan was to utilize 100% of the Communist energies and

resources to ensure their success. He broke it down into 3 different parts. Mao planned

to use 70% towards recruitment of CCP members and for growth. 20% of the energies

were channeled towards trying to keep the Nationalist forces out in case they tried to

expand into the CCP's tenitory. Since the Japanese had not yet gotten to the interior of

the country where the CCP was stationed, Mao planned to use only 10% of the party's

power towards fighting the foreign invaders. In all probability, the Sino-Japanese War

was responsible for bringing the Communists to power in China. Had it not been for the

fact that Chiang Kai-shek had to use most of his time and military power to fight the

Japanese he could have worked on his original plan of making the KMf stronger. He

would have then, in all likelihood, been able to wipe out the CCP altogether-e-or at least

kept the KMT in power for several more decades.

The war also caused many other problems for China. For one. the Chinese spent over one million dol1ars on the costs of war by 1945161• A dramatic increase in inflation resulted in order to make up the loss. The Chinese people were also physical1y and emotionally exhausted by the end of the war. Approximately 14 million soldiers had been utilized in the war and over 1,300,000 of them were killed 162• There were estimated

160 Ibid. 161 Hsu, p. 612 162 Ibid., p.611 68

to be over 10 million civilian casualties 163• Millions of dollars worth of property had been destroyed. The people were not only still reeling from the effects of the foreign invaders, but also from the internal strife between the KMT and the CCP that had plagued them for so long. During this time with the civilians weary and the military weakened,

Mao chose to stage his civil war.

While China emerged as the victor of the Sino-Japanese war, the Chinese were still defeated. There was mass devastation and loss of life throughout northern China. The

Nationalist army was exhausted from seven years of fighting. The economy was poor, due to high inflation and the costs of war. The people were also very tired of Chiang

Kai-shek and the Nationalist government. Many Chinese did not approve of the way that

Chiang handled the war and felt that he should have dispatched troops in 1931 when

Japan occupied Manchuria. They had grown weary of the civil war. They were also appalled at the treatment that they received by the Nationalist army after the war. Not only did the army return to the Japanese occupied tenitories and treat the Chinese civilians there with contempt, they also used the Japanese and ''their puppet Chinese troops," to fight the Communists, after the Japanese invasion had ended.164 This was a betrayal to the Chinese people, who had just gone through seven years of brutal war with the Japanese. By 1949, after being defeated in three major battles by the Communist army, Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT surrendered and moved the RepubJic of China to

Taiwan. A new, Communist government, the People's Republic of China, was put into place in China on October 1, 1949. On January 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek resigned as the president of the Republic of China-Mao Tse-tung had succeeded in bringing the

163 Chang, p.8 IM Fairbank, 1"h4 Great Chinese Revolutibn, 263. 69

Communists to power. There was an attempted peace proposal made by the vice president Li-Tsung-jen, who had taken over Chiang's place. He tried to offer to the communists that the KMT would stay in the south if the CCP stayed in the north, but

Mao did not want part of China-he wanted all of it and he knew that he would succeed in obtaining it. The KMT no longer was able to resist the CCP for they had become too weak, thus the take over was inevitable. In December of 1949, Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, where he resumed his presidency. His control of Mainland China had been lost to Mao Tse-tung and the CCP.

While the United States offered their assistance to China in 1941, it was obviously done only because it would benefit the United States to have the Chinese help them fight.

The U.S. supplied China with a military advisor, much needed economic aid and offered them a position in what became the Big Four, but never treated them on equal footing with the other Big Three powers. Although the unequal treaties between the Unites

States and China were canceled, President Roosevelt held the Yalta Conference behind

Chiang Kai-shek's back and agreed to give the Russians back the territory of Manchuria; a territory which had once belonged to China. While Joseph Stillwell was stationed in

China in order to give Chiang military advice, he was a stubborn man who publicly insulted the President of China while in his own country. He wanted to see as many

Chinese troops fight the Japanese as possible, for the good of the United States, thus he resented Chiang for holding some troops back and made his bitterness evident. When 70

Stillwell was reca1led, the U.S. mediator, Patrick Hurley was sent to cease the fighting between the KMT and the CCP, but failed. The Marshall Mission followed Hurley's attempt, but George C. Marshall was also unsuccessful and the United States washed their hands of China's internal problems. Relations between the two countries became strained as a result. Although the United States had sent mediators to China with the best intentions, it is possible that their former isolationist approach may have been the best method to follow in the case of the Chinese civil war.

'The Japanese invasion of China caused tremendous chaos and turmoil within China.

The Chinese were in the middle of a civil war, thus their efforts were not completely focused on fighting the Japanese. When Chiang did finally agree to fight the Japanese in

1937, he held back 400,000 of his best troops in case of a Communist attack. While it may have looked as though he was paranoid and terribly stubborn at the time, Chiang turned out to be correct in thinking that if the KMf was unprepared, the CCP could defeat them. Chiang would have no way of knowing at the time, however, if communism would cost China as many lives as would the Japanese military, thus he was potentia1ly putting his people at risk. Mao was using the Japanese invasion to his advantage, for while the Nationalist military was busy fighting the Japanese, the CCP was building in size and strength. Mao was also using this time to gain public prestige. Not only did he issue the Communist Manifesto in 1937, stating that the Communists were perfectly willing to forget the Civil War during the Japanese invasion, but he was also very cooperative with the American mediator, Hurley. While Mao appeared very sincere to the public, he was just trying to gain their support. He knew that by appearing to desire the end of the civil war, he would appear to be the more reasonable of the two, between 71

Chiang and himself. By 1949, the people had seen enough of the Nationalist government and were willing to accept the new Communist government with open arms. 72

While a Nationalist fonn of government may have seemed to be idea1 to Dr. Sun and

Chiang, there was not enough structure in order to implement it properly. China had been under Imperial rule for nearly 2000 years and then struggled through a twelve year

Warlord period. Most Chinese people had no contact with the West and others had very limited contact. Western ideals were not popular nor had they been welcome up until that time period. Trying to bring a Western form of government into a tradition-oriented culture was not what was best for China at the time. While nationalism may have worked if implemented properly, there were not many Chinese during the time that would have been able to demonstrate the knowledge of the West, as well as the mi1itary expertise necessary to do so.

In 1937, the KMT had a solid power base and following. The CCP was growing in popularity but was sti11 relatively small in comparison. The Japanese invasion of China was the turning point in this period of Chinese history. Had the Japanese invasion never happened, Mao would probably not have had time to strengthen the CCP, for Chiang had watched him closely before the war. Many factors contributed to Chiang's loss of power including a poor economy, inflation, and low mora1 among the people, yet these were a11 direct results of the Japanese invasion. The lack of early intervention by the United

States, due to their isolationist policy or aid from any allied powers a1so added to China's devastation. The United States got eventually got involved in the Sino-Japanese War after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and it was beneficial to them. By becoming 73 involved in the war on Chinese soil, more Chinese and less American soldiers were fighting the Japanese.

After the fall of the monarchy in China, deciding on a new fonn of government became a trial and error process for the Chinese people. Because they had lived in chaos during the warlord era, they had high hopes for nationalism in China and were discouraged when it seemed to cause more chaos. Mao's Communism seemed to succeed in China because the government had complete control over the people, much as they did while China was a monarchy. While Chiang planned to bring nationalism into

China, he had more concerns about keeping communism out, perhaps not only because he felt it was the wrong choice for China, but perhaps because he knew that his leadership was in jeopardy. This made the people lose faith in him and when Mao defeated Chiang, they welcomed the new Communist government.

It is doubtful that the Communists would have taken power of China when they did had the Japanese invasion not occurred. Throughout his presidency in China, Chiang

Kai-shek took great measures to ensure that the Communists would not overthrow the government, yet he became powerless after the Japanese attacked in 1937. He was then forced to focus his efforts on the war, giving the CCP the opportunity to grow. Chiang's reasons for despising communism as he did may have grown into more of a struggle to maintain power than to do what was best for China. It is also debatable whether or not

Mao Tse-tung was so vehemently opposed to nationalism and truly felt that communism was right for China--perhaps he felt so strongly about it simply because it was his chance to gain power through implementing a new political system in China. Whatever Mao's 74 motivation was led him to success in 1949 and led to the introduction of communism in

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Civil War — Causes of the Civil War

Causes of The Civil War

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Economic factors, political factors, social factors, the role of leadership.

• McPherson, J. M. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press.
• Goldfield, D. R. (2005). America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation. Bloomsbury Press.

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Home > ETDS > DISSERTATIONS > 2361

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The causes and effects of the chinese civil war, 1927-1949.

Jennifer Lynn Cucchisi , Seton Hall University

Date of Award

Degree type, degree name.

MA Asian Studies

Language/Literature /Culture

Edwin Pak-wah Leung

Committee Member

Gilbert Mattos

Shigeru Osuka

China, Chinese Civil War, 1927-1949

Recommended Citation

Cucchisi, Jennifer Lynn, "The Causes and Effects of the Chinese Civil War, 1927-1949" (2002). Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs) . 2361. https://scholarship.shu.edu/dissertations/2361

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The Chinese Civil Wars and the Rise of Mao

• The birth of Modern China can be traced to the declaration of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 by Mao Zedong.

• The Emergence of Modern China is a central topic of study for any 21st century citizen. China is the only place in the world which is officially described as BOTH a developing country AND an emerging superpower. The historian Niall Fergusson argues that America is now so dependent on China that we should really be talking of one Superpower – “Chimerica”!

• This remarkable transformation from “Third World” to “First World” status has raised the possibility that maybe communism – discredited since its collapse in Eastern Europe in the 1990s – still has potential as a viable political system.

• In terms of the IB examination, The Chinese Civil War provides extra material for both the “Causes, Practices and Effects of War” and the “Rise and Rule of Single Party States” sections.

A. Complete Scheme of Work

The chinese civil war: introduction.

An introductory handout providing a timeline of events and lost of characters to familiarise students with an essential overview.

Introductory Prezi: The Chinese Civil War and the Rise of Mao

A brief overview of the main parties involved and the key events. Students should take notes!

The Chinese Civil Wars - Are you more like Chiang or Mao? (Multimedia Decision Making Simulation)

A comprehensive interactive lecture to educate students about the key events of the Chinese Civil War, with twelve decision points and complete with 45 minutes of video clips. Designed to be delivered as an interactive lecture over several hours. As students progress through the decision-making exercise, they should make detailed notes. In addition, each time the class is presented with a ‘decision point’, each students should split 50 points each between the options to reflect what they would recommend the course the leader should follow if his objective is to win full control of China. The teacher will provide each students with a ‘voting slip’ from ActiveHistory for this purpose.When you are told what he actually did, circle off the points given to those options to provide an ‘approval rating’ for Mao or Chiang as appropriate. At the end, students can calculate their overall total “Communist” and “Nationalist” ratings as appropriate and compare the results as a class.

Mao’s Rise to Power – Timeline Task

"Use your detailed handwritten notes from the decision making simulation to complete this table in as much detail as possible. You may wish to use a key to highlight events, places, and people in different colours. Next, develop your timeline further by doing your own web research on some of the key events and individuals you think are most important to help explain why Chiang LOST and Mao WON the Civil War (alternatively, the first 90 minutes of this video covers the topic comprehensively. Add these details into your timeline as appropriate and highlight these in yellow ready to share with the class".

Factual Test - The Chinese Civil Wars and the Rise of Mao (teacher password required)

Twenty questions to test essential knowledge, based on what should have been learned so far.

The Chinese Civil War: Video Recap

"Watch the 8-minute video to complete this initial timeline to summarise what you have so far learned. If you have not already completed your own detailed timeline, develop this one further using your notes from the decision making simulation ".

Analyse the Methods and Conditions which led to Mao’s Victory in the Chinese Civil War | Completed Teacher Version

Students use their detailed notes to complete an analysis of the following factors, taken from the IBO syllabus, then discuss later as a class how they can be connected. Propaganda and Charismatic Leadership | Ideology | Socio-Economic Factors| Military Factors / Use of Force | Role of Foreign Powers

Rise of Mao: Possible Essay Questions | Sample Plan

Students are provided with a list of essay questions from past examination papers. As a class, read through the questions and highlight the central focus point of each. Students then consider how they would structure a question phrased as follows for each of these focus points.

Rise of Mao: Essay Planning

Students are provided with a template which allows them to methodically structure a whole range of essay questions. Each student should complete this for a different questions, then these can be collated and shared to revise from. In a subsequent lesson, the teacher should choose one of these questions for students to tackle in timed conditions.

Useful Quotes from Mao and Chiang

Students are given a list of quotes from Mao and Chiang, and consider where and how they could be integrated into their essay plans.

Source Pack: The Chinese Civil War and the Rise of Mao

This sourcepack comes complete with questions and is broken up logically into sections relating to three key periods leading to the rise of Mao.

Head2Head Virtual Interview with Mao Zedong | Lesson Ideas This interactive application allows students to interview historical characters directly! In this way, different groups of students can learn about different aspects of their life and career. There are plenty of lesson ideas to choose from.

B. Model Essays by RJ Tarr (note: teacher password required)

Analyse the methods and conditions which led to to the rise of mao as ruler of china ., compare and contrast the rise of mao and stalin  (originally published in  history review ), compare and contrast the rise of pinochet and franco, compare and contrast the rise of mao and pinochet, c. quizzes and revision exercises, timeline challenge: the chinese civil war and the rise of mao.

Students are put into teams and play this competitive game which tests their knowledge and develops their understanding.

Timeline - Interactive Newsfeed

Students and teachers can ensure that they have covered the essential information by using this interactive newsfeed, which covers all of the major points in extra detail.

Jigsaw Table Exercise: The Chinese Civil War and the Rise of Mao

After the class has had a feedback session based on the individual research tasks, students should complete this interactive exercise which tests their knowledge of the essential points and which additionally provides them with a thorough, completed table of information with which to develop their original notes. Each student is also given a score, which the teacher can record in the markbook.

MazeGame: The Chinese Civil War and the Rise of Mao

Meet some of the key characters relating to the topic, learn about some of the key documents and artefacts, and take a series of tests before being given an overall score in this decision-making adventure.

Keyword Challenge

If you are unfamiliar with the format of the game, click here for instructions .

Fling the Teacher Challenge

An end-of unit challenge with 45 possible questions. All students should start the quiz at the same time, with 10 minutes available. Award 10 points to anyone finishing the quiz successfully within the first minute, 9 points to anyone finishing within the second minute, and so on. I build up a "leaderboard" of quiz results throughout the year, and especially during revision period!

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• Corpus ID: 166131309

The Causes and Effects of the Chinese Civil War, 1927-1949

• Jennifer Lynn Cucchisi
• Published 2002

3 Citations

The acculturation process of old mrs. pan reflected in pearl s buck’s the good deed, missio politica on coalition governance: ‘better devils’ in sa coalition politics, kompetisi diplomasi ekonomi china dengan taiwan di amerika latin sebagai implementasi kebijakan satu china, 27 references, mao's road to power: revolutionary writings, 1912–1949. volume v: toward the second united front, january 1935–july 1937 . edited by stuart r. schram, associate editor nancy j. hodes. [armonk, ny and london: m. e. sharpe, 1999. 888pp. $165.00. isbn 0-7656-0349-7.], mao: a biography, historical dictionary of revolutionary china, 1839-1976, the search for modern china, mao's china and after: a history of the people's republic, when tigers fight: the story of the sino-japanese war, 1937-1945, the man who lost china: the first full biography of chiang kai-shek, history of the sino-japanese war (1937-1945), china in disintegration: the republican era in chinese history, 1912–1949, china's imperial past: an introduction to chinese history and culture, related papers.

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Why Do Civil Wars Happen?

How do dissent and disagreement tip over into civil war? And is peace, when it comes, ever absolute?

‘The Romans got it right: civil war breeds civil war’

David Armitage is Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University and author of Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (Yale University Press, 2018)

S cheming plotters and foreign ideas; class conflict and moral decline; ancestral division and innate instability – these are a few of the favourite things Romans thought made civil wars happen. The Romans were the ones who nominally invented civil war, meaning literally ‘war between citizens’. They were also the first to experience that kind of conflict as civil war, using not just a precise vocabulary for it (the Greeks hadn’t, for instance) but identifying it as a particularly gruesome form of conflict with its own pathologies and specific causes. As Rome suffered serial civil wars, its historians asked repeatedly what made them happen: internal enemies, Greek notions of democracy, the restive plebs, the luxury spawned by imperial victory, perhaps the primal dissension between Romulus and Remus, or just something that doomed Roman civilisation to replay its founding fratricide again and again.

Fast forward to our own times and the world since 1989, and we find modern versions of ancient explanations. Roman plotters have become entrepreneurs of division, as in the former Yugoslavia. The mythic collision of brothers hovers behind prejudicial explanations based on ‘ethnic’ or ‘tribal’ hatreds in Rwanda or Sudan. And political scientists who study patterns of civil war tell us that the Romans got it right: that civil war breeds civil war; that, as the poet Horace put it 2,000 years ago, it was like a volcano, always ready to erupt, ‘smouldering under ashes’.

Those same contemporary students of internal conflict now tell us that civil wars happen for other, more modern reasons: battles over scarce minerals or economic inequality, ethnic fragmentation or even physical geography, combined with political polarisation, can all determine the likelihood of strife. But one lesson learnt from the Romans endures: that civil wars come not singly but in battalions and the more civil war a polity has endured, the more likely it is to suffer civil war again. Asking why civil wars happens matters most if it can help to prevent them. The paradoxical answer is clear: if you don’t want civil war in future, make sure you didn’t have one in the past. Note to the US: beware.

‘Most explanations focus on division, but divisions in democratic polities are normal’

Diane Purkiss is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and author of The English Civil War: A People’s History (HarperCollins, 2006)

C ivil wars have a single overwhelming cause: the government becomes illegitimate in the eyes of a significant number of the people it governs. By illegitimate, I do not simply mean disliked or distrusted; rather that a particular government is seen as actively working against the constitution or the norms of the polity.

The subsequent question must therefore be how a government becomes illegitimate. Most recent (alarmist) writings about the likelihood of civil war in the 21st-century US usually draw only on relatively recent history in order to assess the situation. Looking back a little further to the civil war in the British Isles lets us extract a useful timeline of the breakdown of legitimacy: all of these events are causally connected.

Firstly, the two sides stop listening to one another. Atrocity stories then circulate. The two sides begin to fear one another. The fear leads people to conspiracy theories. At this point, religion or some ideology external to the polity comes into it. The government loses automatic legitimacy. There are open displays of contempt for government authority, some of which come from within the government itself. The government is forced to try to legitimate itself, which is experienced as a power grab by its opponents. The fear escalates to the point where one or both sides begin to arm themselves – and repeat.

Most explanations of the causes of civil war focus on deep division, but divisions in democratic polities are normal, even bitter divisions. What makes the present moment in Anglophone countries seem perilous are the delegitimation strategies. Intensely patriotic rhetoric – in the English Civil War, about the ancient constitution and rights of the monarch – while intended to intensify commitment to a side becomes instead a cause of conflict because it makes backing down seem like treason. At this point patriotism becomes synonymous with choosing a side. Each side will present the conflict as a short-term effort to restore normality. Typically, both will claim that the other side is led by just a few bad apples. Efforts to remove those bad apples will lead directly to further pushback. And we are off.

‘Attempting to explain what causes civil wars is no easy task’

Clive Webb is Professor of Modern American History at the University of Sussex

I n his second inaugural address of March 1865, US president Abraham Lincoln lamented how slavery had led to war between the Union and Confederacy. ‘All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of war’, he affirmed. ‘To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union.’

His counterpart, Confederate president Jefferson Davis, took exception to that interpretation. According to his memoir, ‘the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict’. Rather than slavery, it was right of the southern states to determine their own affairs free of Northern interference that had led them to secede.

So divided were North and South that it seemed the two sides could not even agree why they had gone to war with one another. As this example suggests, attempting to explain what causes civil wars is no easy task.

The circumstances are distinctive to each conflict but there are some common factors. Understanding them is essential to resolving current wars and helping to prevent future ones.

Right now conflicts are being fought in countries including Cameroon, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Regional struggles elsewhere also have the potential to escalate nationwide.

Civil wars are not only many in number but also long and bloody. Sectarian violence has afflicted Myanmar since what was then Burma gained independence in 1948. Worldwide, intra-state conflict has claimed the lives of as many as 16 million people and displaced countless more since the Second World War.

One way to assess the causes of civil wars is to determine what is needed to maintain national stability. That includes a government accountable to all its citizens and an economy that protects and promotes their standard of living. The absence of either is a potential cause of conflict. That division can occur on class, ethnic or religious lines, the flames of anger and resentment stoked by charismatic leaders.

Whether, as some commentators suggest, the United States could be afflicted by a second civil war is a matter of debate. That it is even a talking point should concern us all.

‘There has never been an apolitical civil war in Africa, or anywhere else’

Paul D. Williams is Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University and author of War and Conflict in Africa (Polity, 2016)

P olitical scientists often define civil wars as armed contests for governing authority of a state resulting in more than 1,000 battle-related deaths and where both sides suffer significant fatalities. Civil wars are very rare events but are most likely in large, populous and poor countries with favourable terrain for rebel military campaigns such as mountains and forests. States transitioning from authoritarian to more democratic forms of government are also at heightened risk. Africa’s deadliest civil wars since the 1960s fit this mould, including in Algeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Uganda.

Why did these civil wars happen? My research suggests four main factors. First, people choose to fight. Structural factors can increase the risks, but civil wars are a choice and people are the triggers. They occur when political leaders and enough of their followers think they have more to gain from war than surrender. Africa’s worst contemporary civil wars – South Sudan, Ethiopia and Sudan – didn’t start in the bush but from violent competition among ruling elites, who decided to mobilise their supporters.

Second, political grievances drive rebellion. Despite some popular arguments about economics and greed, there has never been an apolitical civil war in Africa or anywhere else. Since the 1950s grievances about governance have had most salience in Africa, initially in wars of national liberation but subsequently over contested sovereignty. Similarly, while foreign meddling can prolong civil wars, it doesn’t start them.

Third, civil wars require durable insurgencies. Many groups have had serious grievances with African governments, and many took up arms. But most rebels were crushed or disbanded before violence reached the intensity of civil war. That said, many weak African governments have had such small, poorly equipped and fragmented security forces that rebels haven’t needed huge numbers or exceptional strategies; they just needed to endure.

Finally, for future civil wars, look to history repeating. Sadly, one of the most powerful predictors of where future civil wars will happen is where they have most recently occurred.

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