"Why did the nationalists lose the civil war?"

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Raphael Pujol

“Why did the nationalists loose the civil war?”

Before the creation of the Chinese communist party and reorganisation of the nationalist government, China was under warlord control. China in 1919 was at the primitive age and no real Chinese government was established. The years to come until 1949 were crucial in Chinese history. These years were the result for why Chiang’s nationalist government, the GMD was defeated and how Communism under Mao Zedong was set up in China as the only single party state.

On the 4th of May 1919, a movement occurred in China, this movement gave direction to radicals searching for a regeneration and re-organising the GMD. There were protests in china as the Chinese were realising that the country was being divided out into western and foreign powers. Each warlord in China who had control over a territorial part dealt with foreign countries. This movement created hate towards the warlords and something must have been done. One political leader at this time was Sun Yatzen. He wanted to fight the warlords but he needed help from other countries in order to achieve it. To his disadvantage no one accepted but The soviet union. They would help on one condition, that communist party members were allowed to join in the movement. And it was agreed.  

Unluckily, Sun Yatzen died very soon after, of a cancer, and therefore his place was inherited by his protégé Chiang Hi Check. In 1926 Chiang had been appointed general in chief of the army and was very capable of dealing with the war. In order to defeat the warlords, the communist party, the CCP, which had been created in 1921, and the nationalist party had to come together. This was known as the United front. Chiang then launched the northern expedition, which consisted of getting rid of the warlords. In 6 months, the united front had defeated 34 warlords. For Chiang, on the other hand, the Northern Expedition was not only a battle against warlords, but it was also getting rid of the CCP. In 1927, Chiang’s nationalists troops surprised attacked the CCP who were waiting for them and massacred them. This act was known as the white terror. Chiang then created a national government in Nanking, and later on married Yatzen’s sister in law.

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Meanwhile, as time passed, the CCP tried to rebuild bonds with people in cities and tried to gain support by creating propaganda in factories. The communists believed that revolution, according to Marx theory, should be led from the cities while a smaller group in the party believed that the key to revolution was in the country side, where most of the population lived, in the Jianxi province; this was led by Mao Zedong, a member of the CCP.  In 1927, the communists were organising peasants in the south of China, where the gaps between the poor and rich were ...

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