The Chinese Civil War - Background and Main Events

by minhyuklee (student)

Chinese History

At the start of the 20th Century China was one of the oldest cultures and nations in the world. By tradition, Chinese society and politics have been conservative. Confucianism has had a great influence on China. This is the philosophy which requires you to accept without complaint your place in an unchanging social order. This hierarchical structure has developed over 2500 years, where the duty of the citizen is to obey lawful authority in the form of the rule of the Emperor.

Until the 19th Century China had been a closed society and had deliberately avoided contact with other nations, wherever possible. It therefore developed a sense of its own superiority over all other cultures. But in the 1840s this self-belief was suddenly and dramatically shaken, when Britain and France used their greater military strength and advanced technology to impose themselves on China. China were forced to open up her ports to foreign commerce enter into a number of unequal treaties.

As a result by 1900 over 50% of China’s key ports and towns were in foreign possession. Chinese bitterness at this humiliation led to mounting dissatisfaction with the imperial government. The Qing (Manchu) dynasty’s inability to protect China encouraged the growth of a revolutionary movement. They wanted to end Chinese subjection to the west by ironically adopting Western philosophy and economic ways. In 1911, the Qing government collapsed.

A republic was set up, but for the next 4o years it was unclear where the real power in China lay. Rival warlords and factions struggled to assert authority. Two of those groups were the GMD (nationalist party) and CCP (communist party). In the 1930s GMD was in control of China. From 1937, Japan occupied China. In 1945, Japan surrendered WW2 and so China returned to China. From 1945-49, the CCP and GMD fought a bitter Civil War for control of China. In 1949, Mao and the CCP defeated the GMD and so China became Communist with Mao as leader.

The Chinese civil war

China was an Imperial Dynasty from 2200BC until 1911, when the system was overthrown in the 1911 Revolution.

Han Dynasty 206 BC – 220 AD

Ming Dynasty 1398 – 1644

Qing (Manchu) Dynasty 1644 – 1911

The Manchu Emperors came from Manchuria, a large north-eastern state, which was originally outside of China. Therefore, in a sense, the Manchu Dynasty was one of foreign rule. When Nationalism started to rise in the 19th century it was anti-Manchu agitation. For example they cut off their queues, the traditional Manchu hairstyle, which had been force on them. China was made up from four ethnic groups: Han (Chinese), Manchus, Mongols and Tibetans. 90% of the population was Han. In 1900, the reading of the unequal treaties led to an anti-foreign movement, known as the Boxer Rising. The failure of the uprising led to more discontent with the Manchus The boxers were revolting against more loss of Chinese sovereignty and they were joined by the Manchu government. The Manchus failed to lead them to victory and this further exposed the ineffectiveness of the Imperial authorities. The revolt against the Manchus finally came in October 1911, Four months later the Manchu dynasty abdicated. In 1912, China became a republic led by Yuan Shikai. In his period as leader, he did little to solve China’s economic and political problems. However, he had abandoned the antique imperial system, experimented with the representative principle, resolved to drive out the foreigner and given hope to the Chinese. Yuan died In 1916 and this led to a chaotic period of the warlords 1916 –1927. The alliance between the GMD and CCP achieved its primary objective of crushing the warlords. Chiang Kaishek was officially the leader of China

The Sino-Japanese War 1937 – 1945. This conflict began when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. They then tried to extend their control to the rest of China. This led to a renewal of the GMD-CCP alliance against the enemy. Kaishek was more concerned with destroying the CCP, than fighting the Japanese, so he offered only a limited resistance to the occupying forces. This was in complete contrast to Mao, who appealed to the spirit of nationalism in the struggle against the Japanese and this endeared him to the people. The USA became an ally of China after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941, but they failed to understand the political situation in China and gave support to the GMD government. Mao was outraged by this and it led to his anti-Americanism. Mao was now pushed towards the Soviet Union. But Stalin never showed faith in the CCP and Stalin had urged the CCP to maintain its from with the GMD, even when they were murdering the Communists. Mao never forgot the way he and the CCP had been treated by the USSR.

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Japan surrendered in 1945 and China returned to its Civil War between the CCP and GMD. As WW2 came to an end in the Pacific, relations between the government of Kaishek in China and its powerful US ally had become frayed. Although Roosevelt had hoped that China would be the keystone of his plan for peace and stability in Asia after war, he eventually became disillusioned with the corruption of Kaishek’s government and his unwillingness to risk his forces against the Japanese (he hoped to save them for use against the Communists after the war had ended), and China became a backwater as the war came to a close. Nevertheless, US military and economic aid to China had been substantial, and at war’s end the Truman administration still hoped that it could rely on Kaishek to support US post war goals in the region. Japanese aggression and problems of post war reconstruction, the Communists were building up their liberated base in North China. An alliance with Kaishek in December 1936 had relieved them from the threat of immediate attack from the South. Although Kaishek was suspicious of the Communists and stationed troops near Xian to prevent them from infiltrating areas under his control. He had good reason to fear for the future. During the war, the Communists patiently penetrated Japanese lines and built ip their strength in North China. To enlarge their political base, they carried out a mass line policy designed to win broad and popular support by reducing land rents and confiscating the lands of wealthy landlords. By the end of WW2, according to Communist estimates, 20 to 30 million Chinese were living under their administration and their People’s Liberation Army PLA included nearly 1 million troops. As the war came to an end, world attention began to focus on the prospects for renewed civil strife in China. Members of a US liaison team stationed in Yanan during the last months of the war were impressed by the performance of the Communists, and some recommended that the US should support them or at least remain neutral in a possible conflict between Communists and Nationalists for control of China. The Truman administration, though skeptical of Kaishek’s ability to forge a strong and prosperous country, was increasingly concerned over the spread of Communism in Europe and tried to find a peaceful solution through the formation of a coalition government of all parties in China. The effort failed BY 1946, full scale war between the Nationalist government now reinstalled in Nanjing, and the Communists resumed. The Communists having taken advantage of the Soviet occupation of Manchuria in the last days of the war, occupied rural areas in the region and laid siege to Nationalist garrisons hastily established there. New Kaishek’s errors came home to roost in the countryside, millions of peasants attracted to the Communists by promises of land and social justice, flocked to serve in the PLA. In the cities, middle class Chinese, who were normally hostile to Communism, were alienated by Kaishek’s brutal suppression of all dissent and his government’s inability to slow the ruinous rate of inflation or solve the economic problems it caused. With morale dropping, Kaishek’s troops began to defect to the Communists. Sometimes whole divisions, officers as well as ordinary soldiers changed sides. By 1946, the PLA was advancing south out of Manchuria and had encircled Beijing; Communist troops took the old imperial capital, crossed the Yangtze the following spring, and occupied the commercial hub of Shanghai. During the next few months, Kaishek’s government and 2 million of his followers fled to Taiwan, which in the Japanese had returned in Chinese control after WW2. The Truman administration reacted to the spread of Communist power in China with acute discomfort. Washington had no desire to see a Communist government on the mainland, but it had little confidence in Kaishek’s ability to realise Roosevelt;s dream of a strong, united and prosperous China. In December 1946, Truman’s emissary, General George C Marshall sought and received permission from the White House to abandon his mission, arguing that neither side was cooperating in the effort. During the next 2 years the US gave limited military support to the Nanjing regime, but refused to commit US power to guarantee its survival

Mao Zedong

Mao was born in 1893 in Hunan province. His family was quite rich. He doted on his mother, but he fell out with his father when he refused to show him the respect expected of a Chinese son. In 1912, he trained as a teacher. In 1918, he joined the Hunan independence movement. In 1919, he worked as a librarian at Beijing University. It was here that he was introduced to Marxist ideas and developed a conviction that China needed a Revolution to be regenerated. During his student days in Hunan he witnesses the brutality of the rival warlords. “The brutal punishments inflicted on the peasants included such things as gouging out eyes, ripping out tongues, disemboweling and decapitation, slashing with knives and grinding with sand, burning with kerosene and branding with red hot irons. What Mao saw greatly affected him, but it was not the cruelty which moved him so much as the realization that it was the strongest and most ruthless who always won. He concluded that the only way to gain power was through violence.

“A revolution is not a tea party, it is an act of violence, by which one class overthrows another” ‘’All power grows out of the barrel of a gun”

In 1921, he became a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party, CCP. In 1923, he joined the GMD (Nationalist Party). Between 1924 and 1927, he helped plan the GMD/CCP Alliance. In 1927, he created the Jiangxi Soviet dedicated to achieving a peasant revolution. In 1930, he suppressed a mutiny in the Red Army. After 1931, China was weakened by Japanese military control Kaishek leader of GMD, was more concerned with destroying the CCP. In 1934, he encircled the CCP base in Jiangxi. Mao led the besieged CCP to escape north to Yanan. This journey took over a year to complete. It was never as glorious as history made out 20000 of the 100000 who set out survived. But the fact remains that it was a very important stage in the development of Chinese Communism. During the march a meeting took place, where Mao outmaneuvered his opponents and imposed his idea that for the revolution to be successful, it must be based on the peasants in the countryside, not the workers in the towns. In 1935, he created the Yanan Soviet. In 1942, he crushed the opposition within the CCP. During the Civil War period the peasants were treated with great brutality by the Communists, to force them to take their side against the Nationalists. Mao even sent his sone, Anying to take part in the suppression of the peasants, as he felt he needed toughening up. What Anying witnesses came close to unhinging him metally. In one set of vilages the locals were rounded up and made to attend an anti0landlord rally. It was winter and below zero. For 5 days the villagers were not allowed to leave the unsheltered area and were forced to chant Maoist slogans. Some of them froze to death standing up. On the 5th day the landlords were kicked and punched to death, as the crowds shouted kill, kill, kill. In 1949, he led the CCP to victory over the Nationalists. He then declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China. “A clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful pictures can be painted on it” Mao 1949.

Mao’s rise to power

In 1927 in Shanghai, Chiang Kaishek organized a massacre of left wing members of the GMD, especially those who were also members of the CCP. The CCP organised resistance and this was the strat of the Civil War. The CCP split into two parts.

The Moscow trained central leadership went underground in Shanghai. They called upon members of the CCP to launch urban revolutions. Although Moscow sent an agent, Heinz Nuemann to assist them, the urban revolts failed.

Mao led another group into the countryside of Hunan and Jiangxi where they established independent Soviet areas. There, Mao and Zhu De founded the Red Army.

Between 1939 and 1934 Chiang Kaishek launched a series of 5 military Campaigns of Encirclement and Extermination against the CCP in the Kiangxi Soviet. From 1931, Mao used the failure of the Moscow directed leadership to consolidate his power as the real leader of the CCP. During the extermination campaigns Mao and Zhu De, the Commander in Chief of the army, successfully developed the tactics of guerilla warfare from base areas in the countryside. The CCP successfully fought off 4 campaigns using tactics of mobile infiltration and guerilla warfare developed by Mao, but in the fifth, Jiang gathered about 700,000 troops and established a series of blockhouses around the Communist positions. The Central Committee of the CCP abandoned Mao’s guerilla strategy and used regular warfare tactics against the better armed and more numerous

In order to avoid extermination on 15th October 1934, the remaining 85,000 troops and 15000 administrative personnel broke through the Nationalist lines and fled westward on what became the ‘Long March’. During the first 3months of the march the Communists were subjected to constant bombardment from Chiang’s air force and attacks from his army, and they lost more than half of their men. During the march Mao established his dominance of the party. The remnants arrived in Shaanxi in October 1935, with about 8000 survivors (10%). The Long March was a near disaster. Most of the Red Army had been destroyed, but it became a legend. Edgar Snow said that it was an odyssey (journey) unequalled in modern times.

The Long March:

Decisively established Mao’s leadership of the CCP

Enabled the embattled Communists to reach a base area beyond the direct control of the GMD

Established Mao as the potential leader of China with the mandate of Heaven in the minds of the peasants. It was the origin of the cult of Mao

Reinforced Mao’s faith in the ability of the revolutionary sprit to overcome all obstacles and mould history

In December 1936, the Communists settled in Yanan, where they remained throughout the war with Japan. From this base they grew in strength.

Seeing the threat from Japan, the CCp began promoting the idea of a United Front against the external threat. This was popular all over China, but Jiang remained more concerned with defeating the Communists, than to protect the country from Japan. A truce was concluded after Jiang had been briefly imprisoned by his own forces, and both grou[ps fought the Japanese in an uneasy alliance. The CCP were the more successful. They fought as partisans and came to control vast areas of the countryside. As a result, they

1) expanded their military forces to somewhere between 50000 and 1000000 at the time of the Japanese surrender

2) established political control over a population that may have totaled as many as 90 000 000 where socialist agrarian policies secured broad support among the peasants.

Maoism was created during this period in Yanan, although not known by that name until the Great Proletarian Revolution.

Ma thought book learning useless if not accompanied by real life experience there can be no knowledge apart from practice. The young cadres were taught to listen to the old men from the country side .

He considered the peasants as the vanguard of the revolution.

In place of democratic centralism he preferred the mass line, based upon the practical experience of the peasants.

History was not moved merely by impersonal forces. The revolutionary will of the peasantry could, if harnessed, move mountains.

Mao saw and

A new form of Marxism adapted to Chiense conditions and ways fo thinking or form of Stalinism

The differences between Mao and the soviet j

Giving a basic grounding in Marsistt tehroy and Leninst pri out. nciples of party organization to the thouof new members who had been drawn into the party in the course of the expansion…….

The elimination of foreign dogmatism blind obedience to the Soviet model.

In March 1943, Mao achieved official leadership of the party, becoming chairman of the secretariat and of the Politburo Shoertkjndknfkdnfkjdsnfkjndkjnfkj

The practice of organizing campaigns in the villages to ensure that policies were properly carrie

Ig gave the CCP experience of government

US policy was mainly to create a strong central government under US influence. The US hoped to bring the GMD and CCP together under the moderates of the Democratic League. This failed as both sides were too suspicious of each other.

Talks broke down over the failure to merge the two armies. The USA reverted to supporting the nationalists.

Serious fighting brokey was no longer interested in an armistice. Their advance continuored. out again between the armies of the GMD and CCP in Manchuria in April 1946.

By mid 1947, the GMD army was overstretched in occupying all the areas gained and a successful Communists counter offensive began in Manchuria, sweeping the country.

Chang Kaishek resigned from the Presidency in January 1949, and the GMD asked the US to mediate with the CCP, hoping to retain the South. The CCP sensing victor

To what extent was the rise to power of Mao due personal appeal or ability?

Showed ability & determination

In quest for education

Use of communism

Gained on support from peasants in countryside

Long March

Alliance with nationalists

Opposition to Japanese and nationalists

Ruthless treaties

State of China

Mistakes of Nationalists

Hostility to foreign control

Mao was very successful not only in a sense that he achieved the target but he also exceeded it by far. He’s initial target for gross industrial output of 53,560 million yuan was exceeded by over 1000 million yuans in 1957.For particular areas of production, although in some areas like oil, machine tools and freight cars have not achieved the targets, majority of targets for exceeded in other areas. Therefore, it can be stated that Mao’s five year plan have turned out successful.

The new Chinese flag. The large star stands for the Communists Party. What does each of the other four stars represent?