History UsefulNotes / ChineseCivilWar

For a more detailed account, visit Wiki/TheOtherWiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War

The Japanese invasion not only bought Li and Mao breathing space, but the demands of fighting the war essentially destroyed the KMT's capacity to function as an administration. The invasion directly caused gross corruption and demoralisation among KMT personel, and deligitimated it in the eyes of many ordinary Chinese people.

Inflation caused widespread corruption among KMT personnel out of necessity by 1943-4, when the KMT administration's ability to track monthly inflation and increase wages to match it finally broke down. In many months government wages inadvertently became unsurvivable for many ordinary personnel with families, and even some singles. High direct taxation led to widespread food shortages and worsened a famine in Henan province which killed 2 million and rendered the province ungovernable. The desperation of cash-strapped regional governments led to them adopting a CCP policy, namely encouraging the cultivation of Opium for export to Japanese-controlled areas. Some regional governments even established Opium monopsonies and encouraged consumption within their own jurisdictions.

The USA's Truman Administration seems to have believed that the KMT and CCP were like the Democratic and Republican Parties of the USA itself: that they had come to blows through an unfortunate series of misunderstandings and that, if only an older and wiser outside power could force them to sit down and negotiate with one another, they would realise that their differences weren't so great after all and that war with their fellow countrymen was a terrible thing which neither side truly wanted. To this end they dispatched the Marshall Mission of 1945-6, which used the threat of withholding UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) funding and sales of US-calibre munitions to force the KMT to negotiate with the CCP about disarming, resolving their differences, and forming a unified government together. The US also destroyed all German-calibre weapons and munitions captured in the European theatre of war to increase their influence over the KMT through arms sales.

The Chinese Civil War of 1927-50 was fought between a number of factions for control of [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors the Republic of China]] ([[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing est.1912]]). The most powerful of these were initially Marshall Zhang Zuolin of Manchuria, General Secretary Chen Duxiu of the CCP (Communist Party), Minister Wang Jingwei of the Reformed KMT (Nationalist Party) left-faction, and Generalissimo UsefulNotes/ChiangKaiShek of the KMT centre-right faction. The last remaining great warlords in the war's final phase of 1946-50 were General Secretary UsefulNotes/MaoZedong of the CCP, General Li Zongren of Guangxi, and Chiang.

The USA's Truman Administration seems to have believed that the KMT and CCP were like the Democratic and Republican Parties of the USA itself: that they had come to blows through an unfortunate series of misunderstandings and that, if only an older and wiser outside power could force them to sit down and negotiate with one another, they would realise that their differences weren't so great after all and that war with their fellow countryment was a terrible thing which neither side truly wanted. To this end they dispatched the Marshall Mission of 1945-6, which used the threat of withholding UN reconstruction funding to force the KMT to negotiate with the CCP about disarming, resolving their differences, and forming a unified government together.

For a more detailed account, visit TheOtherWiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War

The war is generally considered to have begun in 1927, when Chiang Kai-shek led the Socialist-Nationalist two thirds of the KMT's military forces against Wang Jingwei's Socialist-Communist/Internationalist third. This was the first time in the Republic's history that two organisations with sufficient bases of popular support base and military-economic power to potentially unify the country had fought one another. Despite controlling Beijing and claiming the Presidency of the Republic, Marshall Zhang Zuolin of Manchuria is generally considered not to have had the support of the people or sufficient organisational cohesion/efficiency to have posed a credible alternative, which is why the KMT's internal struggle is considered the start of the war.

In April 1949 the CCP shattered the KMT's last cohesive defense line on the Yangzi river, after which KMT resistance was too weak and disparate for the conclusion to be in doubt. Even after the CCP's declaration of the People's Republic of China on the 1st of October 1949, fighting continued in the Himalayan foothills and mountains, Tibetan Plain, Chinese Central Asia, and on Hainan Island into 1950. In some areas the fighting overlapped with the beginning of UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar, which Stalin allowed President Kim Il-Sung to launch because he wanted to prevent the CCP from taking the KMT's last major hold-out on Taiwain Island.

The Truman administration suspended all aid money, though they resumed arms sales in 1947. Stalin authorised the dispatch of 100,000 North Korean volunteers to fight with the CCP, and a growing Soviet technical and military advisor presence. Both grew increasingly unhappy with the course of the war as the balance of power tipped in favour of the CCP and Li Zongren ousted Chiang Kaishek to assume the Presidency of the Republic, dividing the KMT's house against itself. After the CCP broke the 'back' of the KMT in the third (of three) encirclement campaigns in the Beijing area in the winter of 1948-9, Stalin attempted to force the CCP into peace talks with the KMT. Mao refused.

The Chinese Civil War was between the Gong Chan Dang (Communist Party of China, CPC) and the Guo Ming Dang (Kuomintang, KMT, or the Chinese Nationalists), was a massive war that alternated between revolutionary protest, total war, tentative alliance, and guerrilla war.

The war was at first an on-again, off-again affair. A lot of it was simply undermining the Kuomintang as much as possible.

Then the Japanese invaded.

United by the horrors the Japanese committed, the two rivals formed an alliance to combat the Japanese. After the Japanese got kicked back to their island, the war started for real. The war ranged from the Far North of China to the mountains of Szechuan Province (which, incidentally, are horrifically difficult to fight in). The Communists won, but it was far from easy. In the end, what brought down the nationalists was internal fighting for power, as well as intense amounts of corruption.