Chinese Civil War

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The Chinese Civil War () was a conflict in China between the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party; KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC). It began in 1927 after the Northern Expedition when the right-wing faction of the KMT, led by Chiang Kai-shek, purged the Communists from a KMT-CPC alliance. The primary conflict ended in 1950 with an unofficial cessation of major hostilities, with the Communists controlling mainland China (including Hainan Island) and the Nationalists restricted to their remaining territories of Taiwan, Penghu, and several outlying Fujianese islands.

The First United Front

To defeat the warlords who had seized control of much of Northern China since the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, Kuomintang leader Sun Yat-sen sought the help of foreign powers. His efforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1921 he turned to the Soviet Union. For political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Communist Party of China. The Soviets hoped for Communist consolidation but were prepared for either side to emerge victorious. Thus the struggle for power in China began between the Nationalists and the Communists.

In 1923 a joint statement by Sun and Soviet representative Adolph Joffe in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China's national unification, and issued the Sun-Joffe Manifesto, calling for a unified and independent China, and arranged an alliance between the KMT and CPC. Soviet advisers, the most prominent of whom was an agent of the Comintern, Mikhail Borodin , began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the KMT along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CPC was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the KMT, and its members were encouraged to join while maintaining their party identities, forming the First United Front between the two parties. Chinese communist members were allowed to join the KMT on an individual basis. The CPC was still small at the time, having a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925. The KMT in 1922 already was 150,000 strong. Soviet advisers also helped the Nationalists set up a political institute to train party cadres in mass mobilization techniques and in 1923 sent Chiang Kai-shek, one of Sun's lieutenants from Tongmeng Hui days, for several months' military and political study in Moscow. After Chiang's return in late 1923, he participated in the establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy outside Guangzhou, which was the seat of government under the KMT-CPC alliance. In 1924 Chiang became head of the academy and began the rise to prominence that would make him Sun's successor as head of the KMT. However, the "party within party" situation and the Soviet meddling in Chinese political affairs irked Chiang, and caused him to begin purging the communists from KMT ranks and led to the Civil War.

Northern Expedition (1926–1928) and KMT split

Just months after Sun's death in 1925, Chiang, as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, set out on the long-delayed Northern Expedition against the northern warlords to unite China under KMT control.

By 1926, however, the KMT had divided into left- and right-wing factions, and the Communist bloc within it was also growing. In March 1926, after thwarting an alleged kidnapping attempt against him, Chiang abruptly dismissed his Soviet advisers, imposed restrictions on CPC members' participation in the top leadership, and emerged as the preeminent KMT leader. The Soviet Union, still hoping to prevent a split between Chiang and the CPC, ordered Communist underground activities to facilitate the Northern Expedition, which was finally launched by Chiang from Guangzhou in July 1926.

Government troops round up prisoners.

In early 1927 the KMT-CPC rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CPC and the left wing of the KMT had decided to move the seat of the Nationalist government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. But Chiang, whose Northern Expedition was proving successful, set his forces out to destroy the Shanghai CPC apparatus. Arguing that communist activities were socially and economically disruptive, Chiang turned on Communists and unionists in Shanghai, arresting and executing hundreds on April 12, 1927. The purge widened the rift between Chiang and Wang Jingwei's Wuhan government (a contest won by Chiang) and destroyed the urban base of the CPC. Chiang, expelled from the KMT for his actions, formed a rival government in Nanjing. There now were three capitals in China: the internationally recognized warlord regime in Beijing; the Communist and left-wing civilian-military regime at Wuhan; and the right-wing Kuomintang regime at Nanjing, which would remain the Nationalist capital for the next decade.

The Comintern cause appeared bankrupt. A new policy was instituted calling on the CPC to foment armed insurrections in both urban and rural areas in preparation for an expected rising tide of revolution. Unsuccessful attempts were made by Communists to take cities such as Nanchang, Changsha, Shantou, and Guangzhou, and an armed rural insurrection, known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising, was staged by peasants in Hunan Province. The insurrection was led by Mao Zedong.

But in mid-1927 the CPC was at a low ebb. The Communists had been expelled from Wuhan by their left-wing KMT allies, who in turn were toppled by a military regime.

The KMT resumed the campaign against warlords and captured Beijing in June 1928, after which most of eastern China was under Chiang's control, and the Nanjing government received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China. The Nationalist government announced that in conformity with Sun Yat-sen's formula for the three stages of revolution — military unification, political tutelage, and constitutional democracy — China had reached the end of the first phase and would embark on the second, which would be under KMT direction.

Anti-Communist campaigns (1927–1937)

During the Agrarian Revolution, Communist Party of China activists retreated underground or to the countryside where they fomented a military revolt, beginning the Nanchang Uprising on August 1, 1927. They combined the force with remnants of peasant rebels, and established control over several areas in southern China. Attempts by the Nationalist armies to suppress the rebellion were unsuccessful but extremely damaging to the Communist forces. This marked the beginning of the ten year's struggle, known in China as the Ten Year's Civil War (). It lasted until the Xi'an Incident when Chiang Kai-shek was forced to form the Second United Front against the invading Japanese.

A Communist leader addressing Long March survivors.

After Chiang Kai-shek had foiled the coup to oust him launched by Feng Yü-hsiang, Yen Hsi-shan, and Wang Ching-wei (1929–30) in the Central Plains War, he immediately turned his attention on rooting out the remaining pockets of Communist activity. The first two campaigns failed and the third was aborted due to the Mukden Incident. The fourth campaign (1932-1933) achieved some early successes, but Chiang's armies were badly mauled when they tried to penetrate into the heart of Mao's Soviet Chinese Republic. Finally in late 1933 Chiang launched a fifth campaign orchestrated by his German advisors that involved the systematic encirclement of the Jiangxi Soviet region with fortified blockhouses. By the fall of 1934, the Communists faced the possibility of total annihilation. It seemed that the time was now ripe to finish off the CPC, then turn against the remaining warlords. However, the intervention of the Japanese by invading Manchuria a little later would greatly alter the course of the Civil War.

In October of 1934, the Communists took advantage of gaps in the ring of blockhouses (manned by the troops of a warlord ally of Chiang's, rather than the Nationalists themselves) to escape Jiangxi. This marked the beginning of a massive military retreat to the west to escape the pursuing KMT forces. It was under this legendary year-long, 6000 km retreat, called the Long March, which ended when the Communists reached the interior of Shaanxi, that Mao Zedong emerged as the top Communist leader. Along the way, the Communist Army confiscated property and weapons from local warlords and landlords, while recruiting peasants and the poor, solidifying its appeal to the masses. Of the 80,000 people began the Long March from the Soviet Chinese Republic, only around 7000 made it to Shaanxi, and this included those who later joined the Red Army on the way.

Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (pictured here in March 1945) was severely weakened in power by the Second Sino-Japanese War.

During the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria, Chiang Kai-shek, who saw the Communists as a greater threat, refused to ally with the Communists to fight against the Japanese. On December 12, 1936, Kuomintang Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng kidnapped Chiang and forced him to a truce with the Communists. The incident became known as the Xi'an Incident. Both parties agreed to suspend fighting and form a Second United Front to focus their energies and fighting against the Japanese. In 1937 Japanese airplanes bombed Chinese cities and well-equipped troops overran north and coastal China.

The alliance that was created with the Communists was in name only and the Communists hardly ever engaged the Japanese in major battles but proved efficient in guerilla warfare. The level of actual cooperation and coordination between the CPC and KMT during the Second World War was minimal. In the midst of the Second United Front, the Communists and the Kuomintang were still vying for territorial advantage in "Free China" (i.e. those areas not occupied by the Japanese or ruled by puppet governments). The situation came to a head in late 1940 and early 1941 when there were major clashes between the Communist and KMT forces. In December 1940, Chiang Kai-shek demanded that the CPC's New Fourth Army evacuate Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces. Under intense pressure, the New Fourth Army commanders complied, but they were ambushed by Nationalist troops and soundly defeated in January 1941. This clash, which would be known as the New Fourth Army Incident, weakened the CPC position in Central China and effectively ended any substantive cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists and both sides concentrated on jockeying for position in the inevitable Civil War.

In general, developments in the Second Sino-Japanese War were to the advantage of the Communists. Kuomintang's resistance to the Japanese proved costly to Chiang Kai-shek. The war against Japan greatly sapped the KMT's military resource, and Chiang's own central army was never to recover from the devastating losses it had sustained in the early stages of the war. In addition, in the last major Japanese offensive, Operation Ichigo of fall 1944, the Japanese were able to maneuver far inland and destroy much of what remained of Chiang's material strength. In contrast, thanks to the brutal mass retaliation policies of the Imperial Japanese Armies, huge numbers of dispossessed villagers were able to be recruited to the Communist ranks. Although the guerrilla operations conducted by the Communists inside occupied China were of limited military value, they greatly heightened popular perception that the Communists were at the vanguard of the fight against the Japanese. By the end of the war large portions of the peasant masses of occupied China were politically mobilized in support of the Communists; however, the Communists had a severe shortage of war material, including small arms.

Post-war power struggle (1945–1947)

Chiang and Mao met in the wartime capital of Chongqing, China to toast to the Chinese victory over Japan, but their shaky alliance was short-lived.

The dropping of the atomic bomb caused Japan to surrender much more quickly than anyone in China had imagined. Under the terms of the Japanese unconditional surrender dictated by the United States, Japanese troops were ordered to surrender to Kuomintang troops and not the Communists Party of China.

In the last month of the World War II in East Asia, Soviet forces launched the mammoth Operation August Storm in Manchuria. This operation destroyed the fighting capability of the Kwantung Army and left the USSR in occupation of all of Manchuria at the end of the war. Consequently, they took the surrender of the 700,000 Japanese troops still stationed in the region. They seized the arms of these surrendering Japanese and handed them over to the Communist Party of China, providing them with the initial military means to face the Nationalists in open warfare.Later in the year Chiang Kai-shek came to the painful realization that he lacked the resources to prevent a CPC takeover of Manchuria following the scheduled Soviet departure, he therefore made a deal with the Russians to delay their withdrawal until he had moved enough of his best-trained men and modern material into the region. Nationalist troops were then airlifted by the United States to occupy key cities in North China, while the countryside was already dominated by the Chinese Communists. The Soviets spent the extra time systematically dismantling the entire Manchurian industrial plant (worth up to 2 billion dollars) and shipping it back to their war-ravaged Motherland.

American General George Marshall arrived in China and was part of negotiations over a cease-fire between the KMT and the CPC, the terms of which would build a coalition government that would include all of the contending political/military groups in China. Neither the Communists (represented by Zhou Enlai) nor Chiang Kai-shek's representatives were willing to compromise on certain fundamental issues or relinquish the territories they had seized in the wake of the Japanese surrender. Notably, however, was the fact that the Nationalists demilitarized 1.5 million troops in an effort to support the Marshall Mission, whereas the Communists did not; they used the cease-fire period to arm and train the huge numbers of peasants who had joined the People's Liberation Army throughout the war with Japan. The truce fell apart in the spring of 1946, and although negotiations continued, Marshall was recalled in January 1947.

Final stage of fighting (1946–1950)

With the breakdown of talks, an all out war resumed. This stage is referred to in Communist media and historiography as the War of Liberation (). While the Soviet Union provided limited aid to the Communists, the United States assisted the Nationalists with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new surplus military supplies and generous loans of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment. They also airlifted many Nationalist troops from central China to Manchuria, the defense of which the Generalissimo saw as vital to his cause. Nevertheless, the Communists, who had already situated themselves in the north and northeast, were poised to strike.

Belatedly, the Nationalist government sought to enlist popular support through internal reforms. The effort was in vain, however, because of rampant corruption in government and accompanying political and economic chaos including massive hyperinflation. By late 1948 the Nationalist position was bleak. The Nationalists had already taken the brunt of heavy fighting against the Japanese during WWII, while the Communists (for the most part) took part in guerrilla warfare. As a result, the demoralized Nationalist troops proved unable to stop the People's Liberation Army's advance. Although the Nationalists had an advantage in their numbers and weapons, and benefitted from considerable international support, their low morale hindered their ability to fight. Furthermore, though they administered a larger and more populous territory, their corruption effectively stifled any civilian support.

The Communists were ultimately able to seize Manchuria after struggling through numerous set-backs while trying to take the cities, with the decisive Liaoshen Campaign. The capture of large Nationalist formations provided them with the tanks, heavy artillery, and other combined-arms assets needed to prosecute offensive operations south of the Great Wall. The Huaihai Campaign () of late 1948 and early 1949 secured east-central China for communist forces, while the Pingjin Campaign () resulted in the Communist conquest of northern China, including Beiping (now Beijing), which was taken by the Communists without a fight on January 31, 1949. On April 21, Communist forces crossed the Yangtze River, capturing Nanjing, capital of the Nationalist's Republic of China, two days later. In most cases the surrounding countryside and small towns had come under Communist influence long before the cities.

By late 1949, the People's Liberation Army was pursuing remnants of Nationalist forces southwards in southern China. On October 1, 1949 Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China with its capital at Beiping, which was renamed Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and 600,000 Nationalist troops and 2,000,000 refugees, predominantly from the government and business community, retreated from the mainland to the island of Taiwan, and there remained only isolated pockets of resistance, particularly in the far south. A PRC attempt to take the ROC controlled island of Kinmen was thwarted in the Battle of Kuningtou halting the PLA advance towards Taiwan. In December 1949 Chiang proclaimed Taipei, Taiwan, the temporary capital of the Republic of China and continued to assert his government as the sole legitimate authority in China. The last of the fighting ended with the Communist conquest of Hainan Island in May 1950.

Relationship between the two sides since 1950

Most observers expected Chiang's government to eventually fall in response to a Communist invasion of Taiwan, and the United States initially showed no interest in supporting Chiang's government in its final stand. Things changed radically with the North Korean invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950, thus triggering the Korean War. At this point, allowing a total Communist victory over Chiang became politically impossible in the United States, and President Harry S. Truman ordered the U.S. 7th Fleet into the Taiwan straits, ending any immediate possibility for a successful Communist invasion.

Some American historians have theorized that the loss of mainland China to the Communists enabled Joseph McCarthy to purge the China Hands from the U.S. State Department. In turn, it is possible that John F. Kennedy lacked the advice of any real experts on East Asia when he was trying to formulate a policy on Vietnam, which would imply that the Chinese Civil War can be linked causally to the Vietnam War. In addition, the belief of Lyndon Johnson that the loss of China cost Truman and the Democratic Party its political support led the later President to determine to uphold South Vietnam at all costs.

Meanwhile, on Taiwan, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, intermittent skirmishes occurred throughout mainland's coastal and peripheral regions, though American reluctance to be drawn into a larger conflict left Chiang Kai-shek too weak to "retake the mainland" as he constantly vowed. ROC fighter aircraft bombed mainland targets and commandos, sometimes numbering up to 80 and sent by the U.S. military, landed repeatedly on the mainland to kill PLA soldiers, kidnap CPC cadres, destroy infrastructure, and seize documents. The ROC lost about 150 men in one raid in 1964.

The ROC navy conducted low intensity naval raids, and lost some ships in several small battles with the PLA. In June 1949, the ROC declared a "closure" of all mainland ports and its navy attempted to intercept all foreign ships, mainly of British and Soviet-bloc origin. Since the mainland's railroad network was underdeveloped, north-south trade heavily depended on sea lanes. ROC naval activity also caused severe hardship for mainland fishermen.

After losing the mainland, a group of approximately 1,200 KMT soldiers escaped to Burma and continued launching guerrilla attacks into south China. Their leader, General Li Mi, was paid a salary by the ROC government and given the nominal title of Governor of Yunnan. Initially, the United States supported these remnants and the Central Intelligence Agency provided them with aid. After the Burmese government appealed to the United Nations in 1953, the U.S. began pressuring the ROC to withdraw its loyalists. By the end of 1954, nearly 6,000 soldiers had left Burma and Li Mi declared his army disbanded. However, thousands remained, and the ROC continued to supply and command them, even secretly supplying reinforcements at times. Raids into mainland China gradually ended by the late 1960s as PLA infrastructure improved. Remnants of these KMT loyalists remain in the area and are active in the opium trade.

After the Republic of China complained to the United Nations against the Soviet Union supporting the Chinese Communists, the UN General Assembly Resolution 505 was adopted on February 1, 1952 to condemn the Soviet Union.

Though viewed as a military liability by the United States, the ROC viewed its remaining islands in Fujian as vital for any future campaign to retake the mainland. On September 3, 1954, the First Taiwan Strait crisis began when the PLA started shelling Quemoy and threatened to take the Dachen Islands. On January 20, 1955, the PLA took nearby Yi Kiang Shan, with the entire ROC garrison of 720 troops killed defending the island. On January 24 of the same year, the United States Congress passed the Formosa Resolution authorizing the President to defend the ROC's offshore islands. Instead of committing to defend the ROC's offshore islands, President Eisenhower pressured Chiang Kai-shek to evacuate his 11,000 troops and 20,000 civilians from the Dachen Islands, leaving them for PLA takeover. Nanchi Island was abandoned as well, leaving Quemoy and Matsu the only major islands remaining. The First Taiwan Straits crisis ended in March 1955 when the PLA ceased its bombardment, amid United States threats of escalation and use of nuclear weapons.

The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis began on August 23, 1958 with another intense artillery bombardment of Quemoy and ended on November of the same year. PLA patrol boats blockaded the islands from ROC supply ships. Though the United States rejected Chiang Kai-shek's proposal to bomb mainland artillery batteries, it quickly moved to supply fighter jets and anti-aircraft missiles to the ROC. It also provided amphibious assault ships to land supply, as a sunken ROC naval vessel was blocking the harbor. On September 7, the United States escorted a convoy of ROC supply ships and the PRC refrained from firing. On October 25, the PRC announced an "even-day ceasefire" — the PLA would only shell Quemoy on odd-numbered days. By the end of the crisis, Quemoy had been struck with 500,000 artillery rounds and 3000 civilians and 1000 soldiers had been killed or wounded. Quemoy and Matsu were major campaign issues in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. Gradually through the 1960s live artillery was replaced by propaganda.

In January 1979, the PRC announced it would stop shelling Quemoy and Matsu. Though the PRC conducted missile tests in 1995–96 and escalated tensions, armed clashes between the two sides have ceased. Since the late 1980s, there has been growing economic exchanges on both sides while the Taiwan straits remain a dangerous flashpoint.