35.1.3: The Chinese Civil War

The Chinese Civil War: Background

During the Warlord Era, control of the Republic of China was mostly divided among a group of powerful military leaders. The anti-monarchist and nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT) and its leader Sun Yat-sen sought the help of foreign powers to defeat the warlords, who had seized control of much of Northern China. Sun Yat-sen’s efforts to obtain aid from the Western countries were ignored, however, and in 1921 he turned to the Soviet Union. For political expediency, Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Communist Party of China (CPC), which would eventually found the People’s Republic of China. Thus, the struggle for power in China began between the KMT and the CPC.

Communist members were allowed to join the KMT on an individual basis. However, after Sun died, the KMT split into left- and right-wing movements. Some KMT members worried that the Soviets were trying to destroy the KMT from inside using the CPC. The CPC also began movements in opposition of the Northern Expedition, passing a resolution against it. In March 1927, the KMT held its second party meeting where the Soviets helped pass resolutions against the Expedition and curb Chiang’s power.

Northern Expedition

On April 7, 1927, Chiang and several other KMT leaders held a meeting where they proposed that Communist activities were socially and economically disruptive and had to be curbed for the national revolution to proceed. On April 12 in Shanghai, the KMT was purged of leftists with the arrest and execution of hundreds of CPC members. The CPC referred to this as the April 12 Incident or Shanghai Massacre.

The KMT resumed its campaign against warlords and captured Beijing in June 1928. Soon, most of eastern China was under the control of the Nanjing central government, which received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China. The KMT government announced, in conformity with Sun Yat-sen, the formula for the three stages of revolution: military unification, political tutelage, and constitutional democracy.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Commander-in-Chief of the National Revolutionary Army (photographer unknown; ca. 1926).: The Chinese Civil War was a major turning point in modern Chinese history, with the CPC gaining control of almost the entire of mainland China, establishing the People’s Republic of China to replace the KMT’s Republic of China. It also caused a lasting political and military standoff between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, with the ROC in Taiwan and the PRC in mainland China both officially claiming to be the legitimate government of China.

The Civil War Before World War II

During the 1920s, CPC activists retreated underground or to the countryside, where they advocated an armed rebellion. The revolt of the CPC against the Nationalist government began in August 1927 in Nanchang. The Nanchang Uprising saw the formation of a Communist rebel army, the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, which would later become the People’s Liberation Army. A CPC meeting confirmed the party’s intention to take power by force, followed by a violent anti-Communist campaign by Wang Jingwei’s government in Wuhan starting on August 8. On August 14, Chiang Kai-shek fled Nanjing, but KMT forces continued to attempt to suppress the rebellions. By the fall of 1927, there were now three capitals in China: the internationally recognized republic capital in Beijing, the CPC and left-wing KMT at Wuhan, and the right-wing KMT regime at Nanjing, which would remain the KMT capital for the next decade.

This marked the beginning of a ten-year armed struggle, which ended with the Xi’an Incident when Chiang Kai-shek was forced to form the Second United Front against invading forces from Japan. In 1930, the Central Plains War broke out as an internal conflict of the KMT. The attention was turned to rooting out remaining pockets of Communist activity in a series of five encirclement campaigns. In 1934, the CPC broke out of the encirclement. The massive military retreat of Communist forces lasted a year and became known as the Long March, led by Mao Zedong, who soon became the pre-eminent leader of the Party with Zhou in second position.

The march ended when the CPC reached the interior of Shaanxi. 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 90,000–100,000 people who began the Long March from the Soviet Chinese Republic, only around 7,000–8,000 made it to Shaanxi.

The Civil War After World War II

The Civil War represented an ideological split between the Communist CPC and the KMT’s brand of Nationalism. It continued intermittently until late 1937, when the two parties came together to form the Second United Front to counter the Japanese threat and prevent the country from crumbling. However, the alliance of the CPC and the KMT was in name only. The level of actual cooperation and coordination between the two parties during World War II was at best minimal. In the midst of the Second United Front, the CPC and the KMT were still vying for territorial advantage in “Free China” (i.e., areas not occupied by the Japanese or ruled by Japanese puppet governments).

In general, developments in the Second Sino-Japanese War were to the advantage of the CPC, as its guerrilla war tactics won them popular support within the Japanese-occupied areas, while the KMT had to defend the country against the main Japanese campaigns since it was the legal Chinese government. Under the terms of the Japanese unconditional surrender dictated by the United States, Japanese troops were ordered to surrender to KMT troops and not to the CPC, which was present in some of the occupied areas. In Manchuria, however, where the KMT had no forces, the Japanese surrendered to the Soviet Union. Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Japanese troops to remain at their posts to receive the Kuomintang and not surrender their arms to the Communists. However, in the last month of World War II in East Asia, Soviet forces launched the huge strategic offensive operation to attack the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria and along the Chinese-Mongolian border. Chiang Kai-shek realized that he lacked the resources to prevent a CPC takeover of Manchuria following the scheduled Soviet departure.

A fragile truce between the competing forces fell apart on June 21, 1946 when full-scale war between the CPC and the KMT broke out. On July 20, 1946, Chiang Kai-shek launched a large-scale assault on Communist territory, which marked the final phase of the Chinese Civil War. After three years of exhausting military campaigns, on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China with its capital in Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and approximately two million Nationalist Chinese retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan after the loss of Sichuan (at that time, Taiwan was still Japanese territory). 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.

Mao Zedong Proclaiming the Establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.:  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 approximately two million Nationalist Chinese retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan in December of the same year.

During the war, both the Nationalists and the Communists carried out mass atrocities, with millions of non-combatants deliberately killed by both sides. Benjamin Valentino has estimated atrocities resulted in the deaths of between 1.8 million and 3.5 million people between 1927 and 1949. Atrocities include deaths from forced conscription and massacres.

Aftermath

Most observers expected Chiang’s government to eventually fall in response to a Communist invasion of Taiwan, and the U.S. initially showed no interest in supporting Chiang’s government in its final stand. Things changed radically with the onset of the Korean War in 1950. At this point, allowing a total Communist victory over Chiang became politically impossible for the U.S., and President Harry Truman ordered the United States Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the ROC and PRC from attacking each other.

To this day, no armistice or peace treaty has ever been signed, and there is debate about whether the Chinese Civil War has legally ended. Cross-strait relations have been hindered by military threats and political and economic pressure, particularly over Taiwan’s political status, with both governments officially adhering to a “One-China policy.” The PRC still actively claims Taiwan as part of its territory and continues to threaten the ROC with a military invasion if the ROC officially declares independence by changing its name to and gaining international recognition as the Republic of Taiwan. The ROC mutually claims mainland China and they both continue the fight over diplomatic recognition. Today, the war as such occurs on the political and economic fronts in the form of cross-strait relations without actual military action. However, the two separate states have close economic ties.

Attributions

• The Chinese Civil War
  • “Chinese Civil War.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Republic of China (1912–49).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_(1912%E2%80%9349). Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Kuomitang.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Shanghai massacre.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_massacre. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Long March.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Xi’an Incident.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%27an_Incident. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Northern Expedition.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Expedition. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “History of the Republic of China.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_China. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Second Sino-Japanese War.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “PRCFounding.jpg.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War#/media/File:PRCFounding.jpg. Wikipedia Public domain.
  • “Chiang1926.jpg.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War#/media/File:Chiang1926.jpg. Wikipedia Public domain.