Yanan and the strongpoint offensive
In March 1947 GMD forces captured Yanan, the Communist base which Mao had fled to at the end of the Long March, and where he constructed an alternative Chinese social and political system. A few months later, to luxuriate in the capture, Chiang Kai-shek flew into Yanan and walked along the streets and into the cave dwellings where Mao had once lived. The Nationalists hailed this as a great triumph, which would be the prelude to their recovery from the loss of Manchuria. For a short period the...
Lao Deshan from peasant to conscript
The terror and misery that the practice of forced recruitment brought to China's peasants is illustrated by the fate of Lao Deshan, a 16-year-old living in Guillin province, whose experience was recorded by members of one of the International Red Cross teams working in China during the civil war. Lao's ordeal began in February 1947 when an NRA recruiting gang came to his village, searching the houses and scouring the countryside to pick up any young men unlucky enough not to have hidden...
Nationalist China and the Communist bases in 1946
rank-and-file recruits was often a consequence of their being at the mercy of this type of officer. Given the venality and the self-serving character of these officers, it followed that they were very poor fighters. They avoided contact with the enemy whenever possible and if engaged in battle were the first to surrender or defect when the going got tough. Chiang's greatest problem in maintaining his armies as efficient fighting units was the high level of desertions. This had been a difficulty...
Ku Wongmei a witness to torture
As the war turned in favour of the PLA, Mao and the Communists gained many converts from the Nationalists, who were unable to match the appeal of CCP propaganda. Nevertheless, although Chinese Communism was renowned for the idealism of its adherents, it, like Chiang's Nationalism, had its dark and vicious side. Drawn from the documentation gathered by organizations such as 'China Watch', a picture emerges of the difficulties faced by Party idealists attempting to reconcile their natural human...
Key passes and corridors 194749
Despite the appearance of control that the presence of 200,000 Nationalist troops in northern China gave Chiang, the reality was that with the successful PLA defence of Harbin the initiative had passed to the Communists. The Nationalists' superior air power was nullified by the destruction of the airstrips and runways that the PLA found so easy to attack and the NRA so hard to defend. Similarly, the repeated sabotage of the railway lines made the large-scale movement of Nationalist troops...
The struggle for Manchuria
Even before the brief ceasefire had given the initiative to the PLA, the Nationalists had experienced great problems in trying to impose themselves on the region. Manchuria, equal in size to western Europe and made up of three main provinces, Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, had for 14 years after 1931 been the Japanese puppet state of Manchuguo. When Japan surrendered in 1945, the Nationalists had thus inherited what had been an efficient, albeit coercive, administration. But they were unable...
The Liaoshen LiaoningShenyang campaign 12 September12 November 1948
In the summer of 1948, the civil war entered its most decisive and destructive stage. Mao, who had established his military HQ at Xibaipo in Hebei province where he stayed between May 1948 and March 1949, was convinced that the tide had turned and was flowing strongly in his favour. He ordered his commanders to abandon 'mobile defence' and undertake the GMD's 'total destruction'. Gone now was any notion of a compromise peace. In response Lin Biao, having taken time to build up his forces,...
The Liaoshen campaign
A similar fate soon befell Changchun. Under siege since August, the Nationalists had tried to break out on several occasions but had been unable to pierce the surrounding PLA ring. After three months of fearful privation that reduced the population to cannibalism, with corpses being bought and sold for food, Changchun finally surrendered on 26 October. The Nationalist cause had not been well served by their leaders at Changchun. A number of NRA officers made contact with the enemy, offering to...
China and the USA
In the 1950s there was much bitterness among Americans over what was termed the 'loss' of China. The charge was that the USA, despite having invested heavily in time, diplomacy and resources in China, had allowed it to fall to Communism. Stalin, the argument ran, had outmanoeuvred the USA and, using Mao as a puppet, had established China as a Soviet satellite in Asia. The establishment of the PRC was thus one of Stalin's great Cold War triumphs. Mao's Soviet-backed victory had helped create a...
Western China
Chiang and the Nationalists faced a perennial ethnic and religious problem in China's most westerly states, Tibet and Xinjiang, which were areas larger in size than western Europe. In Tibet, the great majority of the population were adherents of the Lama faith, a branch of Buddhism. In Xinjiang most were Muslims. The Tibetans were ethnically and culturally distinct from the Han race, which made up 90 per cent of the population of China. Equally different from the Han were the Uighur, Kazakh,...
Nationalists and Communists
The Guomindang had come into being in the first decade of the twentieth century with the aim of modernizing China. Under its founder, Sun Yatsen, the GMD had advanced a revolutionary programme whose first objective was the bringing down of the ruling Qing dynasty. Yet, despite its contribution to the Chinese Revolution of 1911, which brought an end to the Qing, the GMD did not control the Chinese Republic that was then established. Central authority remained weak and the Nationalists, whose...
Chiang Kaishek and Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong's record up to 1949 was a truly remarkable one. He had led a vast social revolution, had defeated the Japanese invaders and the Nationalists, and had created the People's Republic of China, the world's largest Communist state. Set against these successes, Chiang Kai-shek's record seemed barren. Having been the dominant force in China for over a decade, he lost the civil war and was driven from the mainland. It would be easy, therefore, to see Chiang's career up to this point as a...
The PLAs takeover of southern China in 1949
The fall of Nanjing and Shanghai coincided with another of the great symbolic events of the civil war, the crossing of the Yangzi by the Communists. In Chinese tradition the Yangzi, the nation's greatest river, was a life source. Moreover, for the Communists to control it meant that it was no longer the physical barrier that had hitherto defined the extent of their power. So significant was it as a symbol tfiat some Nationalists had suggested it should be treated as a moat guarding the entrance...
The final struggles 1949
Following the Pingjin campaign, the remainder of the war had an air of inevitability about it. Fierce struggles would still take place, but at best the Nationalists were engaged in delaying actions. Chiang Kai-shek continued to urge his forces to defend their remaining positions on the mainland, but it was clear he no longer believed that the Communists could be prevented from taking the whole of China. What followed was, in effect, a slow surrender. Since both the USA and the Soviet Union had...
The Soviet Union and China
Mao regarded Stalin's policies towards China as being deliberately devious. He had strong grounds for thinking so. At the end of the Pacific War, rather than assisting the CCP in seizing the territory now relinquished by the Japanese, Stalin, under the terms of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship agreed with Chiang's GMD government, had allowed thousands of Nationalist troops to pour into Manchuria. Stalin urged Mao to show restraint and to enter into talks with Chiang Kai-shek. Since this was...
The Pingjin campaign
PLA cavalry near Beijing.This type of light horsemen proved of great value to the Communists in their taking of inaccessible area such as the Shanhai pass.The PLA's control of the main passes that linked Beijing with key areas gave the Communists a major strategic advantage in the latter stages of the civil war. Philip Jowett PLA cavalry near Beijing.This type of light horsemen proved of great value to the Communists in their taking of inaccessible area such as the Shanhai pass.The PLA's...
Chronology
1945 4-11 February Yalta Conference 6 and 9 August Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 14 August Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship 28 August Mao flies with Hurley to Chongqing for start of CCP-GMD talks, meets Chiang for the first time in 20 years 2 September Formal Japanese surrender 11 October Mao returns to Yanan from Chongqing 21 December Start of Marshall mission to China 1946 March Soviet forces leave Manchuria May Communists take Harbin June 10 Short-lived ceasefire in Manchuria 26...
The Huaihai campaign
cause of their own misfortunes. Disputes between commanders hindered effective liaison even when workable plans were drafted, these were in danger of being passed on to the Communists by moles within the GMD. Such was the case now. Su Yu received intelligence that told him of a major NRA troop movement that involved the 7th Army Group temporarily leaving Xuzhou to link up with an NRA force coming from the coast. Su ordered an immediate attack before the link could be made. Within five days...
The Huaihai campaign November 1948January 1949
There was a well-known saying among Chinese strategists 'Manchuria is a limb of the nation, the central provinces are the heart.' In that saying lay the explanation for what proved to be the pivotal struggle of the civil war, the Huaihai campaign, so called because the bulk of the fighting occurred in the region between the Huai River and SuYu.the overall planner of the PLA's Huaihai campaign, was another of the PLA commanders who made effective use of the information passed to him by moles in...
NRAs strongpoint offensive and PLA counteroffensive 1947
Mao rides out from Yanan in March 1947, leaving Chiang Kai-shek an empty city and a hollow victory. Mao's readiness to abandon the Soviet base which the CCP had spent over a decade constructing was a striking example of his unsentimental and pragmatic approach to war. Cody Images Mao rides out from Yanan in March 1947, leaving Chiang Kai-shek an empty city and a hollow victory. Mao's readiness to abandon the Soviet base which the CCP had spent over a decade constructing was a striking example...