The Chinese Civil War between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang has become one of the longest and key military conflicts of the 20th century. The victory of the CCP led to the fact that a huge Asian country began to build socialism.
Background and timeline
Bloody civil wars in China have shaken the country for a quarter century. The conflict between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party was ideological. One part of Chinese society advocated the establishment of a democratic national republic, while the other wanted socialism. The Communists had a striking role model in the person of the Soviet Union. The victory of the revolution in Russia inspired many supporters of left-wing political views.
Civil wars in China can be divided into two stages. The first came in 1926-1937. Then came a break due to the fact that the Communists and Kuomintang joined forces in the fight against Japanese aggression. Soon, the invasion of the army of the land of the rising sun in China became an integral part of World War II. After the Japanese militarists were defeated, the civil conflict in China resumed. The second stage of bloodshed occurred in 1946-1950.
Northern hike
Before the civil wars began in China, the country was divided into several separate parts. This was due to the fall of the monarchy that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. After this, a single state did not work out. In addition to the Kuomintang and the Communists, there was also a third force - the Bayan militarists. This regime was founded by the generals of the former Qing imperial army.
In 1926, the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek began a war against militarists. He organized the Northern Campaign. According to various estimates, about 250 thousand soldiers participated in this military campaign. Kaisi supported and the Communists. These two largest forces created a coalition National Revolutionary Army (NRA). The northern campaign was also supported in the USSR. Russian military specialists came to the NRA, and the Soviet government supplied the army with aircraft and weapons. In 1928, the militarists were defeated, and the country was united under the rule of the Kuomintang.
Break
Before the Northern Campaign between the Kuomintang and the Communists ended, there was a split, because of which the subsequent civil wars in China began. March 21, 1937 the National Revolutionary Army took Shanghai. It was at this point that disagreements began to appear between the allies.
Chiang Kai-shek did not trust the Communists and only entered into an alliance with them because he did not want to have such a popular party among his enemies. Now he almost united the country and, it seems, believed that he could do without the support of the left. In addition, the Kuomintang leader feared that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) would seize power in the country. Therefore, he decided to deliver a preventive strike.
Chinese Civil War 1927-1937 It began after the Kuomintang authorities arrested the communists and smashed their cells in the largest cities of the country. The left began to resist. In April 1927, a major uprising of communists broke out in Shanghai, recently liberated from militarists. Today in China, those events are called the massacre and counter-revolutionary coup. As a result of the round-up, many CCP leaders were killed or imprisoned. The party went underground.
Great hike
At the first stage, the civil war in China 1927-1937. represented scattered skirmishes of two sides. In 1931, the Communists created their own likeness of the state in the territories they control. It was named the Chinese Soviet Republic. This predecessor of the PRC has not received diplomatic recognition in the international community. The capital of the communists was the city of Ruijin. They entrenched mainly in the southern regions of the country. Over the course of several years, Chiang Kai-shek initiated four punitive expeditions against the Soviet Republic. All of them were repulsed.
In 1934, the fifth campaign was planned. The Communists realized that their strength was not enough to repel another blow of the Kuomintang. Then the party made an unexpected decision to send all its forces to the north of the country. This was done under the pretext of fighting the Japanese, who at that time controlled Manchuria and threatened all of China. In addition, in the north, the CCP hoped to receive help from an ideologically close Soviet Union.
An army of 80 thousand people set off for the Great Campaign . One of its leaders was Mao Zedong. It was the success of that complex operation that made him a contender for power throughout the party. Later, in the apparatus struggle, he will get rid of his opponents and become chairman of the Central Committee. But in 1934 he was exclusively a military leader.
A major obstacle to the CCP army was the great Yangtze River. On its banks, the Kuomintang army created several barriers. The Communists four times unsuccessfully tried to cross to the opposite shore. At the very last moment, the future Marshal of China Liu Bocheng was able to organize the passage of an entire army through a single bridge.
Soon, discord broke out in the army. Two warlords (Zedong and Jeong Gatao) argued for leadership. Mao insisted on continuing to move north. His opponent wanted to stay in Sichuan. As a result, before that, a single army was divided into two columns. The great campaign was completed only by the part that followed Mao Zedong. Zhang Gatao, on the other hand, went over to the Kuomintang side. After the victory of the Communists, he emigrated to Canada. The troops of Mao managed to overcome the path of 10 thousand kilometers and 12 provinces. The campaign ended on October 20, 1935, when the communist army entrenched in Wayaobao. Only 8 thousand people remained in it.
Xi'an incident
The struggle between the Communists and the Kuomintang has been going on for 10 years, and meanwhile all of China has been threatened by Japanese intervention. Until that moment, individual skirmishes were already taking place in Manchuria, but Tokyo did not hide their intentions - they wanted to completely subdue their weakened and exhausted civil war neighbor.
In this situation, two parts of Chinese society had to find a common language in order to save their own country. After the Great Campaign, Chiang Kai-shek planned to complete the rout of the Communists who had fled north from him. However, on December 12, 1936, the Kuomintang President was arrested by his own generals. Yang Hucheng and Zhang Xuedeyan demanded that the head of state conclude an alliance with the Communists for a joint struggle against Japanese aggressors. The president succumbed. His arrest became known as the Xi'an incident. Soon, the United Front was created, which was able to consolidate the Chinese of various political convictions around the desire to defend the independence of their native country.
Japanese threat
The long years of civil war in China gave way to a period of Japanese intervention. After the Xi'an incident from 1937 to 1945, an agreement on an allied struggle against the aggressor remained between the Communists and the Kuomintang. Tokyo militarists hoped that they could easily conquer China, a bloodless internal confrontation. However, time has shown that the Japanese were mistaken. After they entered into an alliance with Nazi Germany, and the expansion of the Nazis began in Europe, the Chinese were supported by the allied powers, primarily the USSR and the USA. The Americans opposed the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor.
The Chinese Civil War, in short, left the Chinese at a trough. The equipment, combat effectiveness and effectiveness of the defending army were extremely low. On average, the Chinese lost 8 times more people than the Japanese, despite the fact that on the side of the former there was a numerical superiority. Japan would certainly be able to complete its intervention if it were not for the allied countries. With the defeat of Germany in 1945, the hands of the Soviet Union were finally untied. The Americans, who had previously acted against the Japanese mainly on the sea or in the air, dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that same summer. The empire laid down its arms.
The second stage of the civil war
After Japan finally capitulated, the territory of China was again divided between the Communists and Kai-shek supporters. Each regime began to control those provinces where there were armies loyal to it. The CCP decided to make the north of the country its springboard. Here lay the border with the friendly Soviet Union. In August 1945, the Communists occupied such important cities as Zhangjiakou, Shanhaiguan and Qinhuangdao. Under the control of Mao Zedong was Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.
The Kuomintang army was scattered throughout the country. The main group was in the west near Burma. Chinese Civil War 1946-1950 forced many foreign states to reconsider their attitude to what is happening in the region. The United States immediately took pro-Kuomintang positions. The Americans allocated Kai Shek sea and air vehicles for the rapid deployment of forces to the east.
Peacekeeping Attempts
The events that followed the surrender of Japan, led to the fact that the second civil war in China still began. Moreover, one cannot fail to mention the attempts of the parties to conclude a preliminary peace agreement. On October 10, 1945, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong signed a corresponding agreement in Chongqing. Opponents pledged to withdraw their troops and smooth out tensions in the country. However, local clashes continued. And on October 13, Chiang Kai-shek ordered a large-scale offensive. In early 1946, the Americans, for their part, tried to reason with their opponents. General George Marshall flew to China . With his help, a document was signed, which became known as the January Truce.
Nevertheless, already in the summer, the Chinese Civil War of 1946-1950. resumed. The Communist Army was inferior to the Kuomintang in terms of technology and equipment. She suffered serious defeats in Inner China. In March 1947, the Communists surrendered Yan'an. In Manchuria, the CCP troops were divided into three groups. In this situation, they began to maneuver a lot, thanks to which they guessed for a while. The communists understood that the civil war in China was 1946-1949. will be lost by them if not to undertake cardinal reforms. The forced creation of a regular army began. In order to convince the peasants to switch sides, Mao Zedong initiated land reform. Rural residents began to receive land, and in the army grew the contingent of new recruits who came from the village.
Causes of the Chinese Civil War 1946-1949 consisted in the fact that with the disappearance of the threat of foreign invasion in the country, the contradictions between the two irreconcilable political systems again intensified. The Kuomintang and the Communists could hardly coexist in one state. In China, only one power had to win, for which the future of the country would be.
Causes of fracture
The communists enjoyed considerable support from the Soviet Union. The USSR did not directly intervene in the conflict, but the proximity of political regimes, of course, played into the hands of Mao Zedong. Moscow agreed to give all their Japanese captured equipment to the Chinese comrades in exchange for food supplies to the Far East. In addition, from the very beginning of the second stage of the war, large industrial cities were under the control of the CCP. With such infrastructure, it was possible to quickly create a fundamentally new army, an order of magnitude better equipped and trained than a couple of years before.
In the spring of 1948, the decisive offensive of the Communists in Manchuria began. The operation was led by Lin Biao, a talented commander and future marshal of the PRC. The culmination of the offensive was the Liaoshen battle, in which the huge Kuomintang army (about half a million people) was defeated. Successes allowed the Communists to reorganize their forces. Five large armies were created, each of which operated in a specific region of the country. These formations began to fight in a coordinated and synchronous manner. The CPC decided to adopt the Soviet experience of the Great Patriotic War, when large fronts were created in the Red Army. Then the civil war in China 1946-1949. moved to its final stage. After Manchuria was liberated, Lin Biao teamed up with a group located in Northern China. By the end of 1948, the Communists established control over the economically important Tangshan coal basin.
CCP wins
In January 1949, the army under the command of Biao stormed Tianjin. The successes of the CCP persuaded the Kuomintang commander of the northern front to surrender Beiping (the then name of Beijing) without a fight. The deteriorating situation forced Kaisi to offer the enemy a truce. It persisted until April. The long-standing Xinhai revolution and the Chinese civil war shed too much blood. The Kuomintang felt a lack of human resources. Multiple waves of mobilization led to the fact that there was simply nowhere to take recruits from.
In April, the Communists sent the enemy their own version of a long-term peace treaty. According to the ultimatum, after the CCP did not wait for an answer to the proposal by the 20th, the next offensive began. The troops forced the Yangtze River. On May 11, Lin Biao took Wuhan, and on May 25 - Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek left the mainland and moved to Taiwan. The Kuomintang government from Nanjing set off for Chongqing. The war was now fought only in the south of the country.
The creation of China and the end of the war
On October 1, 1949, the Communists proclaimed the establishment of a new People’s Republic of China (PRC). The ceremony was held in Beijing, which again became the capital of the country. Nevertheless, the war continued.
The 8th was taken by Guangzhou. The civil war in China, the reasons for which were the equal strength of the Communists and the Kuomintang, was now approaching its logical conclusion. The government, which had recently relocated to Chongqing, was finally evacuated to Taiwan using American planes. By the spring of 1950, the Communists completely subjugated the south of the country. Kuomintang soldiers who did not want to surrender fled to neighboring French Indochina. In the fall , the Chinese army took control of Tibet.
The outcome of the Chinese civil war was that communist power was established in this vast and densely populated country. The Kuomintang survived only in Taiwan. Moreover, today the Chinese authorities consider the island to be part of its territory. However, in fact, there has been the Republic of China since 1945 . The problem of international recognition of this state remains to this day.