Chinese Civil War

The First United Front

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 a political marriage between the KMT and CCP. 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 CCP 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. The CCP 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 propagandists 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-CCP 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, but it was Chiang's harsh policies against the CCP that started 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 CCP 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 CCP, ordered Communist underground activities to facilitate the Northern Expedition, which was finally launched by Chiang from Guangzhou in July 1926.

In early 1927 the KMT-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CCP 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 CCP 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 Ching-wei's Wuhan government (a contest won by Chiang) and destroyed the urban base of the CCP. 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 CCP 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 CCP 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 activists retreated underground or to the countryside where they fomented a military revolt (Nanchang Uprising on August 1, 1927), 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.

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), he immediately turned his attention to 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 CCP, then turn against the remaining warlords, before finally retaking Manchuria from the Japanese.
In October of 1934, the Communists took advantage of gaps in the ring of blockhouses (manned by the troops of a warlord ally of Jiang'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.

Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)

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 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 gruerilla warfare. The level of actual cooperation and coordination between the CCP 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 CCP’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 CCP 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)

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

In the last month of the WWII 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 Chinese Communists, 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 CCP 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. 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.

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