On August 1, 1927, Chinese communist forces seized control of Nanchang in Jiangxi Province from the Nationalist (Kuomintang) local government. Four days later, August 5, with the approach of Nationalist forces, they withdrew from the city, taking 5,000 small arms and 1 million rounds of ammunition.
The communists then embarked on what is known as the “Little Long March”, a withdrawal south to the province of Guangdong. Along the way, they were attacked by Nationalist-affiliated forces, reducing the communist forces to only 1,000 troops from some 20,000 at the peak of the Nanchang Uprising. After breaking up into two groups moving in different directions, the remnants later joined with the forces of Mao Zedong in Hunan Province.
The Nanchang Uprising was the first battle between the Nationalist and communist forces in the Chinese Civil War. In the People’s Republic of China today, August 1 is celebrated as the founding of the People’s Liberation Army.
(Taken from Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 1)
History of the Chinese Civil War In 1911, two thousand years of dynastic imperial rule ended in China. Suddenly left without a central government, the country fragmented into many semi-independent regions. Then from southern China, a political party called the Kuomintang (English: Chinese Nationalist Party) formed a government whose aim was to reunite the country.
The Kuomintang built an army and then began a military campaign for China’s reunification, an event known as the Chinese Civil War. The civil war lasted 23 years and consisted of four phases: first, the Kuomintang’s defeat of the regional military leaders called warlords; second, the Kuomintang’s contentious split into two rival factions, i.e. the right-wing Nationalists and the left-wing and Communists alliance; third, these two rival factions’ brief alliance to fight the Japanese who had invaded China; and fourth, the ultimate reunification of China by the victorious Communists in 1950.
The origin of the Chinese Civil War can be traced to the early 1900s, with many factors coming into play. Among these factors were the growing opposition of the Han people (China’s main ethnic group) to the ruling Qing monarchy; the assimilation of Western political ideas into Chinese thought; China’s military defeats to and occupation by the foreign powers; and the country’s backwardness in stark contrast to the prosperity and development in the West. These factors shattered the Chinese people’s confidence in their government.
In 1911, revolts and civil unrest broke out in many areas of southern China. Being unable to stop the disturbances, the Qing monarchy abdicated, which ended two millennia of Chinese dynastic rule. China was left suddenly without a central government.
In southern China, the Kuomintang emerged and formed a government, and declared that the country was henceforth a republic. Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang’s leader, became president of China – nominally at least. For in reality, the country had fractured into many semi-autonomous regions after the Qing monarchy’s collapse. Sun’s first task was to reunify the country under his government through the use of force. However, he lacked an army to carry out a campaign of conquest, especially in the northern region of China where the Qing monarchy still held strong influence. Sun therefore entered into an agreement with Yuan Shikai, the powerful northern military commander, whereby Yuan would cease his support for the Qing monarchy in exchange for Sun stepping down and allowing Yuan to become China’s president.
After becoming president, however, Yuan suppressed the Kuomintang and gave himself unlimited powers. He appointed military governors, commonly called warlords, in the provinces, where they held great power and commanded a local army. Warlordism would dominate China’s regional politics for many years. With Yuan’s death in 1916, China again was left without a central government. The country fragmented into many quasi-independent regions, with each region coming under the control of a warlord.
Sun returned to China, having fled into exile during Yuan’s dictatorship. Sun restored the Kuomintang and restarted his plan to reunify the country. This time, however, he decided to build his own army. He turned to the Western powers for military assistance but was turned down. Sun then approached the Soviet Union, which promised him support on the condition that Sun allowed members of the fledging Communist Party of China to join the Kuomintang. Sun agreed.
In 1923, with Soviet funds, Sun founded a military academy to train military recruits for his new army. The recruits came from different ideological backgrounds: Chinese traditionalists, right-wingers, left-wingers, Communists, etc. Thus, the Kuomintang Army that ultimately was formed included many political persuasions.
In 1936, Sun passed away. The Kuomintang was wracked by a power struggle, which ultimately split the party into two factions: the left-wingers (including the small group of Communists) led by Wang Jingwei, who was appointed chairman of the Kuomintang, and therefore Sun’s legal successor, and the right-wingers led by General Chiang Kai-shek who, as the commander of the Kuomintang Army, held the real power. Initially, the two sides worked together.