On December 10, 1949, as Red Army forces were encircling Chengdu, the last Nationalist stronghold, Chiang departed on a plane for Taiwan. Joining him in Taiwan were about two million Chinese mainlanders, mostly Kuomintang officials, Nationalist Army officers and soldiers, prominent members of society, the academe, and the religious orders. On March 1, 1950, Chiang resumed his position as China’s president and declared Taiwan as the temporary capital of the Republic of China.
(Taken from Chinese Civil War – Wars of the 20th Century – Vol. 1)
Background 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 1925, 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.
War By July 1927, the Kuomintang Army was built up and ready to go to war. The Kuomintang opened its military campaign along three fronts: the left-wing/Communist faction advanced westward toward Wuhan; a right-wing force headed east for Shanghai; and Chiang’s forces, at the center, advanced for Nanjing. Ultimately, the three fronts achieved their military objectives. Within six months, the Kuomintang had defeated 34 warlords along its path towards the central regions of China.
In Nanjing, Chiang began a violent purge of Communist elements of the Kuomintang. During his military training in the Soviet Union, Chiang had determined that Communism, as well as democratic and other Western political ideologies were inapplicable to China. Chiang was a social conservative who believed that Communism was incompatible with China’s traditional values. His desire to eliminate Communism reached the intensity of an obsession.
Chiang began his purge in Shanghai where his soldiers killed thousands of unsuspecting Communist civilians who had filled the streets to welcome the Kuomintang Army’s arrival. Other purges soon followed in Canton, Xiamen, Ningbo, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Changsha, where thousands of Communists also were killed.
The remaining Communists went into hiding, some in urban areas, but the vast majority in the countryside, where they began working with and mobilizing the peasants and villagers. With the purges, the alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China ended. The Soviet Union also stopped its support for Chiang.
In August 1927, in response to the purges, the Communists in Nanchang broke out in rebellion. Chiang sent his forces to Nanchang, where they easily quelled the rebellion and forced the Communists to flee to the hinterlands of southern China. Another Communist rebellion in Hunan led by Mao Zedong, then a regional commander, was put down as well. Mao and his supporters were forced to retreat to the Jiangxi countryside. There, they established the Chinese Soviet Republic, a quasi-government that formed subordinate administrative councils called “soviets” in other provinces, including Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Henan, Hubei, and Sichuan. Mao’s government gained widespread support from the local rural population. Initially, its small militia was limited to conducting hit-and-run guerilla warfare against government forces. By mid-1932, however, Mao’s militia, now known as the People’s Liberation Army, or colloquially, the Red Army, had grown to 45,000 regulars and 200,000 auxiliaries.
Meanwhile, the left-wing Kuomintang faction, led by Wang Jingwei, established Wuhan as its capital, but the city soon was attacked by a warlord ally of Chiang. Wang’s government collapsed, leaving Chiang as the undisputed leader of the Kuomintang.
The Nationalists (as Chiang’s army now was called) resumed their campaign toward northern China. In June 1928, they captured Beijing, the capital of China’s most powerful warlord, who thereafter pledged allegiance to Chiang. Beijing’s capture was significant, as the city was the symbolic and historical seat of authority in China. This achievement legitimized Chiang’s government, as it meant the complete – albeit symbolic – reunification of the country. Chiang had achieved reunification through military victories, as well as by making alliances with many warlords scattered throughout northern, central, and southern China.
Soon, Chiang’s government became recognized by many countries around the world. From his capital in Nanjing, Chiang began to rebuild China along the modern Western model. However, his efforts would be fraught with difficulties and ultimately not be fulfilled.