A Political and Economic History of China, Part 37: A High-Level View of the 1946-49 Civil War

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7 MIN READ - The Cautious Optimism Correspondent for Economic Affairs marches on with Chinese history, this time with a brief overview of the main events surrounding the Civil War of 1946-1949.

Image: Iconic photo of Mao Zedong inspecting communist troops from a U.S. Army jeep.

Earlier we ended with the disposition of Chinese regional control during Japan’s August 1945 surrender. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist armies controlled the southern half of China and the Yangtze River area, the CCP controlled most of northern China, and the Soviet Red Army occupied the Manchurian northeast which it had invaded in the final days of the war.

In this article we’ll provide a very brief overview of the Civil War’s timeline, in part because the Correspondent is not an expert on very single battle of the war, in part because the factors that decided the war’s outcome are more consequential than the battles themselves (and shall follow in two upcoming articles).

One broad thesis of the 1946-49 conflict is 90% of the fighting that mattered occurred in Manchuria. In the war’s last ten months the Communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) broke out of the northeast and rapidly advanced southward, but by then the war was effectively over. Similarly, one could argue that some of World War II was fought on German soil, but by then the war in Europe was also already decided.

MARSHALL MISSION

Much of the Chinese Civil War’s fate was decided during the Marshall Mission of 1946 -1947, when U.S. Army General George C. Marshall, an officer of virtually impeccable reputation, visited China to mediate a Nationalist-Communist ceasefire. Marshall, aligning with President Harry Truman’s China policy, tried to broker a power-sharing agreement between Chiang’s Nationalist (KMT) government and Mao’s communist rebels. The mission ultimately ended in failure in mid-1947, but during the negotiations Marshall’s demands of the two sides ultimately weakened the Nationalists while greatly strengthening the Communists. In a nod to ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, as a result of the Marshall Mission the Nationalists may have lost the war before it was even fought.

We’ll go into more detail about the Marshall Mission in upcoming chapters, but in short the Truman administration wanted Marshall to pressure both sides into a power-sharing coalition government that resembled, according to historian Jay Taylor, “American style democracy.” The U.S. also asked the Communists to wait for the arrival of KMT troops to accept Japanese surrender in Manchuria, and that the Soviets wait to hand over Japanese weapons, POW’s, and Chinese puppet POW’s to the KMT when its troops arrived.

Mao’s delegation, headed by persuasive negotiator Zhou Enlai, agreed to nearly every concession requested by Marshall plus ceding CCP territory in the north, reducing the PLA down from thirty divisions to only one, refusing to cooperate with the Soviet Red Army in Manchuria, and embracing western democratic-style government. At one meeting Zhou even told his delegation, in front of the Americans, that they should learn from America’s democracy. Marshall was pleased with the progress.

In practice the Communists observed none of these concessions and were positioning their army for military offensives. Mao quietly ordered all guerilla units in the north to consolidate into regiments and divisions and expand their territory. The Soviets were handing over Japanese weapons and POW’s to the PLA while building a massive supply pipeline to Mao’s armies through the Soviet/Manchuria border.

Marshall, believing all was proceeding well with the mission, wrote optimistic reports to Truman that the Communists were working towards a democratic China. However Chiang warned Marshall that the Communists couldn’t be trusted and were preparing for war behind his back. Chiang’s son and future Taiwan President Chiang Ching-kuo had also returned from Moscow meetings with Josef Stalin and reported that, despite the Soviet leader’s agreeable demeanor, he was really “playing games.” For his objections Marshall chided Chiang, reporting back to Truman that the Nationalists were the primary obstacle to peace.

Contemplating a litany of communist promises and only reserved cooperation from the ever-suspicious Chiang Kai-shek, Truman imposed an arms embargo on the Nationalist government to pressure for more cooperation. The embargo lasted until mid-1947.

During that year the Nationalist army’s flow of weapons dried up. Even if the KMT was willing to pay for arms, the U.S. refused to sell them military equipment. Not only did the Nationalists run low on weapons and ammunition, but lack of spare parts translated into thousands of inoperable trucks, forcing Chiang’s soldiers to walk great distances instead of using transport. Meanwhile the Communists, rapidly supplied by their massive Soviet weapons pipeline, became stronger while the Nationalist armies became weaker.

By the time Chiang advised Marshall he’d given the Communists their “last chance,” and the Communists once again broke another set of promises, the Nationalists had lost their initial advantage. Chiang launched an all-out offensive in a much weaker position than before.

THE BATTLEFIELD

In the earliest days of open fighting the Nationalists won some key battles, retaking a few cities in southern Manchuria. 

But time was not on their side. With each passing day the Communists were growing stronger. Corruption within the Nationalist government and even hyperinflation led to discontent among the Chinese population, and many Nationalist soldiers, receiving inadequate food and supplies, defected.

Not only did the Communists receive military support from the Red Army, they also acquired a great deal of American weaponry from defecting Nationalist generals (see attached photo of Mao inspecting PLA troops from his U.S. made jeep).

By 1948 the Communists were pushing the Nationalists back, including the seizure of territory surrounding Changchun, Manchuria’s then-largest city.

The Siege of Changchun was a key event with repercussions throughout the rest of the war. Within the city the Nationalist army held out for nearly six months while the Communists enacted a blockade. The PLA destroyed Changchun’s airport runways and beefed up anti-aircraft guns, successfully preventing airlifts and airdrops from supplying the city. 

After several months starvation set in. Civilians were prevented from leaving the city and over time more and more Nationalist soldiers switched sides. By the time the Nationalist Army fell in October 1948 roughly 150,000 civilians had starved to death.

The communist blockade revealed a deliberate tactic. Changchun survivors were sent throughout China with word of the siege and, deciding they didn’t want to suffer the same fate, many cities later surrendered to the Communists without a fight including Beijing (named Beiping in 1948).

By late 1948 the Communists had more soldiers than the Nationalists and were breaking out of Manchuria. Given the increasingly lopsided numbers, a lack of supplies for the Nationalists, and a huge pipeline of Soviet supplies for the Communists, the war was beginning to look over on paper. In late 1948 the decisive Huaihai campaign began in Shandong province (just south of Manchuria) where the KMT’s 800,000 troops faced off against 660,000 Communist regulars, 400,000 irregulars, and 5.4 million communist peasant soldiers.

Yet Chiang held out, hoping for one last-ditch rescue.

The American press predicted New York Governor Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry Truman in the November 1948 U.S. presidential election, and the very anti-communist Dewey had promised strong and renewed support for the faltering Nationalists. If Dewey won, Chiang’s thinking went, the Nationalists would be saved by renewed American assistance.

Instead Truman shocked the world by upsetting Dewey, convincing Chiang once and for all that the civil war was really over. At the Battle of Pingjin, the last campaign where the Nationalist army put up any meaningful organized resistance, most KMT divisions were completely annihilated and the Communists began streaming southwards towards the Yangtze.

Chiang began preparations for a retreat to Taiwan. In an uncharacteristically brilliant battlefield move he visibly traveled from city to city along the Yangtze, issuing preparatory orders for a massive and decisive battle to “finally destroy the Communists.” In truth Chiang was only giving the false impression of fighting to the bitter end while he quietly evacuated millions of Nationalist soldiers and officials across the Taiwan Strait.

By mid-1949 Chiang announced “Shanghai will be another Stalingrad” and the Communists took heed, using valuable time to carefully and deliberately concentrate their troops to overcome Chiang’s last stand.

Meanwhile China’s foreign currency and gold reserves were sailing from Zhoushan Island under the cover of darkness. China’s great art treasures, evacuated to Nanking and then Chungking during the Japanese invasion, were railed to coastal ports and shipped to Taipei where they remain today—at the magnificent Taiwan National Palace Museum.

When the Communists launched their massive offensive to obliterate the last vestiges of Nationalist resistance, they entered Shanghai to find it already abandoned.

When, on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China from Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, Chiang was still in China making final preparations for his retreat. On December 10, 1949 he stepped onto a plane in Chungking, the last time he would ever see mainland Chinese soil, and flew in darkness over one-thousand miles of communist-controlled territory to his new capital in Taipei.