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WhyDidCommunistsWinChineseRevolution

The document discusses the factors leading to the Communist victory in the Chinese Revolution, highlighting the Nationalists' corruption, economic mismanagement, and military disorganization under Chiang Kai-Shek. In contrast, Mao Zedong's Communists effectively gained peasant support through land reforms and a unified military strategy. The aftermath saw Mao establish a totalitarian regime, leading to significant societal changes and economic reforms in China post-1976.

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Laura Suárez Martínez
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6 views

WhyDidCommunistsWinChineseRevolution

The document discusses the factors leading to the Communist victory in the Chinese Revolution, highlighting the Nationalists' corruption, economic mismanagement, and military disorganization under Chiang Kai-Shek. In contrast, Mao Zedong's Communists effectively gained peasant support through land reforms and a unified military strategy. The aftermath saw Mao establish a totalitarian regime, leading to significant societal changes and economic reforms in China post-1976.

Uploaded by

Laura Suárez Martínez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Why Did the Communists Win the Chinese Revolution?

From 1911 to 1945, China experienced a revolution, a


struggle against warlords, a civil war between the
Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-Shek and the
Communists led by Mao Zedong, and invasion by the
Japanese. After the defeat of the Japanese in World
War II in 1945, a full-blown civil war erupted again in
1946. The Nationalists were backed by the United
States and the Communists had support from the
Soviet Union. By 1949, Chiang and the Nationalists,
despite having more soldiers than the Communists,
were defeated and forced to evacuate the Chinese
mainland for the island of Taiwan.

Historians point to a number of factors for the


nationalists defeat. Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek.

Chiang’s Kuomintang government was filled with


incompetent and corrupt officials. The people especially hated the tax collectors, who
were commonly called “blood-sucking devils.” Chiang himself held dictatorial powers,
but his orders were often ignored. He had little success in rallying Chinese nationalism
to win an unpopular war against the Communists.

Chiang’s decision to go to war against the Communists in 1946 came at the cost of
postponing the economic reconstruction of China. This meant diverting tax revenues,
investment, and other resources to the war effort rather than to the needs of the people.
Heavy taxes, a huge government debt, inflation, unemployment, and food shortages
caused many, especially in the cities, to lose faith in the Nationalist government.

Economic discontent in the cities led to thousands of labor strikes. Students, newspaper
editors, and intellectuals protested against Chiang’s Nationalist government. They
demanded an end to the civil war and the creation of a government that included the
Communists. The Nationalists responded with censorship, beatings, mass arrests, and
even assassinations. This repression drove many to the Communist cause.

The Nationalist government seemed to care only for city business interests and rural
landlords while ignoring the suffering of the peasants. In Communist areas captured by
the Nationalists during the early part of the civil war, corrupt government administrators

© Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2016 1


helped landlords take back lands that the Communists had handed over to the peasants.
The government often punished peasants for participating in Mao’s land-distribution
programs.

Chiang’s army had more soldiers than Mao’s, but it was poorly led. Chiang’s military
was not coordinated by a central command. Generals tended to head independent
armies and even competed with one another for food and ammunition. Many officers
were corrupt, sometimes selling for personal profit the rice intended for their troops.
Chiang’s military supply sys- tem was inadequate, unreliable, and crippled by
corruption.

More important, few


volunteered to join Chiang’s
armies. Most soldiers were
drafted against their will or
even kidnapped by army
“recruiting squads.” Soldiers
were poorly trained, clothed,
and fed. Officers enforced
discipline by beating them.
Some were roped together on
marches to prevent them
from deserting.
Mao Zedong declares the founding of the People's Republic of China, October 1, 1949.

Communist propaganda took


full advantage of all the Nationalist failings. Mao focused on winning over the peasants
to gain their support in the civil war. “The battle for China,” he said, “is a battle for the
hearts and minds of the peasants.”

Whenever the Communists secured an area during the civil war, Mao’s cadres (teams of
supporters) went to work, organizing village “struggle meetings.” Peasants and laborers,
who owned little or no land, met to force wealthy landlords to confess their bad
treatment of the poor. This sometimes included torturing, beating, or even killing
landlords as “enemies of the people.”

The cadres then cancelled all debts owed to the landlords and distributed their land and
other property to the poor peasants and laborers. What they received became their own
private property.

As more peasants and laborers acquired land, more of them had a stake in the success
of the Communists. If the Nationalists won the civil war, the new landowners

© Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2016 2


understood they would lose everything the Communists had handed over to them. As a
result, they increasingly supported Mao’s army with food, labor, transportation, and
soldier recruits. Most of these people were not dedicated Communists but now they had
something to fight for. Mao had an even greater reason to confiscate and re-distribute
land from the landlords to the poor peasants and laborers. In doing so, he destroyed the
traditional landlord power structure in the villages and replaced it with new peasant
leader ship under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.

Land reform built Mao’s peasant revolution to transform China into a Communist
society. As he kept reminding his cadres, land reform was “the mother of all other
work.”

Unlike Chiang’s numerous independent armies, Mao’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
was unified under a tightly controlled central command. Mao’s generals, dedicated to
the Communist cause, were superior military leaders. They transformed small guerilla
bands into a modern conventional army capable of moving quickly to take advantage of
the much larger but uncoordinated Nationalist armies.

PLA officers treated ordinary soldiers with more respect than the soldiers got in Chiang’s
armies. PLA soldiers were also more motivated than Chiang’s troops. During the civil
war, hundreds of thousands of individual Nationalist soldiers deserted, surrendered, or
defected to the Communists.

The Aftermath
Chiang established a new Kuomintang government on Taiwan, but claimed he was still
the president of all China. Likewise, Mao declared that Taiwan was part of the People’s
Republic of China. This political conflict over Taiwan’s status remains unresolved to this
day.

As the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao possessed absolute power. To
purify the Communist revolution in China, he ordered political purges, mass
imprisonment, and executions of “enemies of the people.” By 1955, Mao had forced the
peasants to give up their privately owned plots of land to form state-owned collective
farms. The peasants then worked for the government. A few years later, Mao ordered
the peasants to work on even larger communes. Food production plummeted, and many
Chinese starved.

Millions died as a result of Mao’s policies. Later, in 1976, claiming that elements of
Chinese society were trying to undermine communism, Mao declared the Cultural
Revolution. Red Guards and armies of students ravaged the countryside beating and
humiliating those suspected of countering the revolution. Thousands of historic Chinese

© Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2016 3


sites and books were destroyed. People were forced from the cities into the countryside
for “re-education. Estimates of deaths caused by the Cultural Revolution range from a
low of 400,000 to over 5 million.

Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, and Mao Zedong died the next year. Following Mao’s
death, China began to adopt free-market reforms that introduced elements of capitalism
into its economy. As a result, the People’s Republic of China today has greatly improved
the standard of living, health and nutrition of the people and the Chinese economy is
now the second largest in the world. The Chinese Communist Party, however, still holds
a monopoly of power. It does not tolerate political dissent or anyone who questions its
right to rule.

For Discussion
1. What might Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists have done to improve their chances
of winning the civil war?

2. To what extent did Mao's program of land reform address the original
grievances of Chinese people before the civil war?

Graphic: Chiang Kai-shek, 1942


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek#/media/File:Chiang_Kai-
shek%EF%BC%88%E8%94%A3%E4%B8%AD%E6%AD%A3%EF%BC%89.jpg

Graphic: Mao Zedong declares the founding of the modern People's Republic of China, October 1, 1949.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#/media/File:Mao_Proclaiming_New_China.JPG

© Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2016 4

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