Civil War in China from Early 1920 to Late 1949 - Essay Example

Running head: THE CIVIL WAR IN CHINA The Civil War in China Name Institution Date Civil war in China Introduction China experienced a collapse of its monarchy in the early 1920s which marked the beginning of warfare in china. By then, the ruling party was the KMT and it felt so inferior that it sought to unify China with the help of foreign powers? Soviet Union came in to support the KMT where it provided advisors in 1920 to help reorganize the KMT party. It also helped the KMT organize an army which was to fight against the northern warlords and Chiang Kai-shek was appointed the leader of the army. Communists were allowed to join the KMT forces though in small numbers. Later on, Chiang began a campaign to eliminate the communists because he disliked their meddling in the politics of China. The ultimate aim is to analyze the reasons as to why the Nationalist party lost the war, what contributed to lose of the war as well as arguing about the view of the war, if it was a Communist victory or a Nationalist defeat. The civil war in china was a result of conflicts between the Nationalist forces and the Communist forces. The misunderstanding came about when they were arguing about who is to take control of china from April 1927 to May 1950. The conflicts began when the Chinese Nationalist party also known as the Kuomintang launched the northern expedition. The Chinese general Chiang Kai-shek eliminated the communist from the KMT (Kathlyn, 2008 p7). However, the warfare that was fought by the KMT was mostly a conventional one but the Communist employed the gorilla style behind the Japanese lines. Eventually the Japanese were defeated and China was free but this marked the beginning of hostility between the Nationalist party and the Communist. These conflicts lead to the internal civil war in China which was between the two parties. The war took quite a long period until it came to an end in the 1950 with the Communist emerging as the winners who now took full control of the Chinese regime. There are many reasons that contributed to the victory of the communist. To begin with, the nationalist party was the ruling government since the early stages of 21st century (Moore, p41 2008). During all this period, the Chinese people experienced instability under the regime of the nationalist party which governed them. Therefore when war broke up in 1937, the Communist party that had been newly formed had the opportunity to win people’s favor. In addition to that, the Chinese people had been immensely affected by the war and drought that had occurred in the early years. The people were starving due to increased hunger caused by the war and drought and this made them feel very uncomfortable with the Nationalist government. On the other hand the Communist party was led by Mao Zedong who was brought up in a farm and had experienced the China’s hardship. He had studied the theories of communism at the Peking University (Kathlyn, 2008 p7). His leadership at the party came about by his strong belief in communism. He therefore took advantage of the bad relationship between the Nationalist government and the farmers where he gained full support of the poor citizens. Furthermore, Mao Zedong had established a workers union that was fighting for the rights of the workers. This made the Communists party to grow though immensely hated by Kai-shek as well as creating more tension between the nationalists and the Communists. Kai-shek decided to take action by instructing his loyalty to destroy the communist (Chang, 2007 p126). It was well known as the ‘Shanghai massacre’ where all the hopes for national prosperity and relations with the communist party were destroyed. He went further to announce a campaign of bloodshed to all the communist members where he aimed at getting rid of them. This indicated that the nationalist party ignored and violated the peace of china. Though the campaign of bloodshed went on, the communist party managed to escape the threats of the blood thirsty nationalists and continued recruiting the volunteers countrywide. The recruitment went on but the party was still too young to start amounting effective campaigns against the nationalist party because their number was still too small. They went on to resist the nationalists but their main campaign was to fight the Japanese who had deteriorated their relations with the Chinese. The nationalists put all their efforts to fight the communists without nations but Kai-shek was still reluctant on that and concentrated on fighting the communists. His policy was ‘first the internal order before external resistance’. This made the Chinese people more disappointed with their ruling government and losing hope in it. The support of the nationalist by the Chinese population was greatly affected during this period of the war between the two nations. The nationalists forced the citizens to fight their war for them and the recruit involved majority of the Chinese peasants. The recruits were taken to the battle field with no training, no any equipment and badly treated by their captors. They were starved, badly mistreated and beaten. These made a lot of Chinese people to be killed in the battle field due to their terrible commanders as well as hunger. To make it worse, the peasants received massive increase in already high tax and this made many of them to starve. On the other hand, Mao Zedong fought very hard against the mistreatment of the citizens and the hiking of the tax. Mao Zedong also gained full support of the citizens and trained some of them who eventually boosted the communist troop who later managed to gain control over the Japanese. The communist party was fighting the battle as well as improving the lives of the Chinese citizens by coming up with policies whose main objective was to reform the country’s economy, and social life of the citizens. Due to these actions, the communist party gained rapid support by the citizens. Later on, it was noted that 75% of the battle men from china were communists’ fighters who led to the achievement of victory (Diana, 2007 p76). When the son war came to an end in around 1945, the internal war continued. This time round the communist party had many members and was ready to face the nationalist party. Extreme fighting between the high morale communists’ troops and aimless nationalist troops landed in communists favor. It is because the communist troops had been highly trained and were ready to fight. The United States gave its support to the nationalist where they aimed at getting rid of the communists. The Soviet Union on the other hand gave its support to the communists and this greatly contributed to the cold war which came four years after the world war two. At this time, the communists had already taken full control of the main land china while the nationalist had been pushed to the Taiwan land where they remained. Communism now became the main government of china. At the beginning of the war, it was evident that the nationalist party was going to win the battle. This is because it had full support of the Chinese population. It was the government at that moment and was highly respected by the citizens. General Chiang Kai-shek was very famous and loved by majority of the people (Chang, 2007 p126-7). His government was well organized and serving the nation well. It was not until he started showing people his negative side. His greediness and appalling leadership became evident when war started. It is during this period that it was noticed that Kai-shek was very mean and did not want any other person to oppose his decisions. The nationalist party lost the war because of the policy mistakes. Some of the mistakes that were done by the nationalist party include the following. To begin with, the nationalists were mainly defeated because of lack of fighting tactics. During the war period they recruited the poor peasants and took them to the battle fields without any form of training or equipments (Diana, 2007 p80). To make it worse, they were mistreated and starved (Moore, 2008 p70). At the battle field they were killed severely by the Japanese trained troops who seemed to be conquering china until the communists began resisting them by fighting them hard with tactics. The nationalist troops were as well worried of loosing the battle and therefore feared to be killed thus took the advantage of the recruits by putting them on the frontline at the battle field so that they could be killed as they remain alive. Their guerrilla tactics were not working out for them and they ended up being losers. The nationality government disregarded the rights of the citizens. The farmers were not given support during the drought period and most of their plantations went to waste because they were unable to prevent the severity of the drought all by themselves. Their leader Kai-shek was only focused on personal benefits without focusing on the prosperity of the nations and the democracy of the citizens (Chang, 2007 p127). His government lost focus when the war begun by neglecting the citizens completely. More so, his government recruited the peasants by force to the troop thus violating the rights of the citizens. At the battle field the peasants were forced to fight without any equipment. They were as well fighting while very hungry since they were not given food at all. The rest of the citizens faced increased taxation to the already high tax. Most of them ended up starving because they could not pay the high taxes and at the same time afford food. The nationalist government did not focus on the prosperity of the nation. The Chinese nation was lagging behind in terms of development and other crucial issues. Their defensive system was very poor since they only focused on fighting their rivals the communists without considering the security of the nation at large. They were being attacked by the Japanese troops but Kai-shek cared less about the citizens who suffered the most and concentrated on fighting the communists. These shows that the nationalist government had poor set of tactics to tackle the problems they encountered and this made the communists to take the advantage of winning over them. It should be noted that majority of the Chinese people are poor peasants but Chiang’s support mainly came from the few rich people. They supported him because under his rule they could expand their richness through corrupt deals since Kai-shek cared les about it. On the other hand, the poor peasants continued living their poor lives since their democratic rights were highly violated. The government officials followed the Chiang’s footsteps by being corrupt and abusing their offices. They manipulated the currency so that they could benefit out of it (Zhang et al, 2002 p65). On the other hand, Mao who had studied about communism understood the importance of serving the poor peasants and he knew exactly what they wanted. He did everything he could to ensure that the peasants got their democratic rights. This made him to become famous and gained the favor of the people. Chiang disregarded the voices of women who have their rights as women of the nation. His main focus was on how he could make a lot of money through corrupt deals. Mao on the other hand fought for the rights of women. At one time he said that women hold up half the sky meaning that the women had equal chances to the men in the national building. The women gave him full support and during his reign, he fully supported and gave them the rights which they only heard of but never had. He also gave them a right to work and made them abolish their ‘feet binding’ habits (Moore, 2008 p72). They felt that they had their freedom of equality, respect, democracy and dignity. The war between the communist and the nationalist that took a period of 4 years saw the communist winning and the nationalists losing. Some people may argue that it is sensible to consider it as a defeat of the nationalists (MacFarguhar, et al, 1991 p800). It is correct to say that but I feel it is more sensible to argue that it was the communist victory. There are various reasons to support this argument. First, the communists fought really hard to make sure that the people of the Chinese nation do not suffer. Mao worked hard to ensure that the rights of the people are not violated. This was a sacrifice by the communist’s members because by opposing the nationalist party, they were putting their lives into danger. There was a time when they were being hunted to be killed by the nationalists because of opposing them. The campaign of shading blood that was launch by the general Chiang was to get rid of all the members of the communist party (Kathlyn, 2008 p13). The communists did not fear or give up, they went on fighting to what they believed was necessary for the population of china. In addition to that, their efforts to the war made them to deserve the victory. They worked very hard to employ different skills and tactics to their troop. They set training camps for the new and willing recruits. They made sure that the new recruits mastered the fighting skills before setting them on the battle field. They also employed the use of equipment which they were familiar with after the training. The nationalists on the other hand took advantage of the powers they had to exploit the poor peasants whom they took to the battle field without any form of training or weapon to defend themselves as well as the party. To make it worse, they were not given food and they went to the battle field very hungry and weak therefore the probability of loosing was high. The communists also used the system of winning the citizen’s favor by doing all they could to ensure their rights of democracy are not violated. Mao made promises to the nations during his campaign to win the favor of the people and indeed he fulfilled them when he finally got to power. For example, he promised the women that they shall have equal chances to men and he exactly did that when he got to power (Diana, 2007 p82). He ensured that their rights are protected as well as making them part of the decision making process of building the nation. The hard work that the communism showed deserved the victory that it gained. Note that if not for the communists to join the son war, the Japanese were going to conquer china. This is much evident in the sense that they had already defeated the nationalists who were giving up. It is because they did not pay much attention to the war since they decided to take poor peasants to fight without any form of training. Conclusion There was civil war in china from early 1920 to late 1949. This war was mainly between the party of nationalist and the party of nationalist. The nationalist leader who was Chiang Kai-shek began to eliminate the communist members who were in the party that was considered as a ruling party at that time (MacFarguhar, et al, 1991 p820). It was at this moment that the conflicts and hatred began between the two parties. The Japanese took advantage of the conflicts between the two parties and the political instability in china to attack the Chinese nation and try to conquer it. The nationalist party under Chiang paid very little attention to the son war and concentrated more on fighting the communists. It was not until the Japanese became severe that Chiang decided to fight back. His fighting tactics were very poor where he used the gorilla styles. They were almost defeated when the communist came in strongly to fight the Japanese as they felt their nation was about to be conquered. At last, the communist was able to win the battle since it employed good tactics with well trained troops. References Chang, H.H (2007). Chiang Kai-shek: Asia’s Man of Destiny. New York: Simon & Schuster Moore, Ewa (2008). Civil War in China. Beijing: Asian studies. Kathlyn, Gay (2008). 21st century books: Beijing: Mao Zedong’s China. Lary Diana (2007). China’s Republic. London: Cambridge University press. MacFarguhar, Roderick, Fairbank, John K. Twitchett, Dennis C. (1991) The Cambridge History of China. London: Cambridge University press. Zhang, Chunhou, Vaughan C. Edwin (2002). Mao Zedong as Poet and Revolutionary Leader: Social and Historical Perspective. Lexington books. Read More