China’s Civil War: a Social History 1946-1949 (a belated book review)

I read this book back in August and owe a review. I was inspired to get the book after viewing Tsui Hark’s 1984 comedy Shanghai Blues, set in 1947 Shanghai (my father’s home town). Behind the comedy, the film portrayed runaway hyper-inflation, frequent power outages and veterans living under a bridge. I know a little about the civil war before the Japanese invasion but next to nothing about the later phase. A member here suggested Diane Lary’s book of the title above. Got it on my Kindle. Here’s my belated take.

 

Chiang Kai Shek, leader of the Guo Min Dang (GMD) was convinced he lost because the Soviets aided Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mao assumed it was the result of the inevitable victory of Communism. Diane Lary writes neither was the case. The Soviets did help the CCP, but they also handed captured Japanese arms to both sides after the end of WWII. They also looted machinery from Manchuria wholesale, since the Nazi invasion had done severe damage to their industrial base. The Japanese conquered Manchuria and built factories. In time the US bombed those factories and then the Soviets looted them.

 

Basically, Lary portrays the war as being Chiang’s to lose. He saw himself as a military man, and was jealous of his few generals who showed promise. He largely ignored societal problems behind the front line. A number of his generals were old warlords who were only tenuously allied with the GMD, mainly concerned with looking out for number one.

 

China, which wasn’t all that developed to begin with, had suffered massive losses to the Japanese. Millions of people had been killed, the economy up-ended and material damage of all sorts in quantity. The very social fiber of China was torn apart. Chiang had received a lot of military aid from the US. He built up his army and didn’t pay much attention to social matters, apart from exhorting people to struggle to victory. Soldiers were traditionally seen as a necessary evil, akin to locusts. The GMD didn’t do much to change this.

 

Chiang maintained large armies but had little trade or industry to support them. This led to massive inflation. In 1947, a US dollar yielded ~200,000 yuan. It currently gets about 8. The middle class was mired in poverty. People with jobs were paid daily and rushed to buy food before the currency depreciated further. The higher echelon of the GMD was blatantly corrupt. Plunging deeper into poverty while seeing this did not do wonders for the civilian morale.

 

The CCP was banished to rural northern China. This partially inoculated them from the inflation, since they lived by a barter economy. The CCP made a point of instructing their soldiers to treat civlians with respect, a change from tradition. This led to admiration from the people that largely stood until Tiananmen Square. But I digress.

 

Chiang’s armies marched into Manchuria, beating the CCP Armies in early fights for the cities with superior firepower. The CCP troops faded into the countryside and began to block roads and railways, ambushing troops who left the cities. A prolonged siege of the cities led to a series of surrenders, with massive numbers of troops lost. Many were enlisted into the CCP armies. During the Japanese war, Chinese soldiers had fought for the Japanese when it looked like they could not be beaten. The GMD approach to these “puppet troops” was execution. The CCP allowed them to redeem themselves by joining their armies. Some of them would show the enthusiasm of new converts. Later, many of these troops would be sent to Korea during that later war.

 

The GMD disaster in Manchuria was followed by other similar debacles in northern China proper. Exhortations to the troops to fight on was undercut by the manic shipping of gold, art treasures and anything not nailed down to Taiwan. My wife yearns to see the museums in Taipei. If only we could be assured that things wouldn’t heat up while we were there…

 

Many people, disgusted with the corruption of the GMD threw themselves into working with the CCP for a new China. Many of them would survive the Great Leap Forward and other catastrophes only to come a cropper during the Cultural Revolution. These days the CCP is rife with corruption.

 

Anyway, the disastrous state of China after Japanese occupation, combined with Chiang’s focusing on military matters to the exclusion of all else, and Mao’s ability to turn liabilities into strengths made for the GMD defeat.

 

A postscript: one of his best generals, Lin Biao, supported Mao during the Cultural Revolution, until he suddenly tried to flee to the Soviet Union and died in a plane crash. Details are still murky. Your guess is as good as mine.