The war began in 1927, after the Northern Expedition. The war represented an ideological split between the Western-supported Nationalist KMT and the Soviet-supported Communist CPC.
The civil war carried on intermittently until the looming Second Sino-Japanese War interrupted it, resulting in an organized and temporary Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion. The Japanese assault and occupation of Eastern China was an opportunistic attack made possible by China’s own state of internal turmoil. Japan’s campaign was defeated in 1945, marking the end of World War II, and China’s full-scale civil war resumed in 1946. Hostilities ended after 23 years in 1950, with an unofficial cessation of major hostilities, with the CPC controlling mainland China (including Hainan Island) and the KMT restricted to their remaining territories of Taiwan, Pescadores, and the several outlying Fujianese islands. To this day, no official armistice has ever been signed, although the two sides have close economic ties.
Background:
The Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911.China was left under the control of several major and lesser warlords in the Warlord era. To defeat these warlords, who had seized control of much of Northern China, the anti-monarchist and national unificationist Kuomintang party and its leader Sun Yat-sen sought the help of foreign powers. His efforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1921 he turned to the Soviet Union. For political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Communist Party of China. The Soviets hoped for Communist consolidation, but were prepared for either side to emerge victorious. Thus the struggle for power in China began between the KMT and the CPC(communist party china).
In 1923, a joint statement by Sun and Soviet representative Adolph Joffe in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China’s unification.The Sun-Joffe Manifesto was a declaration for cooperation among the Comintern, KMT and the Communist Party of China.Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the KMT along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CPC joined the KMT to form the First United Front.
In 1923, Sun Yat-sen sent Chiang Kai-shek, one of Sun’s lieutenants from his Tongmeng Hui days, for several months’ military and political study in Moscow.By 1924, Chiang became the head of the Whampoa Military Academy, and rose to prominence as Sun’s successor as head of the KMT.
The Soviets provided much of the studying material, organization, and equipment including munitions for the academy. The Soviets also provided education in many of the techniques for mass mobilization. With this aid Sun Yat-sen was able to raise a dedicated “army of the party,” with which he hoped to defeat the warlords militarily. CPC(communist party china) members were also present in the academy, and many of them became instructors, including Zhou Enlai who was made a political instructor of the academy.
Communist members were allowed to join the KMT on an individual basis.The CPC itself was still small at the time, having a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925.The KMT in 1923 had 50,000 members.
*KMT: Chinese Nationalist Party.
*CPC: Communist party china.
Northern Expedition (1926–1928) and KMT-CPC split:
Just months after Sun Yat Sen’s death in 1925, Chiang-Kai-Shek, as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, set out on the Northern Expedition. By 1926, however, the KMT had divided into left and right wing factions.The Communist bloc within it was also growing. In the March 1926 Zhongshan Warship Incident, after thwarting an alleged kidnapping attempt against him, Chiang imposed restrictions on CPC members’ participation in the top KMT leadership and emerged as the pre-eminent KMT leader.
On April 7, Chiang and several other KMT leaders held a meeting arguing that communist activities were socially and economically disruptive, and must be undone for the national revolution to proceed. As a result of this, on April 12, Chiang turned on the CPC in Shanghai. The incident purged the KMT leftists by arresting and executing hundreds of CPC members. The incident was called April 12 Incident or Shanghai Massacre by the CPC.The massacre widened the rift between Chiang and Wang Jingwei’s Wuhan. Attempts were made by CPC to take cities such as Nanchang, Changsha, Shantou, and Guangzhou. An armed rural insurrection, known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising was staged by peasants, minors and CPC members in Hunan Province led by Mao Zedong.The uprising was unsuccessful.There now were three capitals in China, the internationally recognized republic capital in Beijing,the CPC and left-wing KMT at Wuhan and the right-wing KMT regime at Nanjing, which would remain the KMT capital for the next decade.
The CPC had been expelled from Wuhan by their left-wing KMT allies, who in turn were toppled by Chiang Kai-shek. The KMT resumed the campaign against warlords and captured Beijing in June 1928. Afterwards most of eastern China was under the Nanjing central government’s control, and the Nanjing government received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China. The KMT government announced that in conformity with Sun Yat-sen’s formula for the three stages of revolution: military unification, political tutelage, and constitutional democracy.
CPC vs KMT and the Long March (1927–1937):
During the 1920s, Communist Party of China activists retreated underground or to the countryside where they fomented a military revolt, beginning the Nanchang Uprising on August 1, 1927.They combined the force with remnants of peasant rebels, and established control over several areas in southern China.
In 1930 the Central Plains War broke out as an internal conflict of the KMT. It was launched by Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and Wang Jingwei. The attention was turned to root out remaining pockets of Communist activity in a series of encirclement campaigns. There were a total of five campaigns.The first and second campaigns failed and the third was aborted due to the Mukden Incident. The fourth campaign (1932-1933) achieved some early successes, but Chiang’s armies were badly mauled when they tried to penetrate into the heart of Mao’s Soviet Chinese Republic.
Finally, in late 1933, Chiang launched a fifth campaign that involved the systematic encirclement of the Jiangxi Soviet region with fortified blockhouses.Unlike in previous campaigns in which they penetrated deeply in a single strike, this time the KMT troops patiently built blockhouses, each separated by five or so miles to surround the Communist areas and cut off their supplies and food source.
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945):
On December 12, 1936, KMT Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek and forced him to a truce with the CPC. The incident became known as the Xi’an Incident. Both parties suspended fighting to form a Second United Front to focus their energies and fighting against the Japanese.In 1937, Japanese airplanes bombed Chinese cities and well-equipped troops overran north and coastal China.
The alliance of CPC and KMT Second united front was in name only. The CPC hardly ever engaged the Japanese in major battles but proved efficient in guerrilla warfare. The level of actual cooperation and coordination between the CPC and KMT during World War II was minimal. In the midst of the Second United Front, the CPC and the KMT were still vying for territorial advantage in “Free China” (i.e. areas not occupied by the Japanese or ruled by Japanese puppet government).The situation came to a head in late 1940 and early 1941 when there were major clashes between the Communist and KMT forces.
In December 1940, Chiang Kai-shek demanded that the CPC’s New Fourth Army evacuate Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces. Under intense pressure, the New Fourth Army commanders complied. In 1941 the New Fourth Army Incident led to several thousand deaths in the CPC.It also ended the Second united front formed earlier to fight the Japanese. In general, developments in the Second Sino-Japanese War were to the advantage of the CPC. The KMT’s resistance to the Japanese proved costly to Chiang Kai-shek. In 1944 the last major offensive, Operation Ichigo was launched by the Japanese against the KMT.