Quick questions on The Chinese Civil War 1945-1949: HSC Modern History National Study China

Liaoshen Campaign (12 September to 2 November 1948). Lin Biao's Northeast Field Army (around 700,000) faced Wei Lihuang's KMT forces (around 550,000) in Manchuria. The PLA cut KMT garrisons off from each other. Jinzhou fell on 14 October. Changchun surrendered after a six-month siege; perhaps 150,000 civilians died of starvation inside the city.

Lin Biao's Northeast Field Army (around 700,000) faced Wei Lihuang's KMT forces (around 550,000) in Manchuria. The PLA cut KMT garrisons off from each other. Jinzhou fell on 14 October.

The largest single campaign of the war. The Eastern China Field Army (Chen Yi) and the Central Plains Field Army (Liu Bocheng, Deng Xiaoping) totalled around 600,000. KMT forces under Du Yuming and Liu Zhi numbered around 800,000, including five elite armies.

Lin Biao's Fourth Field Army (around 1 million) plus North China forces surrounded the Beiping-Tianjin region (Fu Zuoyi, around 520,000 KMT). Tianjin fell on 15 January after a brief assault. Fu Zuoyi negotiated the peaceful surrender of Beiping on 31 January 1949.

Chiang spread KMT forces too thinly garrisoning cities; the PLA concentrated overwhelming force at chosen points. The German and US-trained divisions, designed for conventional war, were destroyed faster than they could be replaced.

Hyperinflation destroyed urban living standards and the KMT tax base. The Gold Yuan reform failed.

KMT corruption was endemic; the "Four Big Families" (Chiang, Soong, Kung, Chen) accumulated wealth while soldiers went unpaid. Press censorship and Blue Shirt repression alienated intellectuals and students.

The KMT never tackled rural inequality. CCP land reform mobilised peasant volunteers and supplied PLA logistics on a scale the KMT could not match.

US aid declined sharply after 1947 (the China White Paper of August 1949 effectively conceded defeat). Soviet aid to the CCP, including arms and technical support, continued.

Mao's strategic directives showed sustained discipline. Lin Biao's Manchurian campaign, Chen Yi's Huaihai operations, and Peng Dehuai's Shaanxi defence were all expertly executed.

Land reform, base-area governance, and the Mass Line gave the CCP a depth of peasant support the KMT lacked.

PLA conduct in captured cities, particularly Beiping and Shanghai, was reported by Western journalists as comparatively disciplined. The contrast with retreating KMT looting helped consolidate urban support.

The CCP had emerged from Yan'an as an ideologically united, hierarchically disciplined organisation. The KMT was a coalition of cliques.

Source A is an extract from Lloyd Eastman on KMT hyperinflation. Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain the economic failure of the KMT in 1948 to 1949. [5 marks]

Evaluate the extent to which the Communist victory in 1949 was the result of KMT failures rather than CCP strengths. [25 marks]