Quick questions on The KMT defeat and retreat to Taiwan 1949: HSC Modern History National Study China

The military reasons are covered in the civil-war dot point. The structural reasons are:

The Liaoshen, Huaihai, and Pingjin defeats by January 1949 broke the field army. Chiang had been preparing Taiwan as a fallback from 1948. Three major operations carried personnel and resources across the Strait:

Taiwan had been a Japanese colony since the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895). The Japanese had developed Taiwan economically: railways, electrification, modern schools, modern agriculture. Japanese was the language of education and administration; many Taiwanese under 50 in 1945 had had no education in Mandarin.

KMT arrival was initially welcomed by many Taiwanese as liberation from Japan. Reality disappointed quickly. Chen Yi's administration imposed monopolies (tobacco, salt, alcohol, camphor), seized property, and extracted resources for the mainland war. Inflation reached around 1,000 per cent in 1946.

Chiang formally resumed the ROC presidency in Taipei on 1 March 1950 (he had resigned on 21 January 1949). Martial law had been declared over Taiwan on 19 May 1949 by then-governor Chen Cheng; it lasted until 15 July 1987, the longest in modern history.

The KMT did what it had failed to do on the mainland: tackle the rural question.

In June 1950 Mao was concentrating forces on the Fujian coast for an invasion of Taiwan. The Korean War (which began 25 June 1950) changed the strategic situation. Truman ordered the US Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait on 27 June 1950, ostensibly to "neutralise" both sides. In practice it shielded Taiwan from PLA assault.

Jay Taylor (The Generalissimo, 2009) is the major rehabilitation of Chiang including his Taiwan years.

Wholesale prices in Chongqing in 1948 were around 1,400 times the 1937 level. The Fabi at 25 yuan to US dollar in 1937 had reached 12 million by mid-1948. The Gold Yuan reform of 19 August 1948 set the new currency at 3 million Fabi to 1 Gold Yuan; the Gold Yuan itself lost 90 per cent of its value within three months.

The "Four Big Families" (Chiang, Soong, Kung, Chen) controlled major economic positions; T.V. Soong's wealth and H.H. Kung's banking made them political liabilities.

The KMT never tackled landlord-tenant relations; the 1930 Land Law on paper was never enforced. CCP land reform after 1946 gave the PLA an inexhaustible peasant recruit base; KMT conscription gave it deserters.

Chiang held cities the KMT could not garrison and roads the KMT could not patrol. Each KMT advance left isolated cities to be picked off; each PLA campaign concentrated overwhelming force.

Senior officers defected at decisive moments. In the Liaoshen, Huaihai, and Pingjin campaigns, KMT defections accounted for around 1 million troops switching sides.

Without the Korean War, the PLA's planned 1950 invasion would have proceeded. Taiwan was probably a year from PRC absorption.

It is the policy contrast that explains why Chiang's regime worked on Taiwan and failed on the mainland.