Quick questions on Mao and victory in the Chinese Civil War 1946 to 1949: HSC Modern History Personality

Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945. The CCP held about 95 million people in base areas behind enemy lines. The Soviet Red Army occupied Manchuria and turned captured Japanese stockpiles over to Lin Biao's forces from late 1945. The KMT, with US transport assistance, raced troops into northern cities.

US Special Envoy General George Marshall arrived on 20 December 1945 to mediate. A ceasefire was reached in January 1946. Marshall failed to secure a coalition; fighting resumed in Manchuria in April 1946 and full-scale war by July 1946. Marshall left China in January 1947 with the famous statement on a "dominant clique of reactionaries" in the KMT and "dyed-in-the-wool" Communists.

In the early phase the Nationalists held the numerical advantage (about 4.3 million to 1.2 million). Chiang Kai-shek attacked Yan'an, which fell in March 1947; Mao evacuated and moved to Xibaipo. The Communists used mobile warfare and the strategic retreat, the doctrine of luring the enemy in deep. Peng Dehuai's Northwest Field Army in Shaanxi, Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping's Central Plains Field Army in the Dabie Mountains, Chen Yi's East China Field Army, and Lin Biao's Northeast Field Army in Manchuria coordinated.

Lin Biao's Northeast Field Army was the decisive force. By the start of the Liaoshen Campaign Lin commanded about 700,000 troops, with Japanese rifles, mortars and artillery from the Soviet handover and increasing US-supplied stocks captured from defeated Nationalist units.

Liaoshen Campaign, 12 September to 2 November 1948. Lin Biao's forces took Jinzhou, Changchun, and Shenyang in Manchuria. The Nationalists lost about 470,000 troops. Manchuria was secured.

On 21 April 1949 the Communist forces crossed the Yangtze. Nanjing fell on 23 April; Shanghai on 27 May; Guangzhou on 14 October; Chongqing on 30 November. Chiang Kai-shek evacuated to Taiwan in December 1949 with about 1.2 million troops and civilians.

The Outline Land Law of 10 October 1947, drafted by Liu Shaoqi, replaced the moderate Yan'an rent-reduction policy with the confiscation of landlord and rich-peasant land for redistribution. By 1949 about 100 million peasants in CCP areas had received land. The campaign produced both a base of grateful smallholders and, in many villages, violent struggle sessions in which approximately 1 million landlords were killed by 1952 (the figure rose to about 2 million through the 1950 to 1952 nationwide land reform).

Hyperinflation destroyed the urban middle class. The Shanghai cost-of-living index rose from 100 in 1937 to 1.93 million in 1946 to about 8.7 trillion by August 1948. The gold yuan reform of August 1948 collapsed within months. Corruption was systemic.

On 1 October 1949 at the Tiananmen rostrum in Beijing Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China. About 300,000 people attended the ceremony. The Common Program adopted on 29 September 1949 served as a provisional constitution.

Lloyd Eastman (The Abortive Revolution, 1974, Seeds of Destruction, 1984) emphasised the structural failure of the KMT regime: corruption, hyperinflation, the disconnect between the regime and the peasantry.

The 1948 to 1949 campaigns were industrial-scale conventional warfare; land reform supplied the recruits.

The Soviet handover of Japanese stockpiles to Lin Biao in 1945 to 1946 was decisive.

Most specialists treat his personal interference as a major cause of Nationalist defeat.