THE CCP TAKES OVER MAINLAND CHINA

While conditions on Taiwan were deteriorating for the Nationalists, a dire situation was emerging on the mainland. There had been periodic skirmishes between the Nationalist government and the Chinese Communist Party for roughly twenty years, but the government was always in a position of strength. The CCP had been making large relative gains in support and strategic advantage until the Japanese mounted a large-scale invasion from Manchuria into eastern China in 1937, which led the country to rally around the government to oppose the foreign occupiers. Even during this period of détente, however, there were rather precise delineations about which faction was supposed to be where, and when CCP units moved outside their approved area of operations skirmishes would erupt with the KMT, even amid fighting against the Japanese.

The United States, while formally allied with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, had been thinking seriously about the political fissures in China throughout World War II. American strategy in China was to push for reconciliation between the KMT and the CCP, unifying China into a strong, stable actor in northeast Asia. In hindsight, it seems clear that there was little or no will on the part of either the CCP or the KMT to mend fences. Even the public statements of both parties were extremely bellicose and unequivocal. To believe that peaceful settlement was possible was the triumph of hope over experience.

American efforts were also marred by strategic uncertainty. Some of the more sober analysts saw the growing strength of Mao Zedong’s CCP and recognized that Chiang’s regime was in trouble. At the same time, the existence of a new global strategic environment centered around the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union meant that a communist China would undesirably skew the balance of power in favor of communism, and increase the chances of a Soviet-Chinese alliance. The resulting U.S. strategy was to try to keep Chiang propped up by developing a coalition government in China. Washington tried to persuade the CCP that sharing power with the Nationalists was the best result the CCP could hope for, hinting that a total communist takeover would be unacceptable to the United States. This strategy was deeply flawed, because a coalition government was unsatisfactory to both sides. The CCP sensed its growing strength and refused to accept half-measures, and the Nationalists were de jure in power and clung desperately to the notion that the communist storm could be weathered.
The futility of U.S. diplomacy could be characterized by the visit of General George C. Marshall to China in December of 1945. By January of 1946, Marshall had brokered a cease-fire, developed plans for power-sharing, and persuaded the KMT to accept democratic elections in the future. Marshall returned to Washington in March, and by the time he went back to China in April he found that the cease-fire had been cast off and fighting had erupted again.⁴²

Although forced to accept the reality that U.S. diplomacy could not stave off civil war, the Truman administration continued to half-heartedly support Chiang. The enthusiasm for material support waned, however, as Chiang proceeded to lose both the military and political battles in China. Until the late-1940s, the military and political defeats the Nationalists suffered were alarming, but not decisive. As the CCP continued to gain political support by promising liberation to peasants in the countryside, though, the Nationalists suffered increasingly meaningful military defeats.

Autumn of 1949 would bring the final blows to Nationalist rule. In October, as the CCP took control of Manchuria and a large swath of the surrounding provinces, the Nationalists were forced to move their capital from Canton to Chungking. In November, Communist forces routed them from Chungking, and the KMT moved its operations to Chengtu. Finally, in December 1949, after roughly six million Chinese had perished in the struggle, Chiang Kai-shek and more than a million of his followers fled to Taiwan to regroup and plan their counterattack to retake the mainland. For its part, the CCP remained on the offensive, planning to finish off the KMT in Taiwan. Though Mao himself famously proclaimed in 1936 that he did not consider Taiwan to be a “lost territory” of China⁴³ insofar as the fight against the KMT now carried onto Taiwan, Taiwan became a strategic objective for the CCP. Additionally, once the Allies recognized Taiwan as part of China in the Cairo Declaration, the CCP adjusted its position. The CCP then held that control over all parts of China was its objective, and it accordingly included Taiwan.⁴⁴

NOTES:

42. Jansen, Japan and China, p. 442.

43. See Frank S. T. Hsiao and Lawrence R. Sullivan, “The Chinese Communist Party and the Status of Taiwan, 1928-1943,” Pacific Affairs 52, no. 3 (Autumn 1979): 446-467. The particular statement about Taiwan appears on pp. 453-454, and appeared originally in Edgar Snow’s Red Star over China (New York: Random House, 1948), pp. 88-89.

44. Hsiao and Sullivan, “The Chinese Communist Party,” p. 446.

SOURCE: Ted Galen Carpenter, “America’s Coming War with China: A Collision Course Over Taiwan“, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.