61 Years of Red China - Part One

A Brief History of the Rise of Communism in China and its Devastating Consequences

by Eric Bailey

Associate Editor of Sri Lanka Guardian writes from Austin-Texas

(September 13, Texas, Sri Lanka Guardian) On October 1st, the government of Red China will celebrate the 61st anniversary of their victory over the Chinese Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-Shek, in their Civil War. Over One billion citizens of the world’s largest communist state will be told, as they have been told for decades, a fascinating story about the birth of the People’s Republic of China. It is an inspirational tale of a heroic group of people who fought social injustice, defeated the military occupation by Japan, and unified the country by defeating those Chinese opposed to social justice and economic prosperity, the Kuomintang. It is an interesting story to be sure, but few nations on Earth are as proficient as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at spreading propaganda and falsehoods, so how true is the patriotic tale?

Foreign Spheres of Influence in China, 1900

If ever there was such a thing as a “failed state” it was China in the first fourth of the 20th Century. Throughout the previous hundred years the major powers of the world had carved out spheres of influence in China, giving each, economic domination over their sphere. In some cases outright colonial conquests further weakened the Chinese Empire, as was the case with the annexation of Hong Kong by the British Empire during the First Opium War, as well as Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula’s surrender to the Japanese Empire in the First Sino-Japanese War. The ruling Qing Dynasty proved to be increasingly unable to resist Imperial expansion into Chinese territory. By 1900, a desperate Empress Dowager even turned to anti-foreigner rebels to try and regain control of the country in the Boxer Rebellion. This poorly organized and even more poorly equipped effort was a miserable failure and would pave the way for the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912.

Massive civil unrest also helped to cripple the Qing government over the course of the 19th Century to the point where there was really no hope of resisting foreign encroachment effectively. The Taiping Civil War was, by far, the bloodiest war of the 19th Century, with an estimated 25 million dead, and is arguably only exceeded by the world wars in terms of fatalities in human history. At the same time, several other rebellions also erupted, with casualty rates that also dwarfed 19th Century conflicts in other parts of the world. Despite the failure of all of these rebellions, the casualties and high costs of the conflicts crippled the Qing Dynasty, allowing the rest of the world to take advantage of China with impunity. Between these revolts, famine, and natural disaster, China lost nearly 60 million citizens in less than a quarter century, or approximately one seventh of the population. This is roughly comparable to the entire cost of World War Two, confined to a single country.

Xinhai Revolution in Shanghai, 1911. Supporters display the "Five Races Under One Union" flag

Mortally wounded by 19th Century revolts and constant foreign encroachment, the ineffectual Qing Dynasty was driven from power in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, and the Provisional Government of the Republic of China was formed. This was the birth of the government Chiang Kai-Shek would eventually rule and that exists today as the governing body of Taiwan. The Republic of China, only the fourth example of a republic in Oriental history up to that point, enjoyed the enthusiastic support of most of the population, which would be vital in stymieing counter revolutions by warlords, some of whom were loyal to the deposed Qing Dynasty. Despite the failure of the warlords to gain traction in their occasional bids to bring down the new government, they did control vast swaths of territory and the new republic was equally unable to exert its sovereignty over them. This period of a weak central government and the division of China into the fiefdoms of various private armies became known as the Warlord Era. It would continue until a man named Chiang Kai-Shek rose to the rank of Commander-in-Chief of the National Revolutionary Army in 1926 and promptly led the Northern Expedition, a spectacularly successful campaign that crushed most of the larger warlords and liberated Beijing. By the conclusion of the campaign in 1928, China had been nominally reunified and several of the larger warlords had been eliminated. While some minor warlords remained in the parts of the country, the conclusion of the Northern Expedition is generally considered the end date of the Warlord Era by historians. Of equal importance, Chiang Kai-Shek exited the campaign as the Chairman of the Nationalist Government of China.

National Revolutionary Army troops marching through Hankow (part of Wuhan) during the Northern Expedition

As Chiang Kai-Shek was working to break the power of the warlords, the fledgling republic was facing a new, much more serious threat that had been preparing to strike for years. The leading Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, had accepted aid and military advisors from the Soviet Union to help defeat the warlords and stabilize the country as far back as 1923; however, this would have dangerous repercussions that the KMT totally failed to predict. The Communist Party of China (CPC) had formed only two years earlier and soon developed a relationship with the Soviets that was independent of the national government. Under Soviet advisement, the CPC moved to infiltrate the KMT in order to hijack the party and change it into a Communist movement from within, rather than openly oppose the incredibly popular political party that was credited with leading the Xinhai Revolution and forming the Republic of China. Through this political alliance, Soviet military aid, and the extreme unpopularity of the warlords among the peasant population, the allied CPC and KMT forces, known as the First United Front, made surprisingly short work of the major warlords in Northern China.

It did not take long, though, for the CPC to try and destabilize the KMT. When the Northern Expedition liberated Nanjing in March of 1927, the CPC saw an opportunity to embarrass the KMT in front of the global community and cause the Nationalist government to lose legitimacy in the eyes of the major world powers. As Northern Expeditionary Forces moved to capture the city, warlord troops retreated without offering resistance. As the city was occupied, foreign consulates were approached to ask if they were harboring warlord troops. Once it was established that no warlord forces remained, the KMT troops moved on to secure the rest of the city. However, CPC forces within the Expeditionary Force soon began targeting the significant foreign population in Nanjing, looting consulates, businesses, churches, schools, hospitals, and charitable organizations. Western university teachers were executed and the famous author Pearl Buck nearly became a casualty of the CPC rioters, surviving by hiding along with her family with Chinese friends in a hut on the Nanjing University campus. Soon, American, Japanese, and British warships that were in the harbor began shelling the city in an attempt to defend the besieged British and Japanese consulates. When the mob violence finally subsided, dozens of Chinese and foreigners from five different countries had been killed or wounded. With a Chinese city under KMT control falling into anarchy and being fired upon by foreign warships, the CPC felt sure that popular domestic support for the Nationalists would erode away and foreign countries would be even less likely to recognize Chiang Kai-Shek’s leadership.

The plan, however, backfired on the Communists. Despite foreign outrage at the murders and vandalism, the global community readily accepted Chiang Kai-Shek’s explanation that Communists, not the KMT, were behind the looting. This was particularly true of Japan and the United States, who feared growing Communist influence in China. The “Generalissimo,” as he was called by the Western media, quickly moved to purge the CPC, an action he had already been anticipating, but only had the opportunity to act upon after the Nanjing Incident. Chiang purged almost six thousand Communist militiamen in Shanghai in April, beginning the long and bloody Chinese Civil War. This action initially resulted in a severing of ties between the KMT forces under Chiang and the Nationalist government in Wuhan; however, the Wuhan government soon also began to purge Communists from their ranks and once the Northern Expedition liberated the Warlord capital at Beijing, Chiang’s legitimacy as the leader of the Republic of China was securely established.

The conflict that would follow can be divided into three periods. There would be an initial period of civil war in which the Communist forces would suffer a devastating defeat, followed by the Japanese invasion of China in the Second Sino-Japanese War and its combination into World War Two, and finally The post-invasion period where the Communists would take control of mainland China, consolidate their power at home, invade most of their neighbors, and play a major role in world affairs to the present day. Because the first phase predated the Japanese invasion, the initial decline of the CPC was the natural progression of China’s internal struggle between Communist and Nationalist forces. Bolstered by the success of the Northern Expedition and the negotiated integration of several minor warlord armies into the National Army, the KMT had a distinct long-term advantage in numbers, resources, and nationwide popularity. Despite several years of neither side being able to mount a successful offensive against the other, Nationalists were finally able to break Communist control of much of Southern China from 1932 to 1934. A series of encirclement campaigns split Communist forces into two main groups, each unable to seriously resist the KMT. This forced the CPC to begin the famous Long March retreat, whereby vast portions of Communist territory were abandoned to the KMT and huge Communist casualties were suffered.

Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Zedong

It should be apparent by this account that neither the CPC nor the KMT were without flaws. Each side of the Chinese Civil War played on foreign opinion to further their aims. The CPC utilized Communist Russian aid to strengthen its hand against the KMT, while the KMT played on Western and Japanese outrage at the Nanjing Incident to bolster the legitimacy of the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-Shek. Both factions also accused the other of being more concerned with their political power than with ending warlord rule of parts of China. The KMT pointed to the Nanjing Incident and an attempt to abduct Chiang in 1926 as proof that the CPC was only using the fight against the warlords to exploit weaknesses in the KMT. Conversely, the CPC accused Chiang of reversing on his pledge to crush the warlords when he paused the Northern Expedition to purge Communist elements after the Nanjing Incident, and again when he used political negotiation to peacefully integrate other warlord groups into the Nationalist Government and military after the breakout of the official Civil War. Regardless of each individual’s views on the legitimacy of these accusations, it is clear that the KMT had an overwhelming advantage by the end of the first half of the 1930’s. Superior numbers, control of most of the major industrial centers, and, most importantly, superior popular support from the general population, made a Communist defeat in China almost a foregone conclusion. This would change when Japan began an all-out invasion of China in 1937. This new danger threatened the very existence of China as it never had been before. The response of the CPC and its leader after the Long March, Mao Zedong, to the Japanese invasion would open a particularly dark chapter in Chinese History and a period of shame that the current government of Red China is constantly trying to keep under wraps, but will be the primary subject of the next article in this series.

( Eric Bailey can be reached at eb@srilankaguardian.org and his blog americandecembrist.wordpress.com )