China-One Man’s Revolution

By the summer of 1945 Mao’s forces had liberated large area of northern china form Japanese military control. Mao’s million strong army of guerrilla fighters was now backed by two million strong home guard, a militia of peasant recruited to defend their village against the Japanese. And in those areas under Mao’s control peasant had been won over to the communist cause by the seizure of land, especially from landlord branded as collaborators, and the sharing out of that land among poor villagers. By the end of the war the reputation of the communists was strikingly different from that of the Kuomintang: while Mao’s forces had harassed and stood up to the enemy, the so called nationalists had squandered their American aid and profited from black marketing and corruption that was spectacular even by the standard of ‘warlord’ China.

Even so, when japan was bombed into defeat in august, Chiang expected to benefited from a victory be had done nothing to bring about. He quickly signed a treaty with Stalin which meant that Communist Russia accepted the Kuomintang as the legitimate authority in China and insisted that only his armies should accept the surrender of enemy forces still in China. Mao ignored him and sent his men to accept the surrender of the Japanese in the east and in Manchuria.

Chiang turned again for aid from the ally he had tried to mislead throughout the war-the USA. Roosevelt was dead but a powerful china lobby in the States insisted in helping on helping the Kuomintang to resist the further spread of communism. By courtesy of the US Air force, half a million of Chiang’s troops were ferried east and north to take over Japanese occupied towns.

By 1946 the armies were in position, ready for their final contest. The American government attempted to stave off a civil war, and the alarming prospect that the communists would win and control China, by sending General George Marshal to mediate between the two Chinese leaders. Chiang and Mao were persuaded to come together for talks, but too much history lay between them for any kind of coalition government to possible. The future would belong to one or the other, but not to both.

The civil war erupted in 1947 the Kuomintang mounted a three pronged offensive against the Communists in the North. It failed. When Mao opened his counter offensive in the following year, the enemy forces disintegrated. Chiang’s armies had become weak legions of grafts rather than formidable instruments of conquest. Soldiers deserted in their thousand; some Kuomintang cities surrendered without a fighter. In April 1949, having secured the northern towns, Mao’s armies advanced across the Yangtze River. On 1 October Mao announced the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.

Mao’s revolution had been a long and extraordinary affair. it had taken nearly twenty years and coast millions of lives. It had finally been won by an army that had matured as a fighting force in a nationalist war against an alien occupation. It broke all Marx’s rules for when and where and how a communist revolution should take place. It had been based on the support of millions of peasants, not city workers. It had appealed to national feeling against the Japanese as much as to class feeling against men of property. It had been an open struggle, not a conspiracy. In comparison, the world first communist revolution that of Lenin in 1917 looked like a terrorist takeover of a city.