Mao was no fortune teller. It was a trial-and-error journey for him as much as for everyone else. He, like most other communists, first copied the playbook of the Bolsheviks, in the light of the successful October revolution that led to the eventual formation of the USSR. The Bolsheviks started out in large towns and cities, and mobilised the factory workers. And this was exactly what Mao and others did, and did not succeed.
Mao started to realise the importance of peasants in relation to the CCP's development and direction in China based on those learned lessons, his analytical assessment of China's situation, and the trial and error and successes he experienced while trying new revolutionary ideas out in rural settings.
Mao actually never claimed that he "foresaw" the road to success. He was the one who emphasised time and time again on learning from experiences and grassroot feedbacks, and never to form conclusions without evidence. It was through this that he, and the CCP finally and gradually learned the experience and recipe, and setting the right strategy and policies for achieving the ultimate victory.
Neither of the above points, i.e. where, how and when did Mao get those ideas from, detract from the fact that Mao's "people's war" philosophy was the deciding factor on CCP's ultimate victory.
That is true, but then again, the issue we were arguing about is if it is the "deciding" factor; which I am afraid we do not agree on. Nothing said here shows that it is the deciding factor; and it is okay that we disagree, I simply do
Partly true, in the sense that Chiang's power base has been Shanghai, and the big capitalists. He was too weak politically to implement any policies that would harm the interest of his financial backers. He was also an old-school power player.
However, the land reform policies he implemented when he went to Taiwan was taken straight out of the CCP play book. He was able to pull it off then because he was the undisputed power when he arrived on the island, and most of his political rivals no longer posed much threat (they have themselves lost all of their power bases), and he has very few connections and shared interest with the land-gentry in Taiwan. And because he was a proven hard-core anti-communist, he had the credentials to implement what was essentially communist policies without losing the US support and be afraid of being labelled as a communist (The same "only Nixon can go to China" logic applies).
He implemented those policies because he understood why CCP had won China, and he was not going to let this happen again in Taiwan (there were a lot of communists and communist sympathisers in Taiwan already), and was fully aware of the fact that he commanded a large group of now "homeless and landless" people.
What you say here is speculation; the KMT didn't really take a page out of the CCP play book. The narative I had presented before, is that a capitalist state require time and protection to grow. e.g. what the US army did for Korea after the Korean war. i.e. the US navy and the CCP inability to launch an attack over the taiwan straits is what that allowed the KMT to pursue reforms and economic growth - and they grew fast.
You also should realize that the "communist" policies that you refer to is not that communist at all; all European nations from communist, to fascist, to capitalist, to imperialist practiced it at some time to transition from feudal society to whatever that they were going to.
What did the Chinese manufacture? What did they export?
During WW1, textile industry in Europe faltered and a lot of that was taken up by China, and China had a lot of cotton mills, in the shanghai and canton regions. China also produced a lot of fine china procerlin, furniture. Granted most were cottage industry
China was weak in comparison to all the major colonial and imperial powers of Europe and Japan. China was not weak in comparison to states like Thailand (no offence intended) or those of the minor players in Europe (again, no offence intended). But China's ambition was never to be a minor state.
Fact in point is China is not weak - nor was France or the Soviet Union in comparison but both took a beating by Germany; being successfully invaded doesn't mean that the country is weak. China was at least as powerful as Italy; and besides Which country back then and now is as powerful as the USA? If you consider China weak, then so is GB, the USSR, Germany and Japan. Nor do I think "china" likes the idea of being a Westphalian described "state" but that's another discussion
Japan due to their geographical situation always had limited potential. They were fully aware if given time when China becomes fully or even partially industrialised, their chance of dominion over Asia Pacific will be gone for good. It was now or never for them.
Yes, they might have overestimated their abilities, and underestimate the Chinese abilities to resist, and that while they initially planned to make a profit out of their invasion, it ended up dragging and draining their resources, but I do not see how this has anything to do with the main argument here.
The argument was that China was not that weak as compared to Japan; and in fact they are similar in terms of Army strength.
On a side note, I think that reading some Japanese literature on the topic would also show something else. Some factions of Japan wanted to invade China, some did not. And the fact is, the invasion of China was not sanctioned by the Japanese high command, hence how could it have been a part of a national plan? the Tanaka memo have to be taken in context, but yeah, this is another discussion. History is written by the victors.
I do not think the US wanted to impede China back then. (I am not sure why you would want to bring the US into here). The US back then and the US today had entirely different ambitions and strategic goals. The US back then was a lot more inward looking, and as long as it will be able generate a profit for itself, and that it will not harm its interests in the Philippines, China's rise will not be a threat to them. It will be more of a threat to the British Empire, Colonial France and the USSR---which BTW aren't a bad thing for the US. It was anti-communist for sure, but I do not think at that stage the US thought of China even as a long term threat.
Nor did I, I said:
i.e. future tense, my statement is a snub that even today, many people thinks that the US holds China back, but China still grew, hence it doesn't matter if Japan tried to impede China as China will also grow.
I did not get my info from the CCTV.
Qing already had a decent small arms industry. (Do you know that Qing even started a project on submarines, before the British got their first. Of course the project proved to be far too ambitious and ultimately led to nowhere). The republic inherited much of the late Qing's modernisation programmes. It was a continuous process from the late 1800s to today. The major shipyards in China today like that of Jiangnan and in Wuhan still bear their lineage to the industrialisation efforts started in the late Qing. Jiangnan, for example, still bears its original name.
What China lacked at that time was a lot more than just factories or artillery or heavy weapons. It still lacked the very foundation for industrialisation. It had to import steel, despite an abundance of iron ores and coal. It had no refinery of its own. It had very few engineers of its own. Most, if not all of the few things it can manufacture were of foreign design, and with machines imported from abroad, and in a lot of cases with foreign engineers looking after them.
Yes, I know that, but the British were not the first to invent the submarine, the first modern ones were built by the USA.
Steel refineries were invented in the Qin dynasty and China sold it to Rome... The first modern steel mills were german built for the KMT in Hubei, Hunan and Sichuan during the 3 year plan of 1934...
China didn't have as many engineers and technicians as the other major powers, this is true. But it is not true that they don't have enough. As the Burma road shows, (it was built by Chinese engineers mobilizing peasants, I forgot the name of the engineer who ran it, but he was from Beijing area and he educated the peasants of what is the right size of ballast for each layer of the road by using his thumb to draw a circle with his index fingure and how to test if the road is compacted enough by getting a laborer to piggy back another to stand on one foot) 1000+ km of road was built in less than a year.
Yes, China was behind and many of the basic modern society is missing; but we also should not forget that the German army was horse drawn at that time and that Japanese soldiers mainly marched on foot; and the Japanese were notorious of being out gunned when battling the Americans. i.e. the gap is not as big as it seems.
I raised the issue of what-ifs because, to me (and I may have misunderstood), that you have raised the question of "if KMT had more time to develop its military and industry etc.". The Japanese contributed to "their lack of time", and thus the reason I have mentioned it.
I am not sure why do you think I was picking a side. If it appears to you that I was picking on the CCP's side, because I had praised over their general strategy and that somehow it sounded like CCP propaganda, then I may respectively suggest that it is may be you who have been viewing my replies with a coloured lens.
I was trying very hard, apparently in vein, to explain that CCP's "people's war" was not simply (winning) "popular support", but a well-thought-of strategy and an intricate set of polices that charted the correct direction that eventually led to their overall victory.
Who is picking sides or who is wearing coloured lense is debatable; and we can disagree. I have shown with proper historical cases where "people's war" have failed and you are talking about "popular support" with me. The issues is, in hindsight it is easy to say that a set of policies can be charted in the correct direction to allow for the victory; but as you said above, Mao trail-n-errored it; so can you really claim that a set of policies to achieve an intended result was achieved? or was it that there was a set of policies and there were some results that was attributed to it?
Sirlanka and the Tamil Tigers or Nepals' Maoist Rebels are a good case in point, yea, they had the support of the peasants in their lands, yeah, they took land from the land owners and gave it to the peasants, set up collectives and all. And they studied Maoism deeply; but once they had build up fixed assets on the ground, they were easy to wipe out by government forces.
The peasants were the engine of the Chinese economy for the past 2000 years until China industrialised. The peasants fed the CCP and its army. There were no major natural disasters during the period 1945-49. The peasants apparently could not feed the KMT-led China because they made a mess of the economy, and hyperinflation took-hold, while supplies were actually adequate, the prospectors bought up supplies and withheld eyeing for larger profits while the poor people could not afford even the basic stuff.
Here are some of the numerical facts: in the Huaihai campaign alone, there were about 500 to 600 thousand PLA soldiers participated in total over the entire course of the campaign. There were over 5 million peasants in 4 provinces (Shandong, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu) providing logistic support for the PLA, stockpiling over 480 thousand (long) tons of food and sending over 200 thousand (long) tons of food to the frontline units during the course of the campaign. Of the peasant workers, 220 thousand were front line full-time support, 1.3 million were second line full-time support, and 3.9 million provided temporary support.
This amount of food, I gather, presumably was not supplied by the KMT government, from the US imports.
The important point to observe, is on how organised the civilian peasant support structure was. The link between the civilian and the PLA was seamless, and the entire logistic operation involving millions of workers was both well organised and efficient, and to be honest, if you read into the historical accounts (by the peasants evolved) and records, this operation to me is MORE IMPRESSIVE than the PLA tactics in the actual campaign. Everything down to every person and their responsibilities has been carefully considered and planned, and every group of peasants had their own political and propaganda organisations, providing educational classes, campaigning for and encouraging more support as PLA gains territory, and building new cells in newly acquired lands. Everyone had a sense of purpose and belonging in this giant organisation.
This was no luck or accident. It was the result of years and decades of policies and building work, the "infrastructure" of the "people's war" concept.
I don't deny this, but I disagree that this is the definitive thing why the CCP won the civil war. I would also contend that it is not a policy issue that allow the CCP to grow logistics as such, but circumstance; and the term was coined afterwards.
I can only suggest you to looking at the actual battle histories. If it was not a classical example mobile warfare, I don't know what is. Su Yu was only able to defeat and destroy the several KMT forces larger then his because he was constantly on the move.
The PLA had neither the numerical superiority nor qualitative superiority. They had to manoeuvre to get them into a situation of local numerical superiority to counter the enemy qualitative superiority. If anything, the PLA were never believers of trench and static warfare.
Mobile warfare existed long before tanks and trucks were invented. And not all warfare involving trucks and tanks are mobile.
That you do not understand me. The three stages of People's war as written and executed by Mao was an avoidance to fight major battles until sufficient strength were at hand.
The issue of maneuver is that a soldier can march 20 km a day, but a truck can drive 200 km, this is no contest and all is relative. The Korean war shows this well, when the CCP attacked the retreating Americans almost always got away due to their superior mechanized speed while the SK battalions were annihilated; on the offense, American units often overrun CCP and WPK forces as tanks and APCs are much faster than the speed which soldiers can retreat. That is what I meant by mobility.
PLA of today and PLA of the past were designed to fight different wars, the CCP today is a different party to the CCP in 1949, and China today is a different country to China in 1949.
What I say is by no means ideological. And I do not think you have really understood the meaning of "popular participation" and how it differed from "popular support". I have tried to explain the meaning of "popular participation" or "people's war" in my previous posts, and again in this post.
That strategy was appropriate during the particular time. It may not be appropriate now, because China has changed, its economic structure has changed, its social structure has changed, and its potential enemies and points of conflict have also changed. But it does not mean it is irrelevant, nor will it not become appropriate again in the future. In other words, the concept is not obsolete.
As I said, one has got to work with what fate has given to them. KMT lacked the time to develop a professional army, nor did the CCP. Ideal situations are irrelevant, because they never occur, and certainly did not occur in the Chinese civil war.
By all accounts, the NRA (accept for some remote war-lord factions) was more professional than the PLA.
In fact, if you look through the contemporary documents, it was clear that in 1945, the CCP did not view a hot-conflict with the KMT as desirable to their situation. The CCP was on the up, given more time, they would have grown stronger, and closed the gap between them and the KMT before final showdown would happen, as Mao and the CCP leadership had been planning then. Chiang also thought the same, and wanted to end it while he still had the advantage.
On this I agree it is academic. It doesn't matter if they mobilised the urban population or not, like I have already said in the previous reply. The results would have been the same.
This is one statement I most agree with you, except the statement that "[People's war] is ridiculously inefficient". People's war is a concept, efficiency has nothing to do with it. It may be inefficient because the low-tech and poor quality nature of the PLA that implemented it, but this has nothing to do with the concept in itself.
In a nutshell, it calls for active and willing participation of every citizen in the war process, make them feel they have a real stake-hold in the outcome of the struggle, and a close integration and mutually supportive relationship and infrastructure between the people and the military. It has nothing to do with low-tech or "human-wave" traits some may stereotyping it with.
No. And see above.
Like I have said, again, "people's war" and "popular support" are two entirely distinct concepts.
The number one thing one needs to do in any conflict is to get the people on your side, and actually participate with their actions. People's war requires you not only get the people on your side, but for them to be willingly participate in efforts that will advance your cause, and that your military planning and infrastructure can take advantage of those contributions in an effective way.
People's war does not function for invasion or expedition armies, for obvious reasons.
For countries with small population, this may not work well, especially when faced with a foreign adversary much stronger, because your overall power is still low. For a country the size of China, when even at its dimmest hours, its GDP still rivals some of the greats, it is an entirely different matter.
Simply, we have different view on People's War and Total War; you have argued against a lot of things I have not said. Nor have you addressed a lot of the issues I have raised. Simple to me, as you have said, China didn't nearly have the industrial capacity to sustain war for itself, having pure man power is useless and therefore the linchpin is of the foreign support the CCP received to arm the manpower it possess. I think we will have to agree to disagree.
For this, you just have to ask yourself two questions:
1. Would the CCP had a chance of winning if it did not have the kind of the support the peasants have given them?
2. Would the CCP had a chance of winning if they did not receive or receive little Soviet material support?
My answers to the two questions (and you are welcome to disagree):
1. They would have failed a long time. Mao would have long been captured or killed.
2. I will only say this: there were no clear evidence of NRA performing much better or worse in unit-level combats between them and the various CCP forces comparing the time periods before and after 1945.
