Well, human nature is not black and white nor are people model citizen. That is why no US/EU presidential/parliament race was ever a landslide 80:20 in modern history.
Also yes, people want to be on the wining side; and it is easy to do in retrospect or in the imminent; hence why the mass defection of KMT troops in the last 3 years of the war.
Also, does the saying: "nothing to lose, everything to gain" make sense? as you said, most CCP supporters are peasants who literally have very little to lose and very much to gain from the distribution of wealth from the affluent. It is not that hard to imagine. 背水一戰 and 破釜沉舟 is inherent to the Chinese psychic
There is no comparison between the US/EU elections and the Chinese civil war. One is has more similarity to a reality TV show, with participants having superficial differences and voters vote whoever they fancy; and the other is a fully fledged, and bloody revolution. In the first case, irrespective of who you choose, your life isn't going to change much; in the other case, lending support to one faction will most likely lead to you losing your livelihood, family and children, your life, and your children's.
The peasants, no matter how poor they were, did have something to lose: their lives and lives of their children. Throughout Chinese history, peasants only took up arms and rebelled against the government in extreme situations, where they had no means to continue to live. 100% of peasant rebellions happened in the eras prior to the CCP revolution after a series of natural disasters leading to famine and death. Peasants had the choice of carry on as normal and die for almost certainty, or try out their luck and rebel. China in CCP's time is not in such a situation.
The peasants joined the CCP not because they had nothing to lose, instead, it was because the CCP offered and had given hope to them something that was too good pass by, and that its organisation had given them strength, a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose.
In a civil war civilians naturally want to be on the neutral and not taking sides. They do not want to antagonise any party, and most likely will be willing to pay tributes to buy their peace, but at the same time it is also a big ask for them to willingly give their full support. The CCP got full support from a significant portion of the demographic.
This kind of support do not come free nor automatic when you occupy a region. It takes tremendous amount of work in correct policies, trust building, taking initiatives and leading by examples. It takes a lot of grassroots efforts. Mao did not explain to the peasants the abstract theories of Carl Max (his predecessors did and failed), he linked the ideology to something the peasants can feel and see, and can therefore understand: the CCP provided them with one thing they wanted the most: the ownership of the land they work on, and thus security of their income and future livelihood.
In this the CCP got it right, and in this, they won China.
As a negative example of how with all the money and technology in the world, not getting the strategy in getting people on board and buying your ideology, look at today's Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been decades, and the US and the coalition had the most professional and technologically advanced troops on the ground. Did they achieve their goals of leading the countries to where they want them to be? No. Did they get the civilians on board? No. And as soon as troops left, Iraq started to fall apart, despite of continued pumping of billions of dollars and advanced weaponries to the Iraqi government. Why? Because they did not sell their ideology correctly, they did not bother to find out and could not offer what the majority of the local population really longed for, and they could not get the people willingly participating and contributing to their cause.
No evidence or that you cannot find any evidence? Dieter Heinzig obviously found evidence in the Soviet archives and the Chinese archives. Are those not evidence?
And,
Thats from Heinzig's book, it explains all the counter logic you have brought up.
1) the soviet union supplied the Japanese arsenal to CCP
2) the soviet union supplied weapons from the soviet block - which explains the multinational aspect that the CCP had
3) Mao, had removed soviet weapons from PLA troops before entering beijing for propaganda reasons.
How much you believe it is another reason, you can read the book and check out the sources especially those from the soviet archives. I have said this during my previous post, there is no need to repeat the same things over and over again; all I have presented here is a plausible reasoning for the questions you have brought up.
Even your source confirmed these two points:
1) the PLA only received large shipments of weapons and supplies from the Soviets after they have entered Manchuria, and only in there these supplies has been transferred.
2) the majority of the weapons transferred had been of Japanese origin.
How does this differ from the official CCP accounts? Is there any thing that is really new?
In regards to the troops entering Beijing. First of all, I want to stress that the swap of weapons DID take place. But I find the analysis that "Mao ordered the change of weapons mainly for propaganda purposes of perpetrating the notion that the PLA only relied on captured KMT weapons" puzzling. Because, fore-mostly, the majority of the weapons being swapped to and carried by troops entering Beijing, and participating in the parade were Japanese. 100% of the rifles used in the Beijing parade were the Japanese "38", and all tanks were the Japanese 97.
I cannot find the source now, and I will dig this up, I have read an alternative reason for the order of swap of weapons for troops entering Beijing. It was for propaganda reasons, but it was for a show of strength. They wanted to present the PLA to the dignitaries and observers in Beijing to be as professional as possible, and they tried their best to make the weapons as uniform as possible. All troops were to get the same rifle models, and the Japanese 38 rifles were chosen because 1) they were the most numerous, and 2) they were the longest and looked good on marching. They also tried their best at getting other weapons as uniform as they could.
One VERY IMPORTANT point you seem to have missed, is that the troops entering Beijing were Lin Biao's troops, the SAME troops that had received the Soviet supplies in Manchuria. This was also why most of them also wore helmets, a rarity amongst other PLA units down south. And this also explains the large availability of weapon selections and reported equipment of Soviet weapons.
These units did not participate in Huaihai, BTW.
The CCP were at the dawn of establishing their new republic, they were entering the ancient capital of China, with many dignitaries present, and receiving a large amount of national and international attention. The most important propaganda they want to make would be that of strength, and seriousness, and the image that they were strong and professional enough to become the national leaders and forming the national government. They wanted the army they have to look as at their best possible. This was same the reason why they let the only 17 planes they had flew over Tiananmen twice to fake a force of 26.
Huh? I am only focusing on 1945-1949 which the CCP was in land contact with the soviet union; before there were the Japanese that prevented the eradication of the CCP by the KMT. The German planed KMT fifth encirclement campaign of 1934 was able to eliminate the Jiangxi soviet and spawn the long march.
The long march was a tremendous feat of leadership and human essence. But we should not forget that it is also the longest retreat in the history of mankind where the First Front Red Army under Mao was reduced from 86K men to 7K over a year.
Needless to say as you may already know, the KMT was not in northern China as per the Chin–Doihara Agreement 1935 with the empire of Japan. Shaanxi was in North China.
The CCP must have done something right, but they were also lucky. - timing, geography, human-e
The CCP's struggle against the KMT can be described in 3 stages. The first stage goes from the mutinies and up to the CCP-KMT alliance and concerned their survival; the second stage goes until the end of WW2, and concerned their growth, and the final stage is the period 1945 to 1949, concerned the final show down.
As you have said, they must have done something right, in their first and second stages. You may call the determining factor luck, but to me, luck only provided with them the right circumstances, and it is their correct strategy that ensured that they have best used the circumstances to their advantage.
They did do something right, and that was their strategy and their organisation, and with that, winning against a foe that had neither a clear strategy nor good organisation is simply a matter of time. And assistance tend to go more likely to the side with a better strategy and organisation. That is why the Soviets, after much dithering, finally turned to the CCP's side with full support; and the US after much support and cooperation, found KMT unwanting and a hopeless cause, and ditched them.
The only difference between the winners and the losers is that the Winners has a system that can take full advantage of any "good luck", while mitigating or surviving any "bad luck", while the Losers muddle through both. To winners, there is no "good luck" and "bad luck", but just "circumstances".
Sure, maybe but that is speculation; no facts can prove oneway or otherwise. Had the CCP been powerful enough, why would Stalin force the CCP to join the KMT for soviet aid?
May be, Stalin was like you and every other observer at the time, thinking the KMT still had a clear upper hand in military terms in 1945, and that Stalin still had hopes in having a relationship with the KMT?
again North east, why the KMT lacks force is the Chin-Doihara agreement, not because the KMT was lacking manpower.
"North of China" I had referred to, includes everywhere above the Yangtze river, and actually excluding the North-East, a.k.a. Manchuria, which at the time was Japanese puppet state Manchuguo. The KMT initially had more influence and legitimacy than the CCP at the start of anti-Japanese coalition. They ended up losing much of the support in those regions, while CCP grew rapidly. All before the much touted Soviet aid.
There were various guerrilla groups operating, and many initially were loyal to KMT, a.k.a, the nominal leadership and government of China. If they had done a better job of gathering support, and fostering personal relationships, and had implemented some of the Mao's suggestions better, they would still have had maintained a power base. The KMT was in support of Mao and CCP's protracted war strategies at the time. The CCP had the correct ways of doing things, and was motivating large sections of people, but lacked arms and resources; and KMT had the arms and resources, but its supported groups were plagued with regionalism and infighting, and unwilling to share resources---losing hearts and minds in the local-grown guerrilla groups, which at the time were neither loyal to KMT nor CCP.
Having control of much of the Northern China had given the CCP the crucial advantage of being able to enter Manchuria faster than KMT, and thus receiving the much touted Soviet supplies.
mmm, no, the reason why the KMT were able to take the northen cities was because of the american air lift of KMT troops. The Japanese would surrender to the CCP or KMT, they just wanted to go home after the war.
A shameful chapter to the KMT, the US sent 100K US marines to Shandong to prevent a possible incursion into China by the USSR and to ward off the CCP...
All the same, they got the control of the cities and townships.
well, yes, and you are assuming that smuggling can meet the demand. Also, you set the question to:
So who do you buy arms and material from? the western allies who is allied to the KMT? anywhere east of Germany in europe is soviet territory, east of which is allied territory; The US/Canada is allied. where do you buy material from?
And, how many tonnes can you reasonably smuggle? We are talking about 300 ship loads, or 1,200,000 ton a year that was supplied by the Soviets. Do the math. 50 kg on a back pack, 500kg by horse and cattle, 5 tons on a truck, 15 tons per rail car, 4000 ton per ship. how are you going to smuggle anywhere near that level when the rail is not connected, the roads are poor? you get 2/3rd of the population of china 200 million peasants will be able to haul maybe 1,000,000 tons
And how do you pay for it? the CCP were buying things from Soviet Credit, the KMT was buying things from American Credit. if you cut the soviet out, who does the financing? war is not cheap, there is a reason why the US gold reserve nowadays is so massive compared to everyone else; from lend lease.
I think, my replies above already addressed most of the points you raised in these paragraphs.
Hong Kong is 1500 km away from Shanxi where the CCP is; how much can the CCP smuggle over that distance with no railhead nor road network? In the 1970s, it took a day ~8 hours to sail from Hong Kong to Macau, it takes a month or two to ship to Beijing by boat and 3-4 months by train. in the 30s? it will probably be stolen along the way as the lax KMT guards that allows the smuggling is also not so bothered to profit from it.
If you think the CCP could not have smuggled the resources, then how do you propose Soviet Union (as the main contributor as you have suggested) was to send the supplies covertly? By armoured convoys through much of China and Japanese Manchuria?
The reality is that trading was still thriving in most parts of China, CCP smuggled through the legit commercial channels. There were many CCP sympathisers/agents amongst capitalists and merchants, which still operates freely and are distributing goods throughout the towns and cities in China. The KMT officials and connected merchants constantly had restricted goods like medicines go "missing", and had these sold in black markets for a high profit; and the CCP agents and sympathisers also had the restricted goods go "missing", and had these through the commercial supply routes smuggled to CCP occupied regions. No one cared about the "accounting errors", because everyone had them, and that was how everyone got rich.
All of your arguments of the ab-most importance of Soviet supplies rests on PLA having entered Manchuria and having already controlled much of the northern China above Yangtze river. Only then had they the logistic possibility of receiving large shipments of supplies. But my arguments had been all along that by that stage, the CCP winning was already just a matter of time. The tide was already turning, and CCP was already on the up. The CCP strategy has been working, and there were no significant changes in the KMT strategy nor organisation to suggest any change in the general direction of all things were going.
The Soviet supplies just shortened the time for the CCP to obtain victory, and was a CONSEQUENCE, rather than the cause of CCP successes; much like the withdrawing of US aid to the KMT was a consequence, rather than the cause of their failure.
