Why did the Communists win the Chinese Civil War?

Geographer said:

I see. So the farmers didn't know anything about Marxism? What did the CCP tell them about their plans for the future? Did the farmers expect to own the land they were living on, or did they have an idea the government would nationalize and collectivize it?

I doubt conditions for the farmers between 1958-1961 were a step up from anything experienced in peacetime pre-PRC rule.

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Probably they were. Much of the previous hundred years of unrest, revolution, Invasion and Civil War, would have been times of virtual endless anarchy in many respects and the CCP did restore law and order if nothing else. Famine was nothing new, and the problems of the early decades of CCP rule were blips in an otherwise improving situation.
In 1949, China was a wrecked country after the aforementioned century of turmoil. Such Infrastructure that had not been destroyed by conflict would have been antique and dilapidated. Physical communications would have been severely limited, which meant that it would have been difficult for the country to take advantage of its vast size and widely distributed natural resources - a major factor btw in the famines of the GLF. On top of that unex munitions; much of it deliberately laid, made large parts of the country side lethal to farmers and their families. On top of this, the KMT had retreated with the nations treasury in 49 leaving the rest of the country virtually penniless.
Despite all this, Life expectancy, GDP and Population did all increase significantly between 1949 and the 1969 as the CCP managed to clear munitions and generally repair/rebuild critical infrastructure and get the country moving again.
Anyone old enough to remember would have been well aware of this.

Probably they were. Much of the previous hundred years of unrest, revolution, Invasion and Civil War, would have been times of virtual endless anarchy in many respects and the CCP did restore law and order if nothing else. Famine was nothing new, and the problems of the early decades of CCP rule were blips in an otherwise improving situation.
In 1949, China was a wrecked country after the aforementioned century of turmoil. Such Infrastructure that had not been destroyed by conflict would have been antique and dilapidated. Physical communications would have been severely limited, which meant that it would have been difficult for the country to take advantage of its vast size and widely distributed natural resources - a major factor btw in the famines of the GLF. On top of that unex munitions; much of it deliberately laid, made large parts of the country side lethal to farmers and their families. On top of this, the KMT had retreated with the nations treasury in 49 leaving the rest of the country virtually penniless.
Despite all this, Life expectancy, GDP and Population did all increase significantly between 1949 and the 1969 as the CCP managed to clear munitions and generally repair/rebuild critical infrastructure and get the country moving again.
Anyone old enough to remember would have been well aware of this.

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Was there any four year period in which 20 million Chinese died from government-created famine before 1958? It seems that most of the benefits you list come from cessation of hostilities rather than good CCP leadership or economic policies. As such, farmers would have gotten the same benefits, minus the collectivization of land, if the KMT had won the war.

Moreover, if farmers supported the CCP because the CCP promised to improve their living conditions, why didn't they rebel during the Great Leap Forward?

Geographer said:

Was there any four year period in which 20 million Chinese died from government-created famine before 1958? It seems that most of the benefits you list come from cessation of hostilities rather than good CCP leadership or economic policies. As such, farmers would have gotten the same benefits, minus the collectivization of land, if the KMT had won the war.

Moreover, if farmers supported the CCP because the CCP promised to improve their living conditions, why didn't they rebel during the Great Leap Forward?

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That is the trouble when you use facts which arise from the Propaganda of the Cold War, you lack the context in which to interpret the figures. The context in this instance would be the death rates and causes from the previous few decades, plus of course meteorological data and other general demographics. Without this any attempt to interpret a single event on its own is meaningless.
The GLF was an early initiative and could easily be one of the first times that modern, systematic records were taken and recorded throughout China.

If there is one thing that the traumatised people of a traumatised land will seize on irrespective, it is hope and they will cling to that hope even harder when things get tough, especially when the only alternative is none.

Geographer said:

Was there any four year period in which 20 million Chinese died from government-created famine before 1958? It seems that most of the benefits you list come from cessation of hostilities rather than good CCP leadership or economic policies. As such, farmers would have gotten the same benefits, minus the collectivization of land, if the KMT had won the war.

Moreover, if farmers supported the CCP because the CCP promised to improve their living conditions, why didn't they rebel during the Great Leap Forward?

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The 20 million figure (or 30 million, 60 million, 80 million, or whatever) is entirely bogus. This number varies from source to source, picked arbitrarily by a particular author.

The first documented mention of this figure comes from a research by some Frenchmen who used this methodology: they used the population data from 1951 to 1958 to calculate a rate of population increase, then applied that rate up to the 1960's to get an imaginary population figure. They then subtracted the actual population figure from the 1960's from their imaginary figure and got the "death" rate from that number.

It completely ignores that 1951-1958 was the post-war baby-boom years of China, and that during a famine, you'll obviously not keep having kids. It also ignores the variability in the census methodologies used during those decades. China had a population of 600 to 700 million during that period, and a deviation of even 1% would yield in a difference of 7 million people. To use this method to estimate "death" figures from the GLF is inane, and illustrates the extent of academic dishonesty.

Because the Communist had popular support & led by men who only few years later proved themselves to be good enough to defeat even the US in Korea while the KMT was led by a guy who even their US ally called a pea-brain, or was that peanut-brain ?

Geographer said:

The KMT has maintained that the reason the Communists won the Civil War is because the KMT exhausted all its military strength fighting Japan. Of the 22 main engagements of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the KMT was the primary and usually only Chinese participant.

How much did Soviet support help the CCP? As I understand it, the USSR initially favored the KMT over the CCP in 1945 for an unknown-to-me reason. Is that right? How much support did the surrendering Japanese army give the Communists? How important was American support for the KMT?

Who did Chinese popular opinion favor in the Civil War? We can break it down by socio-economic class like business people, farmers, land owners, intellectual, urban workers, and government officials.

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When you refer to the Chinese civil war do you only mean the period after World War Two? If so, that is only the final phase of the Chinese civil war that began with many rebellions coinciding with foreign invasions since the mid-1800s.

From the KMT's roots prior to its official founding after the revolution of 1911 through the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War Two years the KMT was pacifying in any way they can, including striking deals with, the many existing elites in China. In doing so, they accepted under their umbrella a lot of the people who benefited from and held on to feudal, corrupt, and/or simply self-serving practices at the expense of modernizing China and improving the lives of most ordinary Chinese. The KMT also failed to make much headway against the colonial invaders operating in China, due to both strategic choice and insufficient military strength.

From Chiang Kai Shek's takeover of the KMT in 1926 through the Xian incident in 1936 he focused the KMT on fighting domestic opponents including the CCP and avoided fighting the Japanese who were obviously preparing to/already expanding their invasion of China. Chiang re-prioritized who the KMT focused on fighting only after some of his own men kidnapped him in the Xian incident to change his mind on that specific topic.

The Second Sino-Japanese war breaks out in 1937 only about half a year after the Xian incident. During this war which for Chinese people morphs into World War Two, unofficial Chinese resistance naturally led to leadership by and support for the CCP as it relied on the CCP's demographic of ordinary Chinese in the countryside as well as in cities.

By the time of the final phase of the Chinese civil war after World War Two most ordinary Chinese favored the CCP over the KMT. It is impossible to do a socio-economic breakdown of support for either party due to lack of data but a logical guess would be the vast majority of the Chinese population, who were poor, including apparently many KMT troops who switched sides, probably were disillusioned with the KMT if not outright supportive of the CCP.

The 20 million figure (or 30 million, 60 million, 80 million, or whatever) is entirely bogus. This number varies from source to source, picked arbitrarily by a particular author.

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I think the analysis of many scholars, most recently that of Frank Dikotter (2010), who says 43-46 million died, is on balance accurate. The precise number is morally irrelevant though. The relevant facts are that the Great Leap Forward wrecked massive destruction on China and killed millions of people. It failed to accomplish any of its goals. There was no equivalent event under pre-Communist rule.

Geographer said:

I think the analysis of many scholars, most recently that of Frank Dikotter (2010), who says 43-46 million died, is on balance accurate. The precise number is morally irrelevant though. The relevant facts are that the Great Leap Forward wrecked massive destruction on China and killed millions of people. It failed to accomplish any of its goals. There was no equivalent event under pre-Communist rule.

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What is morally relevant is that there was no political group who tried as hard and succeeded as much as the CCP to empower and improve the lives of the vast majority of Chinese who prior to Communist rule were dirt poor, uneducated even often illiterate, had to worry about basic survival with few prospects beyond that, and are the embodiment of how the Chinese system had fallen behind the times and needed to change. The Great Leap Forward was but one of many failed experimental societal changes the Chinese people were up for trying in order to catch up with the forefront of societal development.

PanAsian said:

What is morally relevant is that there was no political group who tried as hard and succeeded as much as the CCP to empower and improve the lives of the vast majority of Chinese who prior to Communist rule were dirt poor, uneducated even often illiterate, had to worry about basic survival with few prospects beyond that, and are the embodiment of how the Chinese system had fallen behind the times and needed to change. The Great Leap Forward was but one of many failed experimental societal changes the Chinese people were up for trying in order to catch up with the forefront of societal development.

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As I've said many time elsewhere, those with a political axe to grind will always find fault with those they are opposed to. Even if the CCP were angels among men and performed the absolute greatest political and economic miracles of all time they'd still find something to attack with.

Geographer said:

I think the analysis of many scholars, most recently that of Frank Dikotter (2010), who says 43-46 million died, is on balance accurate. The precise number is morally irrelevant though. The relevant facts are that the Great Leap Forward wrecked massive destruction on China and killed millions of people. It failed to accomplish any of its goals. There was no equivalent event under pre-Communist rule.

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You also need to compare with the number of deaths caused by deliberate policies in other similarly sized countries in history like slavery, the justice system or even seemingly less drastic policies like the inadequate US health care system compared to other developed countries which caused countless millions of premature deaths over decades.
Unlike GLF which was a sudden single event easy to remember, these injustices in the US are spread over decades if not centuries becoming routine but the number of premature deaths caused are nonetheless very real.
The GLF was designed to take China forward which went wrong while the others are deliberate policies to benefit the business class or to suppress groups of people.

It's also dishonest to just look at the short period of GLF. You should look at the change life expectancy improvement since the Communist took power.