Why did the Communists win the Chinese Civil War?

solarz said:

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.

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I agree with your posting all those million supposedly killed by Mao is nothing but statistical error or using faulty statistic purposedly to demonize Mao Surely there are million die but mostly due to failed economic policy and severe natural disaster that visiting china periodically in history.

But as Goebels once said Lie repeated million times becomes a truth

But it is not the France who invented this million killed in GLF But American demographer and American Neo con Sinologist Rodick MacFarguhar who first invented this "million killed" Here is the story


Official Chinese sources, released after Mao’s death, suggest that 16.5 million people died in the Great Leap Forward. These figures were released during an ideological campaign by the government of Deng Xiaoping against the legacy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. However, there seems to be no way of independently, authenticating these figures due to the great mystery about how they were gathered and preserved for twenty years before being released to the general public. American researchers managed to increase this figure to around 30 million by combining the Chinese evidence with extrapolations of their own from China’s censuses in 1953 and 1964. Recently, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in their book Mao: the Unknown Story reported 70 million killed by Mao, including 38 million in the Great Leap Forward.

Western writers on the subject have taken a completely disproportionate view of the period, mesmerized, as they are, by massive death toll figures from dubious sources. They concentrate only on policy excesses and it is likely that their views on the damage that these did are greatly exaggerated. There has been a failure to understand how some of the policies developed in the Great Leap Forward actually benefited the Chinese people, once the initial disruption was over.

U.S. state agencies have provided assistance to those with a negative attitude to Maoism (and communism in general) throughout the post-war period. For example, the veteran historian of Maoism Roderick MacFarquhar edited The China Quarterly in the 1960s. This magazine published allegations about massive famine deaths that have been quoted ever since. It later emerged that this journal received money from a CIA front organisation, as MacFarquhar admitted in a recent letter to The London Review of Books. (Roderick MacFarquhar states that he did not know the money was coming from the CIA while he was editing The China Quarterly.)



Chinese data on famine deaths was used by a group of U.S. demographers in their own work on the subject. These demographers were Ansley Coale, John Aird and Judith Banister. They can be said to be the three people that first popularized the “massive death toll” hypothesis in the West. Ansley Coale was a very influential figure in American demography. He was employed by the Office of Population Research which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1980s when he was publishing his work on China. John Aird was a research specialist on China at the U.S. Bureau Of The Census. In 1990, he wrote a book published by the American Enterprise Institute, which is a body that promotes neo-liberal policies. This book was called Slaughter of the Innocents and was a critique of China’s one-child birth control policy. Judith Banister was another worker at the U.S. Bureau of the Census. She was given time off from her employment there to write a book that included a discussion of the Great Leap Forward deaths.35 John Aird read her book pre-publication and gave her advice.

Judith Banister produced figures that appear to show 30 million excess deaths in the Great Leap Forward. This is nearly twice the figure indicated by official Chinese statistics. She believes the official statistics under-estimate the total mortality because of under-reporting of deaths by the Chinese population during the period in question.

Banister calculates the total number of under-reported deaths in this period by first calculating the total number of births between the two censuses of 1953 and 1964. She does this using data derived from the census and data from a retrospective fertility survey carried out in 1982. (Participants in the survey were asked to describe the number of babies they had given birth to between 1940 and 1981). Once the population of 1953 and 1964 is known, and the total number of births between these two years is known, it is possible to calculate the number of deaths that would have occurred during this period. She uses this information to calculate a total number of deaths for the eleven year period that is much higher than official death rates show.

To estimate how many of these deaths occurred in the Great Leap Forward, Banister returns to the official Chinese death rate statistics. She assumes that these figures indicate the actual trend of deaths in China in this period, even though they were too low in absolute terms. For example, she assumes that the official death rate of 25 per thousand in 1960 does indeed indicate that a huge increase in the death rate occurred in 1960. However, she combines this with her estimates of under-reporting of deaths in the period 1953-1964 to come up with a figure of 45 deaths per thousand in 1960. In years in which no famine is alleged the death toll also increases using this method. In 1957, for example, she increases the death rate from the official figure of 10.8 per thousand to 18 per thousand. Banister then compares the revised death rates in good years with the revised death rates in alleged famine years. Banister is then able to come up with her estimate of 30 million deaths excess deaths during the Great Leap Forward.36

The juicy topic of Chinese politics.

I think there are many contributing factors on why CCP won.
But as many have said, the issue of leadership quality is a big issue.

The KMT was essentially a giant entity including many self serving interests, Jiang had to keep these people in power in order to control them.

The CCP started off as a small core group within the government which slowly built up it's membership from educated men. In the beginning the CCP leaders even shunned aspirants with only military back ground, several of the marshals were denied membership initially.

In all honesty it would have been difficult for KMT to protect the interests of the peasants, as doing so would greatly upset many of their military leaders. Jiang understood the situation, but he had to get rid of the CCP before cleaning the house so to speak, as doing so with a possible rival party might cause many of the warlords to rebel and join the opposition. I personally believe that was the only way for KMT to remain in power, if left unchecked the CCP would eventually absorb all the quality leaders and take control of China.

This however is not unbeknownst to at least some of the warlords, many of whom understandably displayed a complete lack of interest in exterminating the CCP. This presented the CCP with an opportunity to slowly work their way into building up a proper power base, isolating and eliminating the ones that posed a threat then convincing sympathetic minds to join.

In other words, CCP succeeded largely because there was a KMT that tried to hold everything together. Had KMT not been there or collapsed, the CCP would have been the primary enemy and wouldn't have much of a chance in surviving the early years.

Then there's the matter of common perception among the populace, needless to say the nature of KMT did not elicit much good will from the peasants. And after WWII many of the warlords forcefully annexed private properties as traitor property, even from the well off supporters of their own party, this accelerated their loss of support.

KMT was also abandoned by their allies, my great uncle was part of the garrison holding the city of Qingdao, they were lead to believe large reinforcements from the US were going to be shipped in. Many refugees from the surrounding area swarmed to Qingdao, the resources of the city were stretched thin causing massive inflation, yet they held on for years but no reinforcements arrived, so their forces had to retreat across the sea.

xywdx said:

The KMT was essentially a giant entity including many self serving interests, Jiang had to keep these people in power in order to control them.

...

In all honesty it would have been difficult for KMT to protect the interests of the peasants, as doing so would greatly upset many of their military leaders. Jiang understood the situation, but he had to get rid of the CCP before cleaning the house so to speak, as doing so with a possible rival party might cause many of the warlords to rebel and join the opposition. I personally believe that was the only way for KMT to remain in power, if left unchecked the CCP would eventually absorb all the quality leaders and take control of China.

...

In other words, CCP succeeded largely because there was a KMT that tried to hold everything together. Had KMT not been there or collapsed, the CCP would have been the primary enemy and wouldn't have much of a chance in surviving the early years.

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If you look at the beginning of the Republic of China, the Communist Party was an active part of it. Song Qingling was a prominent member, and even Sun Zhongshan was happy to associate with the communist party. Many KMT members also held membership in the communist party.

This all changed when Jiang came to power and began purging leftists from the KMT. In essence, Jiang consolidated his power by allying with the aristocracy and the elite. Obviously, communist ideas of land reforms and workers' rights are anathema to that social class, hence why Jiang was so zealous in his determination to eradicate the communists.

We have to understand that the first half of the 20th century was a time of enormous transition for China. In a mere 50 years, China transformed from a feudal society with an imperial government into a socialist republic with unprecedented social equality.

True, by western standards, China was still a backwater country. However, let's compare China in 1900 to China in 1950:

1900:
- widespread serfdom and indentured servitude, peasants and servants were at the mercy of their landlords or masters
- foot-binding and concubinage was the norm, women had basically no rights
- eunuchs
- dynastic rule
- soldiers fought with spears and swords as often as with rifles
- foreign armies could invade with impunity (the infamous Eight-Nation Alliance)

1950:
- no serfdom or indentured servitude
- "women hold up half the sky"
- committee rule
- Korean War

solarz said:

If you look at the beginning of the Republic of China, the Communist Party was an active part of it. Song Qingling was a prominent member, and even Sun Zhongshan was happy to associate with the communist party. Many KMT members also held membership in the communist party.

This all changed when Jiang came to power and began purging leftists from the KMT. In essence, Jiang consolidated his power by allying with the aristocracy and the elite. Obviously, communist ideas of land reforms and workers' rights are anathema to that social class, hence why Jiang was so zealous in his determination to eradicate the communists.

We have to understand that the first half of the 20th century was a time of enormous transition for China. In a mere 50 years, China transformed from a feudal society with an imperial government into a socialist republic with unprecedented social equality.

True, by western standards, China was still a backwater country. However, let's compare China in 1900 to China in 1950:

1900:
- widespread serfdom and indentured servitude, peasants and servants were at the mercy of their landlords or masters
- foot-binding and concubinage was the norm, women had basically no rights
- eunuchs
- dynastic rule
- soldiers fought with spears and swords as often as with rifles
- foreign armies could invade with impunity (the infamous Eight-Nation Alliance)

1950:
- no serfdom or indentured servitude
- "women hold up half the sky"
- committee rule
- Korean War

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I agree with you for the most part, my point was the CCP and the Warlords cannot both exist at the same time.
Jiang can deal with one of the two elements and time would be on his side, but with both time is his enemy, inaction was not an option.
He felt that the CCP was still in its early days, and would be the easier one to eradicate, he made his move.
He did not want to kill everyone from the CCP, most of the members would have served the government well. They can serve as individuals with their own ideals, but the CCP had to cease to exist as a distinguishable entity within the government if he wanted to keep control.
As the leader of the KMT, he made the correct decision.

We have to understand that Jiang only personally controlled a small fraction of the KMT army, imagine what would have happened if he decided to side with communist ideals, it would have been bloody civil war right from the start, and no one would be left to fight the Japanese.

Mao would not have done much better in Jiang's position, there is no way he can bring forth his proposed reforms and keep control of the army, he would have to fight every single step of the way again with no one left to fight the Japanese. Jiang's decision to purge the CCP was a necessary duty as a result of his station, most leaders would have came to the same conclusion.

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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You write that as if China had open debate and everyone agreed to launch the Great Leap Forward. It fact it was conceived of by a tiny group of unelected leaders and carried through massive coercion. To disobey would mean being expelled from the party and possibly losing you and your family's food ration. One of the reasons no one was there to challenge Mao until 1962 was because in 1957-58, Mao arrested, purged, and executed hundreds of his critics, intellectuals and inside and outside the party. A relentless propaganda campaign backed by the threat of violence whipped up initial enthusiasm for the Great Leap Forward, not democratic consensus.

Don't forget that the Great Leap Forward constituted democide: the intentional destruction of a social class. That social class was the landlords, businesspeople, or anyone rich. Mao put quotas on each village to arrest and execute a certain number of "landlords". These weren't accidental deaths, we're talking about millions of executions, suicides induced by torture and harassment, and forced starvation.

Geographer said:

You write that as if China had open debate and everyone agreed to launch the Great Leap Forward. It fact it was conceived of by a tiny group of unelected leaders and carried through massive coercion. To disobey would mean being expelled from the party and possibly losing you and your family's food ration. One of the reasons no one was there to challenge Mao until 1962 was because in 1957-58, Mao arrested, purged, and executed hundreds of his critics, intellectuals and inside and outside the party. A relentless propaganda campaign backed by the threat of violence whipped up initial enthusiasm for the Great Leap Forward, not democratic consensus.

Don't forget that the Great Leap Forward constituted democide: the intentional destruction of a social class. That social class was the landlords, businesspeople, or anyone rich. Mao put quotas on each village to arrest and execute a certain number of "landlords". These weren't accidental deaths, we're talking about millions of executions, suicides induced by torture and harassment, and forced starvation.

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You speak as if democracy was an option during those days. Was slavery voted out in the US?

Unfortunately, your idea that people can just sit down and talk about their problems and come to a solution is just a fantasy. As an example, Mao and the CCP elites did not order the death of landlords. What they ordered were land reforms and the confiscation of private manufacturing property (i.e. factories). It was the peasants themselves, those who had been oppressed for generations by their landlords, who basically lynch mobbed their former oppressors.

xywdx said:

I agree with you for the most part, my point was the CCP and the Warlords cannot both exist at the same time.
Jiang can deal with one of the two elements and time would be on his side, but with both time is his enemy, inaction was not an option.
He felt that the CCP was still in its early days, and would be the easier one to eradicate, he made his move.
He did not want to kill everyone from the CCP, most of the members would have served the government well. They can serve as individuals with their own ideals, but the CCP had to cease to exist as a distinguishable entity within the government if he wanted to keep control.
As the leader of the KMT, he made the correct decision.

We have to understand that Jiang only personally controlled a small fraction of the KMT army, imagine what would have happened if he decided to side with communist ideals, it would have been bloody civil war right from the start, and no one would be left to fight the Japanese.

Mao would not have done much better in Jiang's position, there is no way he can bring forth his proposed reforms and keep control of the army, he would have to fight every single step of the way again with no one left to fight the Japanese. Jiang's decision to purge the CCP was a necessary duty as a result of his station, most leaders would have came to the same conclusion.

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I would have to disagree. Jiang allied with the aristocracy out of self-interest and ambition. It was not a necessary move to secure the integrity of the nation. The KMT made this mistake when Sun gave the post of president to Yuan Shikai. Jiang essentially followed in Yuan's footsteps, only successfully subverting the KMT to his own goals.

Geographer said:

You write that as if China had open debate and everyone agreed to launch the Great Leap Forward. It fact it was conceived of by a tiny group of unelected leaders and carried through massive coercion. To disobey would mean being expelled from the party and possibly losing you and your family's food ration. One of the reasons no one was there to challenge Mao until 1962 was because in 1957-58, Mao arrested, purged, and executed hundreds of his critics, intellectuals and inside and outside the party. A relentless propaganda campaign backed by the threat of violence whipped up initial enthusiasm for the Great Leap Forward, not democratic consensus.

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who said it was about democratic consensus? i don't think any of us are under any illusions of democratic procedures during the mao era. this was the age of absolutism. the great leap foward was a radical theory of industrial/economic development that made huge changes to the socioeconomic organization in terms of the modes of production and how people lived. it resulted in disaster, but that doesn't mean that most people at the time weren't convinced. the vast majority of people at the time were uneducated and full of revolutionary fervour, with the charismatic figure of mao and the promise of utopia, this is just how history happened.

the great leap foward was the result of mao's belief that an advanced ideology was could overcome circumstantial reality. he didn't have any technical (scientific/economic) knowledge and believed that the sheer will of the people, regardless of technological or logistical obstacles, could create miracles in industrial development. this was in contrast to a more practical and realistic mode of economic development championed by liu shaoqi and deng xiaoping, but which mao saw as being too close to "soviet revisionism."

the vast majority of chinese people were not communist party members, so they could not "be expelled from the party" if they disobeyed. if they disobeyed they would have been labelled counterrevolutionary and not only persecuted politically but more likely ostracized by the people around them. social coercion, not state coercion was the primary means by which maoism enforces its ideological prescriptions. during the mao era, the party WAS society, if you were against the mass line, you were against the people.

Geographer said:

Don't forget that the Great Leap Forward constituted democide: the intentional destruction of a social class. That social class was the landlords, businesspeople, or anyone rich. Mao put quotas on each village to arrest and execute a certain number of "landlords". These weren't accidental deaths, we're talking about millions of executions, suicides induced by torture and harassment, and forced starvation.

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whenever there is regime change, whether it be in imperial chinese dynasties or in modern states the world over, there is always redistribution of resources. a new bunch of people take power and the old elite have to pay the cost. at the start of many imperial chinese dynasties, the new dynasty would take land from the old nobility and distribute it to people loyal to itself and also the poor to gain political support. especially in a communist revolution that emphasizes class struggle, we can expect this process to be much more intense.

this "democide" as you call it doesn't really have much to do with the great leap in itself, it was how the communists gained support from beginning. in fact, the act of appropriating and distributing land from landlords to their former tenants and workers was started in 1927 in the first areas the ccp controlled in hunan and sichuan. if anything, the revolution and the entire mao era can be considered "democide."

fact of the matter was, in most cases when landlords were killed it wasn't the government doing it per se, it was the tenants and local poor whom usually hated the landlord's guts either with or without justification. the chinese experience is a revolutionary one based on class struggle, it made "smash the landlord class" one of its slogans, so it's rather redundant to make claims of "democide" in this context. though the state certainly egged them on, the number of landlords that were killed is demonstrative of how exploitative and loathed many of them were.

-this is coming from the son of a 地主仔.

Professor Frank Dikotter of the University of Hong Kong has some very different views. According to an Economist about his book The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945-57, Dikotter says 1) Mao and top CCP officials did order the execution of thousands of "landlords" despite the fact that widespread feudalism did not exist.

Much was wrong in the Chinese countryside, especially after decades of war, but the junker class which the Communists attacked happened not to exist. Nor was village life across China feudal. Most Chinese were small landowners, with little variation in wealth. Tenants were not much poorer than owners, since only fertile land could be let. In the rice-growing south tenants were more prosperous than owners on the hardscrabble plains of the north.

No matter. Work teams fanned out, calling interminable meetings at which villagers were divided into a system of five artificial classes borrowed from the Soviet Union: “landlords”, “rich peasants”, “middle peasants”, “poor peasants” and “labourers”. Members of these last two, those who stood to inherit land confiscated from the rich, were urged to “turn hardship into hatred”, as Mr Dikotter puts it. Old grudges were dug up, and greed played a powerful part. Occasionally, whole villages stood bravely behind those accused of being landlords. For the most part, as the indoctrination of the work teams ground on, close-knit communities disintegrated....

Throughout these orgies of violence, Mao and other leaders coolly laid down quotas—up to four deaths for every thousand Chinese was considered appropriate. In the three provinces under the jurisdiction of Deng Xiaoping, known today for having been open-minded, 150,000 had been executed by November 1951.

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Geographer said:

Professor Frank Dikotter of the University of Hong Kong has some very different views. According to an Economist

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about his book The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945-57, Dikotter says 1) Mao and top CCP officials did order the execution of thousands of "landlords" despite the fact that widespread feudalism did not exist.

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Looks like just another western prof with some 'views'. I don't see any evidence provided to back up the numbers.
Many were killed is true but it was a time of war, revolution. It should be seen in the backdrop of the millions of peasants with zero rights over the centuries killed who were saved by the revolution.
When you go to war, you plan for what's an acceptable casualty number before backing off. That looks like what Mao was doing in the article instead of ordering that number to be killed.
Again, you need to compare with other countries. How many millions were killed in the centuries of injustice in US for example ? How many would have been saved if they had someone like Mao to launch a revolution to force change quickly instead of dragging on for decades ?

Geographer said:

Dikotter says 1) Much was wrong in the Chinese countryside, especially after decades of war, but the junker class which the Communists attacked happened not to exist. Nor was village life across China feudal. Most Chinese were small landowners, with little variation in wealth. Tenants were not much poorer than owners, since only fertile land could be let. In the rice-growing south tenants were more prosperous than owners on the hardscrabble plains of the north.

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i'm from hunan in the "rice-growing" south, i don't know the exact proportion of the population that were "small land owners," but rest assured the vast majority were immensely poor. rice cultivation is heavily labour intensive and it took backbreaking work to eek out a living. my father's mother came from a landlord's family and she told me how she used to have her own horse (a rare luxury in southern china) and would go to collect rent from tenants in a sedan chair. i've been to villages in the region where different compounds previously owned by her family were now occupied by various other families.

undoubtedly, there was injustice done when the land was taken from her family and redistributed, but the injustice done to them does not excuse dikotter's misappropriation of chinese history in order to make a point. maybe china was not feudal in the medieval european sense, but there was most definitely a large socioeconomic disparity between landlords and tenants in rural china. this was a social circumstance that had been acknowledged in cinema, literature, and culture even before the communist takeover.

Geographer said:

No matter. Work teams fanned out, calling interminable meetings at which villagers were divided into a system of five artificial classes borrowed from the Soviet Union: “landlords”, “rich peasants”, “middle peasants”, “poor peasants” and “labourers”. Members of these last two, those who stood to inherit land confiscated from the rich, were urged to “turn hardship into hatred”, as Mr Dikotter puts it. Old grudges were dug up, and greed played a powerful part. Occasionally, whole villages stood bravely behind those accused of being landlords. For the most part, as the indoctrination of the work teams ground on, close-knit communities disintegrated....

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all social classes are artificially defined. although these five categories were ultimately used for political discrimination, they are not arbitrary. i don't doubt that in many cases grudges were indeed dug up and poor peasants were indeed instigated into attacking the better off; it is no secret that a great many innocent people had been persecuted. however to say that this was the only dynamic would be to paint a one sided picture of history. certainly the communists emphasized the economic disparity in rural china in order to strengthen their narrative of exploitation/liberation, but dikotter's claim that such a disparity did not exist is no closer to a truthful narrative.

for myself, dikotter's claims are problematic because they do not tell the whole story. like many chinese, my family was changed forever by this "democide" as you call it. my grandmothers on both sides of the family came from households with higher economic status while both my grandfathers came from unimaginable poverty, they married because both my grandmothers needed to escape the stigma surrounding their class. while this means that i know full well how much social scarring the communists' class struggle caused, i am also aware of the exploitation and vast inequity in chinese society pre-1949.