Chinese Revolution · CHAPTER 10 ·
Chinese Civil War (1945–47)
Chapter 10 of China in Revolution, 1911–1949: “The Failed Peace and Manchuria”
Japan’s surrender in 1945 set off a race for Manchuria: Soviet forces overran Manchukuo and let captured weapons reach the Communists, while the United States moved Nationalist armies north. American mediation produced agreements but no trust, and Nationalist gains, including Yan’an in 1947, hid overextension.
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The map above is the world of China, 1945 — Surrender — the liberated areas.
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SHORT EXPLANATION
When Japan surrendered, accepting the surrender of its forces meant taking ground the other Chinese party also wanted. Manchuria became the great prize. Soviet troops overran Manchukuo, removed industrial equipment and allowed Japanese arms to reach the Communists; the United States transported Nationalist armies north for the formal surrenders. Industry, ports and railways made the northeast important to both sides’ prospects in a civil war.
Mao and Chiang signed agreements at Chungking, and American mediation brought further promises, but neither side trusted the other with its security. Nationalist armies took cities and railways in 1946 while Communist forces rebuilt in the surrounding countryside. The government even captured an evacuated Yan’an in 1947. Its apparent high point concealed long supply lines and declining support.
The full story
Japan’s surrender left a question that neither Chinese party could afford to leave to its rival: who would occupy the territory and receive the Japanese surrender? Manchuria was especially valuable. Its factories, ports and railways offered resources with which to fight a Chinese war, and the hatching on the map shows the region contested from the outset.
The two tan arrows from the north mark August Storm (the ● at Harbin). The Soviet Union entered the war on 9 August 1945 and overran Manchukuo in eleven days. Soviet forces removed industrial equipment that a reparations commission later valued at nearly $900 million. Captured Japanese arms meanwhile reached Communist columns arriving on foot and by junk from Shandong (the red arrow across the gulf). The blue coastal arrow shows the other contender: the United States moved roughly half a million Nationalist troops by sea and air to receive the surrender of a million Japanese in the north. Washington had made a vast commitment to Chiang’s government. Before the struggle for Manchuria’s cities was settled, Communist control was spreading in its countryside.
Peace was discussed even as each side sought an advantage. At Chungking (the ●), Mao and Chiang toasted the republic and signed a unity communiqué in October 1945. General Marshall arrived to mediate, and the parties agreed on a ceasefire and a joint army on paper. Each, however, feared entrusting its security to a state the other might control. Fighting resumed.
Chiang sent his best armies to take Manchuria’s cities against American advice. In spring 1946, at Siping (the ✕), Lin Biao met them in conventional battle, lost an estimated 40,000 men and withdrew north across the Sungari. The victory seemed decisive, but the positions afterward tell a more complicated story. Nationalist troops held cities and rail lines; Communist forces recruited and rebuilt in the countryside around them. The government had inherited the problem Japan had faced: holding points and routes did not secure the land between them.
In March 1947 Nationalist troops captured Yan’an (the ● in the loess hills), the Communist base shown in red since 1935. Its leaders had already evacuated. The photographs of Nationalist banners therefore recorded a symbolic success with little military value. This was the government’s high-water mark, but the cost of holding distant gains and the erosion of support made its position less secure than the map of its advances suggested.
FULL EXPLANATION
How much did Stalin arm Mao?
Nationalist and Cold War accounts have sometimes credited Stalin with handing over Japan’s Manchurian arsenals and thereby manufacturing Communist victory. The archives read by Odd Arne Westad and Steven Levine support a more complicated account. Rifles, artillery and other Kwantung Army stocks reached Communist columns: some passed directly, and more became available when withdrawing Soviet troops conveniently “failed” to guard them. These were meaningful supplies. Soviet policy also had other aims. Moscow removed factories for reparations, signed a friendship treaty with Chiang and hedged against a Communist victory it did not expect. Lin Biao’s force grew at least as much through local recruitment, absorbed puppet troops and mobilization around land reform as through Soviet supplies. Soviet intervention decisively tilted the contest, but the Communists still had to build and organize the army that won it.
“Who lost China?” and its consequences
The question “who lost China” was being asked before the war ended. Its premise is that China belonged within America’s power to keep or lose. Yet a few hundred million dollars in aid and Marshall’s mission could not by themselves reorganize a continental society against its own political and military forces. The accusation nevertheless had lasting effects. During the McCarthy years the State Department’s China specialists John Service, John Paton Davies and John Carter Vincent were driven out after accurately reporting that the Nationalists were losing. The government discarded expertise when it needed it. Historians have linked that loss to two decades of non-recognition of the People’s Republic and to misjudgments that helped carry the United States into Vietnam. Before assigning responsibility for a country’s loss, we should ask what control the outside power actually had.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
Why Manchuria mattered. Manchuria offered the industrial complex, ports, railways and grain with which an army might sustain a long campaign, as well as a border with the Soviet Union. Mao sent his best cadres and about 100,000 troops from other theaters in autumn 1945 under the direction “develop the north, defend the south”. Chiang also had a powerful reason to recover the northeast: its loss in 1931 had damaged his legitimacy. Wedemeyer and Marshall warned that supplying his armies there would be difficult. Both leaders understood the prize; holding it would test the resources each could bring to the region.
Stalin's two policies. Stalin made a formal agreement with Chiang while leaving opportunities open to the Communists. The August 1945 friendship treaty secured concessions associated with Yalta concerning Port Arthur and the railways, as well as recognition of Mongolia’s independence. Soviet forces removed machinery, but as they withdrew in spring 1946 Communist troops gained access to Japanese stocks and positions near vacated cities. Moscow sought advantage in a weak, divided China and did not expect a Communist victory outright.
Why mediation was difficult. A coalition required the two parties to place their armies within a common state. For each, that meant risking the one protection it had against the other. The 1927 purge described in Chapter 5 had given both reason to remember what a broken alliance could mean. They used truces to reposition: Nationalist historians have argued that the 1946 ceasefires helped Lin Biao recover after Siping, while Chiang’s victories strengthened his belief in force. Marshall could obtain signatures and pause the fighting. He could not provide the security each side demanded before surrendering control of its army.
The return to the coast. The return to the coast gave the Nationalists an opportunity to turn victory into public support. Instead, corrupt takeover officials seized assets, currency conversion harmed people holding puppet-issued money, and former collaborationist industry went to favored hands. Hyperinflation added to urban hardship. In villages the government recovered, landlords returned with it. The manner of recovery weakened the support the state would need for the war ahead.
THE TURNING POINT
August Storm, 9–20 August 1945. The Soviet advance of 9–20 August 1945 opened Manchuria to a new contest in eleven days. It left Japanese arsenals within Communist reach, removed industrial equipment and placed a Soviet border sanctuary near the struggle. Chiang had strong reasons to recover the region, yet his garrisons would have to be supplied over great distances. In the 1948 Liaoshen campaign they faced siege, a sealed rail gate and supply lines extending some 1,800 kilometers. August Storm helped establish that arena and its initial positions; the later fighting determined the outcome.
What it changed
Land and the war in the countryside. From May 1946, Communist policy in northern base areas moved beyond wartime rent reduction to outright redistribution. The process was sweeping and often violent. It also gave millions of families land they had reason to fear losing if the Nationalists returned. Land reform helped mobilize recruits and support; at Huaihai in 1948 civilian porters pushed barrows to supply the armies whose victory mattered to the land they held.
An army rebuilt after Siping. Lin Biao’s retreat across the Sungari was not the end of his army. North of the river he rebuilt it as the Northeast Field Army, using Japanese equipment, absorbed puppet troops and conscripts from villages affected by land reform. Winter offensives wore down Nationalist garrisons. By 1948 the force outnumbered and outgunned the government’s best troops, an unprecedented material advantage for a Communist army in this period.
The end of Marshall's mission. Marshall left in January 1947 and blamed both parties for the failure of mediation. Aid to Nanjing continued: it tied Washington to the Nationalist cause without securing the government’s survival. Already, Americans were beginning to ask “who lost China”. That question assumes a power over China’s future that deserves examination.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — The “lost chance” debate: could the 1945–46 mediation have produced a coalition China, or was civil war inevitable?
The agreements themselves give the case for a lost chance some force. Both parties signed the October 1945 communiqué and the January 1946 ceasefire, and China was weary of war. An enforced standstill might have kept the Communists out of Manchuria’s cities and arguably limited their ambitions. The difficulty was deciding who could enforce such a settlement and reassure the parties that it would last. Archives opened since the 1990s, examined by Odd Arne Westad, Chen Jian and others, show Mao treating negotiation as a phase of struggle (“talk, talk, fight, fight”). Chiang’s diaries reveal corresponding distrust and reliance on force. Both Leninist party-armies remembered 1927 and feared disarmament under a state the other might control. Marshall could suspend the shooting, but he could not guarantee either side against its rival’s victory. The skeptical reading is more persuasive: both found coalition useful to discuss, yet neither accepted the security arrangements needed to sustain it. A signed agreement matters, and so does the means of enforcing it.
An interesting fact
In 1946 the Pauley reparations mission toured Manchuria and estimated the value of Soviet removals—generators, machine tools, locomotives and whole factory lines—at roughly 858 million US dollars, or about 2 billion including deterioration. Moscow called the equipment “war booty” taken from Japan. Photographs of concrete floors bolted for machines that had vanished circulated worldwide. The region remained a prize, but its stripped factories made grain, recruits and porters all the more important to the armies competing for it.
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