Chinese Revolution · CHAPTER 11 ·
Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin campaigns
Chapter 11 of China in Revolution, 1911–1949: “The Three Campaigns”
In 1948–49 three Communist campaigns decided China’s civil war. Liaoshen took Jinzhou in October 1948 and trapped the Nationalist armies in Manchuria, Huaihai destroyed Nationalist groups pocket by pocket, and Pingjin ended with Beiping’s surrender, removing about 1.5 million government troops in all.
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The map above is the world of China, 1948 — Liaoshen and Huaihai — the north goes red.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1950 · Europe in 1950.
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SHORT EXPLANATION
The Liaoshen campaign targeted Jinzhou, the railway gateway between Manchuria and China proper. Its capture trapped Nationalist armies in the northeast, and their surrender or defection changed the balance of manpower and equipment. At Changchun, a five-month siege brought mass civilian death; the map marks the city as a memorial.
Around Huaihai, Communist armies destroyed government forces in separate pockets, supplied by millions of civilian laborers. The Pingjin campaign then took Tianjin and secured Beiping by negotiation. About 1.5 million government troops were removed in the three campaigns, leaving the Yangtze without the strategic reserve needed to defend it.
The full story
In the autumn of 1948 the Nationalist armies in Manchuria faced a choice about their escape route. The railway through Jinzhou (the ✕) connected the northeast with China proper. Communist commanders made that junction the object of the Liaoshen campaign, rather than attacking every opposing force in turn. Jinzhou fell in thirty-one hours in October, leaving roughly half a million government troops cut off. Within weeks the trapped armies surrendered or defected, and Manchuria, contested since 1945, turned red. Twenty-one years after Nanchang, the Communists had the larger and better-equipped army.
Victory in Manchuria carried a terrible cost at Changchun (the ◆). Communist forces besieged the city for five months and starved its Nationalist garrison into surrender. An estimated 150,000 civilians died. The marker preserves their suffering as a memorial. Direction for the wider war came by telegraph from Xibaipo (the ●), a farm courtyard in the Taihang foothills where Mao and Zhu De ran a million-man war. It was their last rural headquarters, only months before the party would govern China.
The winter campaign around Xuzhou (the ✕ at Huaihai) moved the decisive fighting onto the plains. About 600,000 Communist soldiers faced 550,000 Nationalists, while Deng Xiaoping coordinated the front committee. More than five million civilian laborers brought grain and other supplies on carrying poles and barrows; land reform in 1946–47 had helped make that mobilization possible. Government divisions defected with their maps and radios, and Communist forces destroyed the encircled army groups one pocket at a time.
The Manchurian field army could now move through the passes for the Pingjin campaign. Tianjin fell after a twenty-nine-hour assault; in January 1949 General Fu Zuoyi surrendered Beiping (the ●) without a shell, leaving its palaces and universities intact. The three campaigns removed roughly 1.5 million government troops and destroyed the strategic reserve north of the Yangtze. The river remained a barrier, but the government had lost the organized strength needed for a durable defense and was already moving its gold.
FULL EXPLANATION
Changchun and the memory of victory
Communist forces surrounded Changchun from May to October 1948. Their aim was to make its Nationalist garrison surrender without the cost of an assault. Civilians caught between the lines paid for that choice: many were refused passage through the cordon as hunger increased the pressure on the defenders. Estimates place civilian deaths around 150,000, and some are considerably higher. This suffering found little place in the heroic founding narrative of the People’s Republic. Military writer Zhang Zhenglu published an account in 1989; it was banned. Changchun belongs in the history of the campaign alongside Jinzhou. The strategy that spared an attacking army could impose an immense cost on the people inside a besieged city.
The money crisis before defeat
The government’s financial crisis preceded the destruction of its armies. Years of printing money to finance war had eroded the fabi. In August 1948 the government introduced the gold yuan, requiring people to surrender gold, silver and foreign currency for the new notes. In Shanghai, Chiang Ching-kuo led a short anti-speculation drive backed by force. The new currency soon inflated rapidly, leaving families with paper that had lost much of its purchasing power. Suzanne Pepper and other historians emphasize the political damage. Merchants, teachers, civil servants and officers’ families were among those affected: these were people the government needed to conduct business, administer cities and maintain its army. The loss of their savings weakened the security and confidence of its own supporters before the winter’s military defeat. Inflation did not mechanically cause every defection, but it helps explain the conditions in which loyalty was tested.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
How encirclement worked. Lin Biao, Su Yu and Liu Bocheng had spent years fighting a stronger opponent. They learned to move their forces and choose where to fight. At Jinzhou, that experience served a larger design: take the transport gateway, isolate the armies behind it, and deal with garrisons and relief forces separately. This linking of battles to a common purpose is operational art. By 1948 the commanders had the resources to apply skills learned under constraint on a far larger scale.
Land reform and the supply line. An army on the plains needed food and ammunition brought forward continuously. The official Huaihai count lists 5.4 million civilian laborers helping to do that work. Villages that had received land had reason to fear a Nationalist victory and the return of landlords; they sent men, grain and barrows. Nationalist troops also drew on the countryside, sometimes requisitioning at gunpoint. The relationship each army had built with villagers mattered to its ability to sustain the campaign.
Command and withdrawal. Chiang directed operations by telephone from Nanjing and overrode theater commanders. In Manchuria, the delay in permitting withdrawal made escape increasingly difficult and left whole armies exposed. Communist fronts were assigned to committees that reviewed results. The command problem raised at Zunyi in Chapter 7 had acquired much greater consequences: decisions at the center could now trap army groups, while the opposing system could adjust its operations.
The decision to change sides. Nationalist soldiers and officers had reasons to doubt the government beyond the battlefield. Hyperinflation impoverished officers’ families, and the August 1948 gold-yuan reform took urban assets in exchange for notes that rapidly lost value. Communist forces put surrendered troops to use, offering units an alternative to fighting on. Fu Zuoyi’s daughter, a Communist agent, provided one connection across the lines during negotiations over Beiping. Her role belongs to a wider story of the government’s declining support.
THE TURNING POINT
Jinzhou, October 1948. The railway through Jinzhou was the route between Manchuria and China proper. Communist forces took the junction in thirty-one hours in October 1948, cutting off roughly half a million Nationalist troops. The subsequent surrender or defection of the northeastern armies strengthened the victors for the campaigns still ahead. The importance of Jinzhou lay in what control of its railway made possible elsewhere.
What it changed
The Yangtze line. The Yangtze remained between the Communist armies and the south, and troops and negotiations still stood in the way of a crossing. Yet the government had lost the strategic reserve needed for a durable defense. Chapter 12 follows the crossing.
Taking over the cities. Beiping’s negotiated surrender preserved its infrastructure, universities and administration. At Xibaipo, Communist cadres attended seminars to prepare for governing cities. A party that had once lost those cities was planning their administration, in contrast to practices associated with the Nationalist return in 1945.
The government moves east. During the winter of 1948–49, the government moved treasury bullion, Palace Museum crates, and naval and air assets toward Taiwan. These resources would help sustain it after its retreat. The island became the seat of the Republic of China after defeat on the mainland.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Did Communist skill or Nationalist collapse decide the three campaigns, and how far can we separate them?
Nationalist weakness is plain in the record. Inflation and the gold-yuan exchange damaged the government’s urban base, command interference exposed its armies, and defections transferred troops and American-made equipment to the PLA. But weakness in one army does not by itself explain how its opponent organized millions of porters or took Jinzhou in thirty-one hours. Communist commanders designed encirclements, mobilized supplies and incorporated surrendered forces. Each defection could weaken the government and strengthen its enemy at once. Odd Arne Westad gives weight both to the Nationalists’ political losses and to the military capacity of the force that defeated them. The two explanations identify different causes, yet the campaigns show them working together.
An interesting fact
Huaihai’s official count records 5.43 million civilian laborers supporting 600,000 soldiers, roughly nine laborers for each soldier. In winter they hauled grain, carried wounded men and pushed supplies across the plains in wheelbarrows. Chen Yi, a campaign commander, later said the victory “was pushed across in wheelbarrows.” Chinese farmers had used the single-wheeled barrow for centuries; here it helped sustain an army on a vast scale despite Nationalist air power.
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