ON THIS DAY ·
Fall of Yan’an
19 Mar 1947 — Hu Zongnan’s 200,000 troops took the cave capital after the CCP had evacuated everything that mattered. The Nationalists gained a symbol and could photograph their banners over the town, but it had no military value; meanwhile Lin Biao was counterattacking in Manchuria. This was both a high point of the Nationalist advance and a turning point.
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The moment in context
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.
From Chinese Civil War (1945–47), chapter 10 of China in Revolution, 1911–1949 (1946).
The place: Fall of Yan’an — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- 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…
- The turn — 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…
- 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…
Then ask the room: The “lost chance” debate: could the 1945–46 mediation have produced a coalition China, or was civil war inevitable? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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