ON THIS DAY ·
Chongqing negotiations
28 Aug–10 Oct 1945 — Mao flew to Chiang’s capital under American escort. The two leaders toasted one another and signed a unity communiqué in which neither believed. General Marshall then spent a year mediating, with the same result: both parties preferred to risk everything rather than share an army.
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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: Chongqing negotiations — 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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