Chinese Civil War

The Chinese Civil War (Traditional Chinese: 國共内戰; Simplified Chinese: 国共内战; Pinyin: guógòng neìzhàn; literally "Nationalist-Communist Civil War"), which lasted from April 1927 to May 1950, was a civil war in China between the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It began in 1927, after the Northern Expedition, when the right-wing faction of the KMT, led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, purged the Communists and KMT leftists from a KMT-CCP alliance. It went on intermittently until the looming Second Sino-Japanese War interrupted it. Full scale war resumed in 1946 and ended in 1950 with an unofficial cessation of major hostilities, with the Communists controlling mainland China (including Hainan Island) and the Nationalists restricted to their remaining territories of Taiwan, Pescadores, and the several outlying Fujianese islands. To this day, no official armistice has ever been signed, although the two sides have close economic ties.

To defeat the warlords who had seized control of much of Northern China since the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, Kuomintang leader Sun Yat-sen sought the help of foreign powers. His efforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1921 he turned to the Soviet Union. For political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Communist Party of China. The Soviets hoped for Communist consolidation, but were prepared for either side to emerge victorious. Thus the struggle for power in China began between the Nationalists and the Communists.

In 1923, a joint statement by Sun and Soviet representative Adolph Joffe in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China's national unification, and issued the Sun-Joffe Manifesto, calling for a unified and independent China, and arranged an alliance between the KMT and CCP. Soviet advisers, the most prominent of whom was an agent of the Comintern, Mikhail Borodin, began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the KMT along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CCP was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the KMT, and its members were encouraged to join the KMT while maintaining their CCP party identities, forming the First United Front between the two parties.

The policy of working with the Kuomintang was also recommended by the Dutch Communist Henk Sneevliet, chosen in 1923 to be a Comintern representative in China due to his revolutionary experience in the Dutch Indies, where he had a major role in founding the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) - and who felt that the Chinese party was too small and weak to act on its own (see Henk Sneevliet#Working for the Comintern).

One major disadavantage that Sun Yat-sen suffered against the warlords was that he had no army, in an era when military power carried the most persuasion. In 1923, Sun Yat-sen sent Chiang Kai-shek, one of Sun's lieutenants from Tongmeng Hui days, for several months' military and political study in Moscow. After Chiang's return in late 1923, he participated in the establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy outside Guangzhou, which was the seat of government under the KMT-CCP alliance. In 1924, Chiang became head of the academy and began the rise to prominence that would make him Sun's successor as head of the KMT. The Soviets provided much studying material, organization, and munitions for the academy. The Soviets also provided many techniques on mass mobilization. With this dedicated "army of the party," Sun Yat-sen hoped to defeat the warlords militarily. Chiang Kai-shek was a fervent instructor and at the academy he built up the personal allegiance and brotherhood with his students and officers who would eventually form the core of his central army. Communists were also present in the academy, and many of them, including Zhou Enlai, were political commissars who instilled the students with a sense of nationalist revolution.

Communist members were allowed to join the KMT on an individual basis. The CCP was still small at the time, having a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925. The KMT in 1922 already was 150,000 strong. However, the "party within party" situation and the Soviet meddling in Chinese political affairs irked Chiang, causing him to begin purging the communists and KMT leftists from the party ranks, leading to Civil War.