Military

Civic War In China

 

CSC 1995

 

Subject Area - Topical Issues

 

                                                EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

 

TiTLE Civic War in china

 

AuthorLientenant Colonel Pan Yun-chiang, Republic Of China Marine Corps.

 

ThesisT:he causes of Nationalist defeat in China were many,polictical disunity existing

with Nationalist China was of fundamental. The other most important cause was military

errors in specific military operation during 1946~1949.

 

BackgroundT:he actual pattern of Communist takeover in China hardly fitted into

traditional Marxist concepts, however. It was not an urban insurrection, or even, for that

matter, a general peasant revolt. Instead, the pattem was one of systematic military

conquest-or, in the latter stages, of negotiated surrenders imposed by the Communists,

who by then had achieved clear military predominance. True, the Communists had built

their armies in certain areas of rural China by arousing and organizing peasant revolt, but

then these armies moved rapidly and efficiently to seize and occupy the rest of the country

during the climactic civil-war years of 1946-49.

            The relative ease of the final Communist takeover was a result in part, of course, of

the strength of the Chinese Communist movement forged during the previous two

decades of armed struggle, but the speed of the takeover was also the result of the

completeness of the demoralization, disintegration, and collapse of the Nationalist regime

on the mainland.

 

RecommendationT:hree fundamental axioms of the Chinese Communist approach to

problem solving, equally applicable to international diplomacy or to revolutionary warfare,

come to mind. The most important of these is the territory oriented strategic concept of

Maoist politico-military doctrine. The second concerns the discontinuous pattern of

politico-military operations in space and time. The third, centering around operational

method, involves the decisive character of isolation, encirclement, and annihilation.

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

            The years 1945 to 1949 witnessed one of the greatest events of the twentieth century:

 

the triumph of Communism in China. Communism not only altered the lives of six hundred

 

million Chinese, but radically affected the world balance of power. The causes of

 

Nationalist defeat in China were many, but political disunity existing within Nationalist

 

China was certainly one of the most fundamental.

 

            1. Many areas of so-called Nationalist territory-some of them ruled by old style

 

warlords-became increasingly alienated from the Central Government; eventually, several

 

of these areas came to terms separately with the Communists, and even those that tried to

 

resist could not do so on their own with any success.

 

            2. Within the Nationalist Party itself, clique politics and factionalism reached a point

 

where unified, vigorous action either to solve the problems in Nationalist-held territory or

 

to fight against the communists was virtually impossible.

 

            3. Runaway inflation reached incredible proportions, creating great instability and

 

insecurity, ensuring corruption, crippling government finance, and causing general

 

demoralization.

 

            4. China's intellectuals, who have played an extremely important role in modem

 

Chinese history and have effected the political climate far more than-their real political

 

power would seem to warrant, became almost universally disaffected, drifting steadily

 

toward the left.

           

            5. Organized labor, while playing almost no significant insurrection role of the sort

 

once expected by orthodox Marxists, nevertheless became increasingly dissident when the

 

deterioration of economic conditions resulted in general hardship.

 

            6. In the countryside, conditions stagnated, and the peasants were subjected to an

 

enormous and growing economic burden. There was no general uprising of the peasants in

 

Nationalist-held territory, but neither was there any significant positive support of the

 

existing regime. Even the most politically passive peasants were predisposed to react

 

favorably when the Communists, backed by their revolutionary armies, suddenly appeared

 

and promised them "liberation" and land.

 

            In short, pubic morale throughout Nationalist China reached such a low point that the

 

basis for any effective resistance to the Communists completely disappeared.

 

            The other most important causes of the Nationalist's defeat during this decisive period

 

were military. The Nationalists pursued a self-defeating strategy. Instead of undertaking

 

offensives aimed at seeking out and destroying the main mobile and guerrilla units of the

 

Communists, they holed up for the most part in isolated, vulnerable, defensive position,

 

allowing the Communists to concentrate their forces, to besiege, attack, and overwhelm

 

such positions one. I will demonstrate this by analysing the three crucial campaigns during

 

1946~1949.

 

MANCHURIA CAMPAIGN

 

            Bounded as it is on three sides by foreign countries-Russia and Korea- and in great part

 

to the South by the eastern Gobi and sea, Manchuria can realistically be considered an

 

independent sub-area of the China theater. In consequence, it is natural to view operations

 

and strategy on that area as a generally independent sub-system of war and politics on the

 

national level.

 

            In the August of the 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded

 

Manchuria. When Soviet occupation forces withdrew some nine months later, in May

 

1946, the Chinese Communists with some Soviet aid, had been assiduously moving troops

 

on the northeastern area, were left confronting the Nationalistswho came in later. By early

 

1946, the Communists already possessed a large but unconsolidated territory, or rather

 

sphere of influence, both political and military, in north and west Manchuria; whereas

 

Nationalist strength gravitated around the South and central areas, including the cities of

 

Mukden and Changchun. "Nationalist military forces in Manchuria numbered about

 

150,000; the Communists, by their own claim, over twice that figure."1

 

            The strategic objective of the Nationalists in Manchuria-the motivation for deployment

 

far from a secure base was central of the main cities, industrials areas, and

 

communications of that highly developed ex-Japanese region, secondarily, control of the

 

countryside, the topographic edge of the area. "The communist objective was to gain

 

control of the whole area by encirclement and annihilation of the Nationalist armies."2

 

Before the Communist could achieve his ultimate strategic goal, however, he had to attain

 

its defensive equivalent Communists troops and bases on the northern bank of Sungari

 

river.

 

            By early June of 1946, the Nationalist advance based at Changchun held a bridgehead

 

on the north bank of the Sungari, and were preparing for drive on Harbin. The Communist

 

generals combated direction with indirection. Instead of undertaking a positioned defense

 

in northern Manchuria and concentrating all available troops at the apparently decisive

 

point, the Communists threatened the Liaohsi corridor in an offensive aimed at severing

 

the communications of Nationalist groups in Manchuria from those in Hopei. The

 

communists captured Anshan, Haicheng, and Tashihchiao to the East and threatened

 

Yingkow, the port through which Nationalist armies to the North were supplied. On the

 

other side of the corridor, the insurgents were minor and fairly direct in approach. The

 

threat to their communications, however, caused the Nationalist commanders to rush

 

reinforcement from the north to recapture the lost towns.

 

            In February 1947, the Communists reacted to Nationalist preoccupation in the south by

 

making their first direct major offensive against Nationalist units preparing for operations

 

designed for capture of Harbin. Attacking at Tangliao, "the Communists outflanked

 

Nationalist displacements and moved 270,000 men into central Manchuria to encircle a

 

Nationalist army retreating to Srupingkei."3 In the same phase of operations, Communist

 

attacks on the Liaohsi corridor intensified. A Communist offensive, using the Jeho-

 

Liaohsi border area as A base, recaptured Jehol. In early June, another force attacked on

 

the south Liao river, which divides the province of Liaoning in half Both offensives were

 

aimed at gradually tightening Communist encirclement of nationalist areas in north

 

central Manchuria.

 

            Although Nationalist counterattacks soon impelled minor and temporary Communist

 

strategic gains, "Communist lines had moved 150 miles south during the spring of 1947,"4

 

and Changchun, Kirin, and Mukden were mutually isolated, with connecting railway lines

 

destroyed.

 

            In January 1948, the Communists attacked the Liaohsi corridor once more and formed

 

a connected group across it, roughly perpendicular to the Peiking-Mukden railway which

 

was the main axis of Nationalist communications. The conflict pattern began to simplify

 

with crystallization of the Communist position into a connected structure and with the

 

disintegration of the Nationalist position into isolated groups. The principal collections

 

remaining to the Nationalist commander were located in and around the three major cities

 

named above, principal in and around Mukden. Repulsing counterattacks from the south,

 

the communist troops were soon able to remote the last Nationalist troops from the

 

defense area by what amounted to psychological encirclement and capture. In November

 

1948, Mukden, the industrial hub of southern Manchuria and the Largest city yet occupied

 

by the Communists, fell to Lin Piao's armies, and Manchurian Campaign was over.

 

            The Manchuria campaign was a triumph of the Chinese Communist high command's

 

strategy. As its immediate result, the Communists gained control of a strategic territory

 

and a secure base of operations from which to move southward inside the Great Wall.

 

Operationally, the Manchuria campaign followed the three conventional stages of an

 

offensive campaign disconnection, encirclement, and annihilation. The three phases were,

 

of course, of disproportionate length: the principal Communist problem for the bulk of the

 

campaign was cutting the Liaohsi corridor. Once this aim of isolation had been realized,

 

encirclement and annihilation soon followed.

 

NORTH CHINA CAMPAIGN

 

            The situation on the north China in 1946 was considerably different from that in

 

Manchuria. On the north China areas, the Communist possessed numerous bases and

 

troops dating back as far as 1937 and developed throughout the entire Sino-Japance war.

 

            On the political level, many rural areas of north China had been under Communist

 

control for years, and the populace was psychologically encircled in the whole area. On

 

the geographic factor, "by far the majority of the approximately one million Communist

 

regular and irregular soldiers on the China at the end of the Second Would War were

 

located in the provinces of north China,"5 at least during the crucial months following the

 

Japanese surrender, far outnumbered Nationalist forces in those regions. Although the

 

Nationalists, aided by American transport facilities, soon occupied most major cities and

 

rail lines, the Communists, from the beginning of the period under consideration,

 

possessed the secure edge-of-the-area countryside bases and were able to use them in the

 

encirclemenet of the center.

 

            In the light of this situation, we may divide north and northwest China operations of

 

the 1946-1948 period into two categories: first, those characterized by Communist

 

attrition of positioned Nationalist defenses; second, those based upon Communist-

 

Nationalist confrontation in the field.

 

            Typical of the first type of operation were hostilities in Shansi and in Hopei. In these

 

areas, the civil war revolved around Communist attack and Nationalist defense of two

 

types of strongpoint: cities and railroads. These Nationalist groups, even though they did

 

disseminate influence and often posed potential threats to Communist communications,

 

did not encircle territory. Co-ordination of force in depth is necessary for territorial

 

control; and in the north China position, Nationalist-controlled points or lines were often

 

fifty or one hundred miles apart, with strong Communist forces-in depth and supported by

 

solid political territory to intervene. Nor was the Nationalist position improved by the

 

strategy which Nationalist commanders customarily employed to provide for aggressive

 

patrols or for extensions into the countryside, with a city or a railroad used as base.

 

            The consequences of Nationalist position are not difficult to assess. Safety implied

 

control of at least a modicum of territory and a quantity in excess of what the Nationalists

 

generally held. As a result, the Communist was in position to capture - that is, overrun

 

Nationalist positions, one by one, as military exigencies dictated. At the same time,

 

however, actual capture of Nationalist groups-such as Taiyuan, long since dead - would

 

have been a dissipation of Communist energies. In many cases, therefor the Communists

 

adopted the strategy of isolating the enemy and of waiting for inevitable surrender. An

 

excellent illustration of this technique was the Communist take over of the Peiping-

 

Tientsin area in early 1949: after a long period of semidormancy, Nationalist forces were

 

pacifically removed from the military board by the surrender of their commander Fu Tso-Yi.

 

            Turning from statics to dynamics, an entirely different type of situation arises. When

 

the Nationalists took to the field, either on offense or defense, the Communist adopted an

 

aggressive strategy of encirclement and annihilation, frequently tempered by extensive use

 

of a indirect approach. Two interesting Campaigns of this nature took place in north China

 

in 1947 and 1948: one was fought in the northwest around Yenan; the other, in east

 

China and Shantung.

 

            The Nationalist offensive against the wartime Communist capital of Yenan had

 

auspicious start, for little Communist resistance was offered against the initial Nationalist

 

drive. While the Nationalists were employing elite troops to hold Yenan, a far more

 

decisive campaign was being waged on the other side whose unfavorable outcome for the

 

Nationalists was influenced by their concentration of valuable forces to the west.

 

            In early March 1947, the Communist high command made a key strategy decision, the

 

most criticalon the Communist side of the campaign. This command decision involved

 

two orders. "First, Communist forces under Liu Po-cheng, based in Hopei, moved to

 

threaten Hsuchow and the Nationalist rear from the southwest. Almost simultaneously,

 

following the second directive, the principal Communist forces in Shantung, under Chen

 

Yi, shifted their main forces northward into northern Shantung and southern Hopei."6

 

Faced with a dual threat from the north and from the southwest, the Nationalist drive

 

slowed to a standstill. The initiative lost, the Nationalist forces in Shantung and adjoining

 

regions were reduced to a defensive role which culminated in eventual collapse.

 

HUAI-RAI CAMPAIGN

 

            Growing directly out of the results of Shantung campaign of early 1948 was what may

 

be termed the critical encounter of the Chinese civil war:Huai-Hai Campaign. By mid-

 

1948, Nationalist were defeated in Manchuria and north China. There remained the area of

 

east-central China between the Communist-controlled north and surviving pivot of

 

Nationalist power south of the Yangtze.

 

            In the Huai-Hai campaign, one of the principal factors in the Nationalist defeat was

 

that the Nationalist forces too close to those of their Communist opponent, with the result

 

that the Nationalist positions were overrun before a firm, consolidated front could be

 

established. Hsuchow was an exposed salient. "Powerful Communist collections to the

 

northeast, in conjunction with Liu Po-Cheng's 450,000 troops on the west,"7 encircled

 

Hsuchow on two sides.

 

            On November 6, 1948, the Huai-Hai campaign was joined with a Communist attack to

 

the west of the pivotal city. The next day, the Communist broke through, pushing a

 

Nationalist army group back to west of Hsuchow. Three days later, the Communist forces

 

struck again, this time at Nationalist flank to the east, and wedged several columns

 

between the forces occupying Hsuchow and Nationalist Seventh Army Group, rendering

 

them incapable of giving each other direct assistance for the remainder of the campaign.

 

            The Nationalist Seventh Army Group, which had thus been cut off from Hsuchow

 

proper, tried to restore its position by pulling away from the east China Sea and shifting

 

its main forces toward the city. Excellent intelligence, however, soon informed the

 

Communist command of this movement, and the Seventh Army Group was rapidly

 

encircled by forces inserted between its nucleus and the sea. The two army groups ordered

 

to relieve the Seventh were delayed. "Ten days after the Communist encirclement began,

 

relieving units were still twelve miles from the outlying positions of the beleaguered

 

force."8 To make matters more critical, the Communists, in conjunction with guerrillas

 

already widespread in the entire theater, soon severed Nationalist communications to the

 

south of Hsuchow. The Sixth Army Group to the west retreated attempting to save itself.

 

The Second, Seventh, Thirteenth and Sixteenth army groups, on the other hand, were

 

trapped in and trapped in around Hsuchow in what has been likened to a"T" with the right

 

crossbar severed. Hsuchow was encircled.

 

            "On November 22, the Communists succeeded in capturing the right half of the "T":

 

the Seventh Army Group, isolated without new supplies for twelve days."9 Additional

 

Nationalist forces to the south, ordered to relieve the Hsuchow situation, either were

 

themselves encircled by the Communists had managed about "a quarter of a million

 

men"10 across Hsuchow's rail communications to the south. Encirclement led to

 

annihilation: by early January of 1949, after a month and a half of uneven and strategically

 

meaningless resistance, all Nationalist units in and around Hsuchow, including the elite

 

Armored Corps which contained almost all Nationalist mechanized equipment, had been

 

captured.

 

            In the Huai-Hai, the lessen is as follows: no attempted linear deployment to contain

 

an enemy operating on interior lines can be realized by a force operating on exterior lines,

 

without strong proximate base of support. The actual logistical bases used by the

 

Nationalists during the Huai-Hai campaign were in the Yangtze valley, some two hundred

 

miles to the south; their politically secure territories were located virtually at

 

boundlessness. Any attempt to deploy in this manner and this objective will result in the

 

immediate encirclement and annihilator of a large part of the defending groups. In

 

practice, however, the concept of containing the enemy, of stopping him without giving an

 

unnecessary foot of ground, of never turning one's back on the foe, is basic to many

 

systems of strategic ethics, both Western and non-Western: military history aboumds with

 

example of the effect on combat operations of these notions. Any reasonable commander

 

will, of course, recognize the occasional necessity of tactical retreat; but few indeed are

 

the commanders who adopt the principle of operation fluidity as completely as did the

 

Chinese Communist top command. The Huai-Hai campaign furnishes an example of the

 

head-on collision, not merely of two armies, but of two systems of strategic thought. Its

 

implications extend beyond the Communist victory on the Chinese mainland

 

into the higher realms of military philosophy

 

CONCLUSION

 

            The decline in the morale of the Chinese people, a direct consequence of the

 

maladministration and corruption of the Nationalist, had a impact upon the quality of

 

Nationalist Army. The Nationalist soldier, in the classic tradition of Chinese soldier, was

 

generally considered to be the scum of humanity. Except in several elite divisions, such a

 

conception could not be changed, and morale remained low despite a multitude of

 

promised reforms. No program of political education was launched, no valid mystique set

 

forth: the soldier of Nationalist knew not why he fought. Against the Japanese he could

 

fight for his country and his people; but in this civil war a peasant soldier from Kwangtung

 

had no idea why he should be fighting in Shansi and Manchuria. Poorly fed, poorly paid,

 

poorly clothed, poorly cared for, poorly armed, often short of ammunition-even at

 

decisive moments unsustained by any faith in a cause, the Nationalist soldier was easy prey

 

for the clever and impassioned propaganda of the Communists.

 

            In turning to military matters of strategy and tactics, I believe that the Government

 

committed its first politico-military blunder when it concentrated its efforts after V-J Day

 

on the purely military reoccupation of the form Japanese areas, giving little consideration

 

to long- established regional sentiments or to creation of efficient local administrations,

 

which could attract wide popular support in the liberated areas. Moreover, the Nationalist

 

Army was burdened with an unsound strategy which was conceived by a politically

 

influenced and militarily inept high command. Instead of being content with consolidating

 

North China, the Army was given the concurrent mission of seizing control of Manchuria,

 

a task beyond its logistic capabilities. The Government, attempting to do too much with

 

too little, found its armies scattered along thousands of miles of railroad, the possession

 

of which was vital in view of the fact that these armies were supplied from bases in central

 

China. In order to hold the railroad, it was also necessary to hold the large cities through

 

which they passed. As time went on, the troops degenerated from field armies, capable of

 

offensive combat, to garrison and line of communication troops with an inevitable loss of

 

offensive spirit. Communist military strength, popular support, and tactical skill were

 

seriously underestimated from the start. It became increasingly difficult to maintain

 

effective control over the large sections of predominantly Communist countryside through

 

which the lines of communication passed. Lack of Nationalist forces qualified to take the

 

field against the Communists enabled the latter to become increasingly strong. The

 

Nationalists, with their limited resources, steadily lost ground against an opponent who

 

not only shaped his strategy around available human and material resources, but also

 

capitalized skillfully on the Government's strategic and tactical blunders and economic

 

vulnerability.

 

            Initially, the Communists were content to fight a type of guerrilla warfare, limiting

 

their activities to raid on lines of communication and supply installations. The success of

 

their operations, which were purely offensive, instilled in them the offensive attitude so

 

necessary to success in war. On the other hand, the Nationalist strategy of defense of the

 

areas they held, developed in them the "wall psychology" which has been so disastrous to

 

their armies. As the Communists grew stronger and more confident, they were able, by

 

concentrations of superior strength, to surround, attack and destroy Nationalist units in

 

the field and Nationalist-helt cities. It is typical of the Nationalists, in the defense of an

 

area or a city, to dig in or retire within the city walls, and there to fight to the end, hoping

 

for relief which never comes because it cannot be spared from elsewhere. Because of this

 

mistaken concept and because of their inability to realize that discretion is usually the

 

better part of valor, large numbers of Nationalist troops were lost to the Government.

 

END NOTE

 

1 . Liu ming- shTheWar between Nationalist and Communist. [Taipei: National

 

Defense University], P 144.

 

2. Liu ming-shung. P 148.

 

3. Liu ming-shung. P 152..

 

4. Liu ming-shung. P 153.

 

5  Liu min-shung.  P 201.

 

6  Liu ming-shung. P 208.

 

7  Liu ming-shung. P 243.

 

8  Liu ming-shung. P 258.

 

9  Liu ming-shung. P 263.

 

10 Liu ming-shung. P 264.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Franz Scchurmann and Schell. Republican China 1911-1949. New York, 1967.

 

F.F.Liu. A Military History of Modem China 1924-1949. Princeton, New Jersey:

 

Princeton University Press, 1956.

 

E. R. Hooton. The Greatest Tumult. Brassey's [U K]: B.P.C.C Wheatons Ltd. Exeter.

 

1991.

 

Liu Ming-Shung. The War between the Nationalist and Communist. Taipei: National

 

Defense University, 1979.