Talk:Chinese Civil War

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[edit] Section on KMT's Shanghai Massacre

Hi, I was redirected here from a "Shanghai Massacre" search. Why isn't there a subheading on this 1927 event, carried out by the Kuomintang, in the article? There used to be an article or at least a section on it as I recall. What's up with this article? It seems in shambles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.105.32.88 (talk) 14:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tooooooooooooooooooooooo biased!

For example, it mentions communism troops recruiting Japanese, but fail to show that KMT also rescuited Japanese (e.g., in Taiyuan).

Another one, it gives a great details of the assistance to the communisum troops from Soviet Union, but never say KMT received far more advanced weapons from US, such as P-51 fighter plane.

Third example: "The Nationalists had already taken the brunt of heavy fighting against the Japanese during World War II, while the Communists (for the most part) took part in guerrilla warfare. As a result, the demoralized Nationalist troops proved unable to stop the People's Liberation Army's advance." These sentences give readers an impression that Nationalist was weaker and PLA was stronger. However, the truth is that when the final stage (1946-1949) of the civil war began, Nationalist troop was far more stronger than PLA. Nationalist kept advancing in every battle field. PLA was defeated at Siping, later lost Changchun, Zhangjiakou, and even lost its capital Yan'an in March, 1947.

Sinolonghai 23:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you on the third example. That sentence gives people the impression that KMT was weak because they fighted Japanese, which is obviously an opinion rather than a fact.

KMT lost the war because it lost popular support rather than the debate of comparing weaponry between KMT and CCP. Chinese wanted no more war after Second World War ended, and it was KMT who resumed the civil war after WW2 ended. CCP was preparing to take part in constitutional democratic system after WW2 ended.

[edit] Casualties?

Why arent the casualties listed?

[edit] Overhaul

Major overhaul - some of the text taken from http://www.nwc.navy.mil/chinesecs/, other parts taken from History of the ROC. --Jiang 08:57, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Removed questionable statements

And yet, even though the balance of power was shifting toward the CPC, there were still numerous opportunities for a negotiated settlement. Joseph Stalin attempted to restrain Mao on several occasions while he gauged American responses to developments in China. After the Huai-hai Campaign, it seemed that the Communists were going to pause on the northern bank of the Yangtze River. Only when it became clear that American and British support for negotiations was lacking, did Stalin give Mao the go-ahead to cross the river.

1) After the CCP broke out of Manchuria prospects for a negotiated settlement were limited by the fact that the CCP had no particular incentive to negotiate with the KMT.

2) The paragraph makes it sound like Stalin had some sort of influence over Mao. I doubt Mao would have stopped at the Yangtze regardless of what Stalin said. By the time the CCP had reached the Yangtze, the KMT was in such disarray that it would have been absurd to think that Stalin would have been able to stop Mao.

[edit] Economist link

Impressive. The Economist has linked to this article for background on current PRC-ROC relations. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to it. - Banyan Tree 13:57, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How could "The Economist" take up an internet crap writing on the Chinese civil war as authoritative? Get your editorial board to do some serious studies, I guess.

[edit] Chiang Kai-shek

Reverted pending sourcing began in 1926 with the takeover of the KMT by 'the right-wing General Chiang Kai-shek. Thank you. Nobs01 15:57, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Conflict template - Why no casualty details?

There's no casualty details on the template. Is someone attempting to censor this article? I know the Chinese ruling party has strong ties to the Chinese Wikipedia, I hope it hasn't extended it's links in here as well. Black-Velvet 09:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't think too much. Casualties aren't included in the article simply because it's tough to come up with the number; the official stats from both sides are either untrue or included surrendered KMT forces (nearly 2 million Nationalist forces surrendered during the war).

--AQu01rius 18:54, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Good point. If casualties are not reliable, what about looking for the number of guns that Chinese communists possessed on Oct 1st, 1949, the day of their founding? Ceck out http://www.republicanchina.org/Communist-2-million-guns-1950.jpg

Hope you guys are stunned by 2 million, the incredibley small stockpile of guns that communists claimed to have captured from the Nationalist government troops. -Note American guns, in total, was 16% of the total assets of China before the CHINA AID ACT of 1948 was passed.

[edit] Campaigns

I'm going to start writing the campaigns for Chinese Civil War, and maybe make a campaign box.

--AQu01rius 16:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Done.

--AQu01rius 18:51, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consistency

Some of this needs to be corroborated with Chiang Kai-Shek, because it doesn't say he was expelled. Saying Chiang was "expelled from the KMT" then saying he's still part of the KMT is a bit confusing. The KMT simply split, did he not? It also says that Wang Jingwei rejoined Chiang again. Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (Be eudaimonic!) 03:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV dispute

Final stage of fighting (1946–1950) The person that added this gave no reason that I can find. I would suggest that it is useless to add an NPOV dispute without justification and is it the whole setion or a specific part. Does anyone have any objections to its removal?

I'd imagine that the anon added the tag because of the sentence that states the KMT received millions of aid and the CCP received none. This is sort of factually incorrect because it fails to mention Marshall's policy of "disengagement" from the KMT following the failure to form a coalition government. While the KMT had backing from the United States to try to stabilize its economy, its army was low on ammunition and much american aid was withheld, particularly during the most crucial periods, due to congress infighting. In fact, Wedemeyer's last mission to China produced a report that says it's best to America's interest to continue supporting the KMT, however inept it was. This report was suppressed by Truman until politicians began pointing noses on "who lost China".BlueShirts 14:57, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

no objection Wenzi 02:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

No it is not factually incorrect. The KMT did recieve millions in US aid and the CCP none; this fact was a major reason for the CCP's reaction to the US (not trusting their negotiations nor their want of a coalition government) because in the end, it was evident that no matter if the KMT introduced reforms or not, and if the KMT stopped fighting the CCP or not, the US would always support Jiang. Yes, Marshall was able to get Truman to embargo arms against the KMT from USG sources (July 29, 1946) but the embargo only lasted 8 months, which afterwards the KMT was given a 'surplus' of military equipment via the post-war Lend-Lease program as well as $125 million US dollars in the China Aid Act. Source: Schaller, Michael. [[THe United States and China into the Twenty-First Century.]]

Subotai 09:26, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

American guns, in total, was 16% of the total assets of China before the CHINA AID ACT of 1948 was passed.

Part of the goods from CHINA AID ACT of 1948 did not ship out till November of 1948 by which time all major campaigns were over. $125 million US dollars in the China Aid Act were deliberately charged at TEN times the market price of weaponry as well as those sold to Turkey and Greece. In 1949, some ships, en route, were stopped in Japan and Okinawa. The balance of the $125 million US dollars was not even spent till well into the Republican White House of 1953. Chinese civil wars had to be looked at together with VENONA and communist control of the State Department.

[edit] Chinese Civil War Template

It seems unbalanced that the historically more significant Civil War has no template while the less significant Warlords era has a gigantic and very well made template. In fact most characters of the Civil War are included under the warlords template. See Template:Warlord era Contributors intrested in this topic should create a Civil war template.--Gary123 Apply now, exciting opportunities available at Continental Op Detective Agency! 06:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I created a Chinese Civil War tempate please help develop it! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Chinese_Civil_War --Gary123 Apply now, exciting opportunities available at Continental Op Detective Agency! 06:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Good job Gary. Asiaticus 10:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Repeated Information

The section on the disbanding of troops by KMT and the troops going over to the Communists and revealing the location of the Nationalist weapons is repeated with more and less information a few sentences down. Stealthkey 03:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The disbanding of former puppet troops was a condition for peace talk, that the Chinese communists demanded with George Marshall.

The Russian gift of 800,000 rifles is already a commonly-acknowledged fact.

Nationalist army troops had already locked up American weapons for lack of ammunition. Milton Miles, before leaving China, personally inspected his Chinese forces, and found out that on average, an American weapon had 20 bullets.

[edit] No legal document has been signed to end the Chinese Civil War

No legal document has ever been signed by the waring parties (ROC and PRC) to officially end the Chinese Civil War. PRC and ROC didn't stop shelling each other untill 1979. Even though fighting between the competing parties has not taken place since 1979, the Chinese Civil War has not legally concluded.

Is a legal document required for a war to end? Is a legal document required for a war to begin? When did the Nationalists and Communists sit down and sign a document agreeing to have a war? Without such a document, the war never legally happened. Readin (talk) 16:04, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Has the Chinese Civil War been resolved today?

Even until 1965 , both side still fighting in real conflict each other.. why put the Civil war end date at 1950? 218.162.81.3 13:47, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

because that's when major combat on the chinese mainland ended. Blueshirts

Are there official agreements signed by the warring parties to end Chinese Civil War? I don't know any. Redcloud822 19:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

No, but the KMT leadership made the historical visit to the mainland in 2005. I'd say the war has ended, at least unofficially. Blueshirts 19:53, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

You are free to speculate the state of the Chinese Civil War, but the fact is there is no official agreements to terminate the Chinese Civil War on legal grounds. Therefore, technically the PRC and ROC are still at war. Indeed, as we see the situation could tense up at any moment, given the preparation for war on both sides of the Strait. Redcloud822 03:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Lets talk real politic here. The US with its airpower and fleet and nukes told the PRC hands off in the early 1950s. That is still operative. Until that ends there is at least a defacto cease fire, "peace" or whatever you want to call it. It could heat back up but the PRC would have to persuade, intimidate or pick a fight with the US to try to get it to abandon their protection of Taiwan. I dont think Taiwan is about to pick a fight anymore. I think a 60 year hiatus qualifies it as a resolved event. It will be a Second Civil War or a war between the US and China if it starts up again. Just as WWII is not called WWI round two. Asiaticus 01:07, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Talk real politicic all you want. No legal document has been signed to end the Chinese Civil War. So when PRC launches an attack on Taiwan, it would be still a civil war instead of an invasion against a sovereign nation. In other words, PRC's attack on Taiwan is legal, and does not break any international law.Redcloud822 09:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

What legal document started the Chinese Civil War? Readin (talk) 16:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What a mess!

There are so many inconsistent statements in this article. Lsxxsc 07:25, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nationalist and Kuomentang

I found it quite confusing when the word "Kuomentang" is used in some paragraph, and "Nationalist" is used in others. How about use only "Nationalist"?

The "Nationalist" movement in china was primarly called "Kuamentang". Prehaps it might be stated in the beginning in chinese and english. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.0.64.36 (talk) 16:12, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

This article really needs to be cleaned up! There are quite a lot of similar statements in the paragraphs Post-war power struggle (1946-47) and Fighting on mainland China (1946–1950). Moreover, paragraphs are too long and unreadable.

[edit] Commanders?

Mao Zedong was not regarded as the commander of the Communist forces until 1935, during the Long March. Before that, various communist forces were scattered around the country led by different leaders - notably, Zhu De and Peng Dehuai. Information regarding these can be easily found in the Long March article. I suggest adding these two to the list of commanders of the communist forces. The same for the nationalists - Wang Jingwei led a significant faction of the nationalist forces at the beginning of the Civil War. Aran|heru|nar 04:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of Text

I deleted a large section of text which was unsourced and seemed at least mildly biased after I noticed several items which directly & materially contradicted the books I've read. One statement particularly stood out:

 ...the Communist force, which previously had never exceeded 50,000...

On page 263 of this^[1] source, it's indicated that the Communist military power numbered 500k - 900k by 1945, so that's just a patently false statement. There were other instances of contradiction, as well. I'm going to POV-tag this article for the same reason. It seems to have a definite, though subtle, bias; and those can be the most dangerous. --Xiaphias (talk) 11:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you point those out? Aran|heru|nar 14:38, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] biased

I agree, this needs to shift away from being biased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delta3420 (talk • contribs) 21:35, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

This should be fixed now. Benjwong (talk) 03:07, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removed a large chunk

I removed the following section from the Chinese civil war#Immediate post-war clashes (1945–1946) section. It was very difficult to find sources to support this entirely. Anyone can help, please do. I used books.google including a couple books I owned. Didn't find enough to match. Benjwong (talk) 03:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

"Immediately after World War II, Chiang Kai-shek made a fatal mistake in trying to simultaneously solve the warlord problem and exterminate communism. Many of the warlords who sided with the KMT were only interested in keeping their own power, and defected to the Japanese side when the Japanese offered to let them keep their power in exchange for their cooperation. After World War II, these former Japanese puppet regimes once again joined the KMT.

Obviously, it was difficult for Chiang to immediately get rid of these warlords for good, as soon as they surrendered to Chiang and rejoined the KMT, because such a move would alienate other factions within the KMT; furthermore, these former warlords could still provide much-needed military assistance to the KMT.

As Chiang had neither sufficient force nor sufficient time to deploy his own troops in the former Japanese controlled regions, these warlords were given titles and ranks in the KMT forces and ordered to "keep order" in their areas of control by not surrendering to the CCP, and by fighting off the CCP if necessary. Chiang and his followers had hoped that these warlords would be able to resist the CCP and hold on to the former Japanese-occupied regions long enough for Chiang to deploy his own troops there. If the CCP were victorious in such conflicts, however, the result would still be of benefit to Chiang and China because the power of these warlords would be reduced as their military forces were smashed by the CCP, and the warlord problem plaguing China for so long could thus be greatly reduced, while at the same time, the CCP would be weakened by the fights and Chiang's own troops would have an easier time taking control. The ensuing battles between the CCP and these warlords resulted mostly in communist victories, exactly as Chiang and his followers had predicted, and their attempt to greatly reduce the problem of the warlords resulted in success.

However, this success came at a huge cost in the KMT' loss of popular support in these Japanese-dominated regions, because the local population already blamed them for losing the regions to the Japanese, while reassigning these former Japanese puppet regime forces as KMT forces to fight alongside of Chinese soldiers against the CCP only further alienated the local populace and strengthened the popular resentment towards Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT."

[edit] Removed another chunk

The following paragraph was removed out of the Chinese civil war#Relationship between the two sides since 1950 section. The info here seems to be vague and could fit into a number of different campaigns. Please readd it if you have references. Benjwong (talk) 03:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

"Meanwhile, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, intermittent skirmishes occurred throughout the mainland's coastal and peripheral regions, though American reluctance to be drawn into a larger conflict left Chiang Kai-shek too weak to "retake the mainland" as he constantly vowed. ROC fighter aircraft bombed mainland targets and commandos, sometimes numbering up to 80, landed repeatedly on the mainland to kill PLA soldiers, kidnap CPC cadres, destroy infrastructure, and seize documents. The ROC lost about 150 men in one raid in 1964."

[edit] Need statistics

The following paragraph was removed out of the last part of Chinese civil war#CPC establish People's Republic of China / KMT retreat to Taiwan island. I was not able to find any consistent statistics for the final outcome. Most sources have it in pieces, and I did not want to grab random stats off websites. Please help fill in the casualties and stats. Benjwong (talk) 03:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

"According to the CPC, from the beginning of July 1946 through June 1950, the CPC managed to destroy a total of 8.07 million KMT troops (including capturing/accepting the surrender of 4.59 million KMT troops), while losing 1.52 million of its own, including 260,000 fatalities, 1.06 million wounded, 20,000 captured by the enemy, and 180,000 missing and desertions.^{[citation needed]} The KMT disagrees with the CPC's claim on the KMT losses, claiming the figure is improbable."

[edit] List of weapons used in the war

I am concerned with the list of weapons used in the war because it is unreferenced and looks OR-ish. So I tried tagging the section, hopefully someone would fix it later. But I was subsequently reverted. Normally in a situation like this, I would try fixing it myself. But since I am not an expert on this, I don't want to mess with it. Therefore, I have to bring this here. What do people think of the list? What should we do about it? —Chris! _ct 05:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

It is best to chase down the original users who put that info there. Or delete the section. Or find a weapon expert. Benjwong (talk) 00:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Japan

Why is Japan listed as an ally of the Nationalists. The Nationalists did most of the fighting against the Japanese according to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.209.139 (talk) 23:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] huge removal

118.139.51.126 is trying to restore part of the long section I added a long time ago. The fact that the war against Japan bankrupted the KMT regime and destroyed its armies, even as late as Ichigo 1944, is very well documented in authoritative books on the subject like Seeds of Destruction and Nationalist China at War. Blueshirts (talk) 17:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

This article was among the many high priority articles for cleanup. If you have this much to add, you must have some source. Benjwong (talk) 17:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Look, I already gave you two very authoritative books on the subject that have details on matter. For the time being you can put a citation notice in the paragraphs if you're not satisfied, and do not delete huge sections wholesale. It's vandalism. Blueshirts (talk) 17:57, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not have access to those books unfortunately. For the time being, I'll flag it with the need-citation notice. Benjwong (talk) 18:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

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