Long term, Short term Causes of the Chinese Civil War.

The Chinese civil war was an armed conflict between the Nationalists Kuomintang and the Communists People Liberation Army.

The event lasted from January 1946 to May 1950.
Long term:
The fall of the Qing Dynasty and the death of Sun Yat-Sei. --> Chiang’s Kai-Shek’s rise to power and his decision of getting rid of the left wing faction inside the government at all costs.

Short term:
Long march
Sino-Japanese War
Results of WWII.

For more than 2000 year’s people lived under the rule of dynasties and emperors from the Manchu dynasty until the Qing Dynasty.

Sun-Yat Sen (1912) --> people have high hopes of a democratic government however people were not accustomed to political freedom.

Chiang (1925) --> after the death of Sun- Yat Sen.
-->Country has political fears and high unequal wealth. Instead of concentrating in satisfying the people’s needs and wants, Chiang focuses to eliminate the opposition from the PLA which increased people’s discontent.
Chiang --> “the sky could not have 2 suns” and therefore there should only be 1 sole leader that would rule the country.
--> the peasants that were 90% of the people were left unattended and therefore this increased the political instability as the situation was similar to 1912. China was still a unindustrialized country with famine and backwards farming techniques.

April 7th, Chiang and the KMT had a meeting arguing that communist activities were both socially and economically disruptive -> April 12th, Chiang turned against the CCP and arrested hundreds of members which resulted in a massacre called “the Shanghai Massacre”.


Short term causes:
Long Marchà 100, 000 people walked 6,000 km to escape from the Nationalist government persecution.
-> Communists confiscated property, weapons from the local warlords and landlords and recruited peasants “solidifying the appeal for the masses”.
-> Only 7.000 to 8,000 men made it to Shananxi, this great retreat made Mao the undisputed leader of the communist party of China and increased his appeal towards the peasants.
-->This event widened more the left and the right factions and increased Chiang’s commitment to eliminate the CCP.

The Second Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945)
-->During the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria Chiang Kai-shek saw the CCP as a greater threat than the Japanese and focus in both fight the Japanese and fight the CCP.
--> Xi’an Incident; Zhyang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng kidnapped Chiang and forced him to make a truce with the CCP.
-->The developments of the Second Sino-Japanese war were advantageous to the Communists. ------>By the end of the war, most of the peasants were in support of the communists rather than to Nationalists.
"The Japanese are a disease of the skin. The Communists are a disease of the heart.”




When the Sino-Japanese War ended; Mao Zedong went on the 28th of August of 1945 to Chongqing in order to negotiate with the Kuomintang government to try and safeguard peace and democracy. When the two sides were still at the negotiation table Chiang Kai-Shek ordered the Kuomintang government to sent troops to attack the liberated areas in the central plains. à Ignored completely the truce agreement which had been signed at the start of the Sino-Japanese which sparked the event known as the Chinese Civil War.