Volta
ConflictJune 1946 – December 1949

Chinese Civil War

Also called: Chinese Communist Revolution, Liberation War, Huaihai Campaign

After Japan’s surrender, full-scale civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists resumed in 1946. Having won over the peasants through land reform, the Communists triumphed in three great campaigns in 1948–1949, and the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan.

Nationalist infantry holding their positions in the Huaihai Campaign, late 1948
Nationalist infantry holding their positions in the Huaihai Campaign, late 1948

Unknown author · Public domain · Source

When Japan surrendered in August 1945, Mao Zedong met Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing and in October they signed the Double Tenth Agreement, while the American general George Marshall also attempted mediation. But the two sides kept fighting over Japanese weapons and territory in the Northeast (Manchuria) and north China, and when Nationalist forces attacked Communist areas in June 1946 full-scale war began.

At first the Nationalists, ahead in US aid and manpower, prevailed and even took Yan’an in 1947. But the Communists won peasant support by redistributing landlords’ land in the areas they held, while corruption and runaway inflation drove people away from the Nationalists. Between September 1948 and January 1949 the People’s Liberation Army destroyed the Nationalist main forces in the three great campaigns of Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin, and Beiping changed hands without a fight. In April 1949 it crossed the Yangtze and took Nanjing.

The People’s Republic of China was proclaimed on 1 October, and in December Chiang’s Republic of China government moved to Taipei. So began the cross-Strait relationship in which the People’s Republic on the mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan each claimed to be the legitimate China.

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States and rulers at the time
Republic of China · belligerent
United States · sponsor — President Harry S. Truman

People

  • Mao Zedong1893 – 1976

    commander · Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party who won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic in 1949, and launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

  • Chiang Kai-shek1887 – 1975

    commander · Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party who unified China through the Northern Expedition and led the Nanjing government through the war with Japan; after losing the civil war he moved to Taiwan and ruled the Republic of China there

  • Zhou Enlai1898 – 1976

    participant · First premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976), long in charge of diplomacy, who arranged Nixon’s 1972 visit

Before and after

Earlier
1945 Planned Homeland Advance Operation
Later
1949 Founding of the People's Republic of China

Themes that include this event

  • Republican China and Imperial Japan1912 – 1949

    The age when the Republic of China, born of the 1911 Revolution, passed through warlord division, the May Fourth Movement, the United Front and the Northern Expedition, fought Japan’s invasion and split in civil war — as Japan moved from Taishō democracy through the Manchurian Incident and military coups to the war in China and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and colonized Korea resisted through the March First Movement and armed struggle