To work out how to implement the Resolution on Military Problems, a three-person committee was convened, consisting of General Chan Chih Chun (National Government), Zhou Enlai (CCP), and US General George C Marshall, (chairman and ‘advisor’). Only unanimous decisions were to be implemented. Naturally, the Committee was paralysed. Nationalist forces were moving into the towns, major industrial complexes, and communication routes in Manchuria, while PLA units were extending the liberated areas as fast as they could. Clashes were inevitable. In June 1946, the Generalissimo unilaterally called a 15-day halt to activities in Manchuria and demanded that the PLA withdraw within that period or suffer the consequences. The ultimatum was condemned by the CCP as a violation of the January agreement. At this, on 30 June, Chiang launched a general offensive against the PLA.[25] The disparity in weaponry and troop numbers meant that initially the Nationalist forces scored important victories, forcing the PLA to retreat, leaving the Nationalist armies in control of all the major and strategically important towns and the railway lines
Up to this point no-one has suggested differences in policy between Mao and Stalin. Mao had faithfully adhered to Stalin’s post-war Popular Front coalition strategy. However, in China there was now a resumption of hostilities between the Nationalists and Communists which was leading to full-scale civil war. It was this escalation which led many to believe there was a break between Mao and Stalin on the grounds that Stalin still wanted a coalition government in China.
But it was just at this time that Winston Churchill announced the cold war in his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech on 5 March 1946. This had given Chiang the confidence to harden his position, convinced Washington would bail him out. On 15 November 1946, Chiang convened a hand-picked National Assembly and the CCP was excluded. From now on, the question of governmental authority (let alone state power) would be resolved by force of arms. Still enmeshed in the theory of stages, the CCP now pressed for a coalition government of liberals, democrats, independent groups and organisations, and ‘social luminaries’ but without Chiang Kai-shek and KMT reactionaries (shades of Wuhan!).
There were strong similarities to the trajectory followed by Stalin in Eastern Europe. Stalin had initially declared that the USSR intended only to replace fascist collaborators by governments friendly to the USSR; there was no intention of altering the social system of these countries. They were to be bourgeois democracies in which the Communist Parties would play an important but not decisive role, and there was no question of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the state form.[26] Of course, in Eastern Europe the factor determining the course of events was the presence of the Red Army, but the political direction pursued by Stalin and Mao was parallel.
Meanwhile, the cold war continued to escalate, and rather quickly. On 12 March 1947, Truman laid down the Truman Doctrine: Washington would defend the ‘Free World’ against Communist aggression. It seemed that once again war against the Soviet Union was high on imperialism’s agenda. The coalition governments in Eastern Europe artificially imposed by the Soviet Army were unceremoniously thrown into the dustbin and replaced by People’s Democracies in which the leading and decisive role was given to the national Communist Parties loyal and subservient to Stalin. Soon Eastern Europe would become a buffer zone protecting the Soviet Union, and with a matching economic system.
A Nationalist or even a coalition regime in which the CCP was stripped of the PLA, would have meant China becoming a puppet of American imperialism, placing US air and naval bases at Stalin’s back door. Stalin had launched the Second United (Popular) Front between the CCP and KMT to protect the Soviet regime from a war on two fronts. Now, precisely the same considerations pushed him in exactly the opposite direction. The Soviet Union needed an ally on its eastern frontier and the only real chance of getting one was for the PLA to win the civil war. Stalin had no reason from either a political or military viewpoint, to break with Mao; instead the Soviet Army rushed to assist the PLA in its preparations for a counter-offensive.[27]
Initially, the Nationalists had an estimated five-to-one advantage in troops and a virtual monopoly of heavy equipment, transport, and air power. The PLA, on the other hand, enjoyed the advantage of already holding liberated zones not only across the crucially important area of Manchuria but also across much of China that had been behind Japanese lines and was now in the rear of the Nationalist armies.[28]
The total amount of American aid given to the KMT was considerable. It is a flagrant lie when reactionary circles in the United States and the world try to explain the victory of Mao Zedong by the insufficient support Washington gave Chiang. After the end of the war against Japan, strictly military aid, besides numerous American advisors in China and the transport of soldiers and materiel in American ships and planes, amounted to nearly US$30 billion in today’s money. Additional economic aid amounted to a further US$30 billion. In fact, no amount of US dollars paid to Chiang Kai-shek would have held back the mounting flood of the Third Chinese Revolution.[29]
The Nationalist army swept westwards and reached the peak of its military successes when it seized Yenan in March 1947. The greater number and fire power of the Nationalists pushed the PLA back to the Russian/Manchurian border where Stalin gave it sanctuary and allowed it to recuperate, re-arm, and re-train. Despite the Soviet bureaucracy’s desire for a compromise with American imperialism on a world scale; in its own immediate interests it had to offer help to Mao. The Soviet Army provided the PLA with huge amounts of light and heavy weapons taken from the Japanese army and supplied numerous Soviet technicians and advisors. Modernised, well-armed, well led, well-motivated and determined, the PLA soon occupied villages, smaller cities and towns and laid siege to the great cities where Chiang’s huge armies with the best American equipment were stationed.
Despite the massive US aid, the war was turning against the Nationalists. The PLA used the same tactics as during the bandit extermination campaigns – cutting communications and destroying bodies of troops – but now it was advancing on the cities. Defending the cities of Manchuria fragmented Chiang’s armies and finally they would become death-traps.[30]
The peasant armies under CCP leadership differed greatly from any former peasant armies. Here was a force systematically organised and trained, equipped with modern techniques, endowed with a national and up-to-date programme of democratic reform even though of an opportunist nature. In the face of the KMT armies the CCP needed the active support of the peasants and so carried through its reformist programme of rent and interest rate reductions and cancellation of debts in a much more vigorous manner. However, to remain within the limits of the New Democracy no revolutionary land seizures were called for even in CCP-controlled areas such as the provinces of Jiangsu, Hopeh, and Hunan.[31]
Nationalist morale was rapidly ebbing away. The military structure was demoralised and permeated from top to bottom by a general feeling of helplessness. The Communist forces they were facing now had weapons as good as their own, a better sense of solidarity and a fighting spirit. Nationalist soldiers were isolated and besieged with little hope of reinforcements, their generals had gained their positions through being cronies of Chiang not ability, their officers abused the soldiers under their command, were openly corrupt and using the war to enrich themselves, and they faced a hostile population.[32]
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Kerry, Mao-Stalin, …. Op. cit.
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Cohen, A. The Communism of Mao Tse-tung. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966, p94 et seq.
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Kerry, Mao-Stalin … Op. cit.
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North, Moscow … Op. cit p223.
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Mandel, E. The Third Chinese Revolution, May 1950] MIA.
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Peng Shuzi, Op. cit.
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Ibid.
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North, Moscow … Op. cit. p205 et seq.