China 1949: Year of Revolution by Graham Hutchings, Bloomsbury Academic
The conflict between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists was one of the biggest civil wars in human history. It involved more than five million soldiers and led to a change of government and the dislocation of millions of people.
More than 70 years after the Kuomintang moved their government to Taiwan, the civil war remains unfinished. The reunification of China is still uncertain; it seems far in the future.
China 1949: Year of Revolution is a gripping account of that extraordinary year. By Graham Hutchings, an associate at Oxford University’s China Centre, the book answers in meticulous detail the big question: why did the Communists win?
In 1945, the Kuomintang (KMT), led by Chiang Kai-shek, had 4.3 million soldiers in uniform, against 1.37 million in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). From 1945 to March 1949, the KMT received from the United States US$1.6 billion in military and economic support and US$400 million in credits. It had an air force and a navy; the PLA had neither.
But World War II was a godsend to the Communists. It gave them “space and time to develop the techniques of governance, organisation and mass mobilisation, land reform, economic production and build up its army. The war subjected Chiang’s government to eight years of brutality, driving it out of its capital, cutting it off from the outside world, decimating some of its best armies and destroying much of the infrastructure”. Without the Japanese invasion, the Communists would have been unable to take power.
After Emperor Hirohito surrendered on August 15, 1945, the Russians, who had occupied Manchuria, supplied the Communist army of Lin Biao with stocks of Japanese weapons and ammunition. Lin, the region’s military commander, “suddenly found he had more arms than he did men to put them to use. He promptly stepped up recruitment, drawing heavily on former soldiers of Japan’s puppet Manchukuo state”.
By the start of 1949, the Communists were well on the road to victory. Their success was due to several factors. One was unified command and tight discipline; another was a better “narrative”, including land for the peasants and freedom from corruption and rule by the rich and privileged. By mid-1948, 800,000 government troops had changed sides and comprised 28 per cent of the PLA, by then totalling 2.8 million.
The KMT side was handicapped by a power struggle between Chiang, who stepped down on January 21, 1949, and his successor as president, Li Zongren. But Chiang did not retire or leave the country. He continued to give orders. KMT generals had two masters. In addition, the generals had their own regional loyalties and agendas.
The PLA captured cities by military action and by negotiation. On January 20, 1949, General Fu Zuoyi surrendered Beijing and his 500,000 troops to the PLA without a fight. His daughter and fiancé were Communist Party members; his command had been infiltrated. Mao Zedong chose Beijing as the capital, instead of Nanjing, used by the KMT since 1927.
By 1949, the PLA felt strong enough to face the KMT in pitched battles. In the two-month Huaihai campaign from November 1948, the PLA killed or wounded 171,000 KMT soldiers and captured 320,000, and 64,000 defected. The following April, one million PLA soldiers crossed the Yangtze River along a 645km front. Within four days, they had captured Nanjing and six other cities.
By spring 1949, the US government had decided not to provide further support to the KMT. This was another important factor in its defeat.
Seeing the loss of the mainland, Chiang moved thousands of troops to Taiwan, as well as the nation’s gold, silver and foreign exchange, and many treasures from Beijing’s Palace Museum. He was preparing a new government there. This move further divided the resources and leadership of his regime.
On December 10, 1949, Chiang boarded a DC-3 in Chengdu for the long flight over Communist-held territory to Taipei. “Chiang’s face bore a sorrowful expression as he boarded the plane. He did not utter a single word,” said a fellow passenger. Chiang never set foot on the mainland again.
China 1949 draws on many sources, both Chinese and English, and its bibliography runs to 10 pages. The book is the product of four years of research and interviews by Hutchings, who was China correspondent for The Daily Telegraph from 1987 to 1998, based in Beijing and Hong Kong, before becoming managing director at Oxford Analytica, a post he held for 16 years, in 2000.
It adds to known events the stories of less well-known players, including Bai Chongxi, Guangxi general and bitter foe of Lin; schoolboy Ya Xian, who later became a well-known poet in Taiwan; Mei Jun, an ordinary young woman who left her native village with her baby strapped to her back – she was the mother of Taiwanese author Lung Ying-tai; Lester Knox Little, American head of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service; and Eva Spicer, a British history teacher at Nanjing’s Jinling College. They provide a human account of those tumultuous times.
The book offers a new insight into one of the most important events of the 20th century. We continue to live with its consequences today.