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Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950
The Chinese Civil War was one of the key conflicts of the twentieth century. The Communist victory determined Chinese history for several generations, and defined international relations in East Asia during the Cold War and after. Despite its importance and scope―its battles were the largest military engagements since World War II―until now remarkably little has been known about the war, and even less about its effects on the societies that suffered through it. This major new history of the Chinese Civil War attempts to answer two central Why was the war fought? What were the immediate and the lasting results of the Communists’ victory? Though the book highlights military matters, it also shows how campaigns were mounted alongside profound changes in politics, society, and culture―changes that ultimately contributed as much to the character of today’s China as did the major battles. By analyzing the war as an international conflict, the author explains why so much of the present legitimacy of the Beijing government derives from its successes during the late 1940s, and reveals how the antagonism between China and the United States was born.
428 pages, Paperback
First published March 19, 2003
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About the author
Odd Arne Westad
42 books144 followersOdd Arne Westad, FBA, is a Norwegian historian specializing in the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history. He is currently the ST Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at Harvard University, teaching in the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 6, 2023
1. I became aware of this book when I read some other books, some of them offered high marks about it. In addition, I like another book of his, so I decided to read it, and finally I got around to read it in the last week or so.
2. A disclaimer: since my main interests were on the military aspect, I didn’t read the book cover to cover, instead, I just went through the military-related contents. And my assessment would be solely based on them.
3. To be frank, I’m deeply disappointed. I’d give it 2.5 stars. To summarize, the author fell into the same trap that CCP won mainly because of its victory in the Northeast (Manchuria). Instead of following others’ conclusions, he should have studied where the forces from both sides were deployed chronologically, and when and where the major fights occurred and their results and consequences. Apparently, he failed woefully short. GMD never sent enough troops to Manchuria, and the fiercest fights happened in Jiangsu, Shandong, and then central plain. As an extension, Lin Biao, the commander of CCP force in Manchuria, performed at average at best, far from brilliance.
4. Another important point is that the author’s failure in grasping CCP’s core principle in engaging the enemy forces. The most import thing to them was to wipe out opponents instead of controlling lands, even cities. This was opposite of Jiang.
5. So the war was decided by where and when most enemy armies were destroyed (both quantity and quality), especially in the early and middle stages, since those were the most difficult times.
6. Initially the war was mostly fought in Manchuria. CCP’s strategy was to control all of it. If that could be accomplished, they would be in a decent shape, even losing all the areas south of the Wall. That’s why some best units and a big part of high level officials were sent there from other areas. This strategy was based on the suggestion of a division commander of the New Fourth Army, and adopted during the time Mao was in Chongqing negotiating with Jiang. But what happened in late 1945 and first half of 1946 was far from realizing this aim.
7. From the view of CCP, the all-out war started in late Jun 1946, when GMD forces attacked Li Xiannian in central China (page 46-47). Around that time, Mao had a plan to attack certain cities and railroads in northern and eastern China (see page 46 below the box) to force new negotiations and better terms, but was not really put into operation. The main reason was that Su Yu was against the section for him and Chen Yi. The plan for the northern Shanxi province was executed, with disastrous results.
8. After WWII, Chen Yi was mainly in Shandong and northern Jiangsu, Su Yu was to the south (in central Jiangsu, northern bank of the Yangzi River). In the summer of 1946, soon after what happened in paragraph 7, Su Yu had several engagements with Jiang’s forces pushing north from Nanjing, and annihilated a big portion of it. This was probably what page 47 talked about Chen Yi defeating Li Mi (in fact, it’s Su Yu defeating Li Mo-an). However, that’s far from enough due to his big disadvantage in numbers. Still he was able to capture quite some US made weapons.
9. Shortly after that, Chen Yi suffered a series of loses in northern Anhui and northern Jiangsu, GMD was able to take advantage of the opponent’s weak area between Chen Yi (in the north) and Su Yu (in the south). It was too late when Su Yu (not Chen Yi, page 47, 3rd paragraph) arrived. At this point, CCP had to give up the areas in central Jiangsu and move to the north to join force with Chen.
10. It was during this period, several high-level officials in the region sent a secret telegraph to Mao, complaining Chen Yi’s incompetence. This was highly unusual. The developments led to another unusual arrangement: when Chen’s and Su’s forces were reorganized as the Eastern China Field Army, Chen was the command and commissar. However, the order was that Su Yu was the one in charge of operations, not Chen.
11. Given the serious situations, they fought and retreated north. In the process, they won some significant victories: Subei Campaign (never mentioned in this book), Yixian-Zaozhuang (end of page 157). The book did talk about Laiwu Campaign (page 158, 2nd paragraph), but it’s really hard to fathom, it didn’t cover Menglianggu Campaign, in which GMD’s number 1 crack unit (74th division, army size) was completely wiped out. To be fair this campaign was mentioned in Mao’s message (page 158, 4th paragragh).
12. Afterwards, Mao had some strange plans, initially splitting Chen and Su’s army into several parts, none was big enough to do much damage given GMD forces were quite concentrated. They tried to attack two towns (Nanma was one) at different times, but were not able to win either time. Then Mao asked Chen and Su to command the biggest portion of their force to attack west (and helping Liu-Deng, see next paragraph).
13. Liu-Deng’s offensive in summer 1947. Without doubt, the initial phase (July – early August) was a big success. But moving to Dabieshan was far from a good move. This opinion would have been heresy to CCP for a long time. Since it’s Mao who proposed it and it’s Deng (who later became supreme leader) who helped execute it, so official assessments were always good. In the last 2-3 decades, more and more doubts have been raised. The aim was to re-establish a base in that area, but this apparently failed, Liu and Deng actually split their forces and left Dabieshan separately in early 1948. It pretty much remained the same until the middle part of the Huanhai Campaign (middle November, 1948) when they reunited. When they started the attack, they had a force of about 120K. When they left Dabieshan, less than half remaining. This was one lesson Su Yu learned before he sent the pivotal telegraph mentioned in the next paragraph.
14. Because the tough situation Liu and Deng were in (some of the commanders even said the conditions were worse than during the Long March), the situation in the wider region overall was pretty much an impasse (but KMD had quite some mobile units for contingences). To break it, Mao came up with another plan of the same type in late 1947: asking Su Yu to take 3 columns/armies (~100K) across the Yangzi River and make trouble in GMD’s backyard. At that time, Chen Yi was with CCP leaders in northern Shaanxi (was away from commanding the CCP Eastern China force, and later, the 3rd field army). After deep thinking, Su Yu was against the plan and sent a long telegraph to Mao in early 1948. In my mind, this is THE MOST IMPORTANT document of the war. Part of the content was on the cover of “Moving the enemy: operational art in Chinese PLA’s Huai Hai Campaign” by Gary J. Bjorge. I doubt the author ever read it. Mao and Su discussed this for months, until a decision was made in April, 1948. At that time, Su Yu was asked to attend a meeting with top CCP leaders. The decision was a compromise: Su Yu didn’t have to cross the River as originally planned, instead, he’s given 3-6 months to destroy 6-12 enemy brigades. Basically it’s a prove-it plan, Su had to show that fighting in central plain would break the stalemate. He was given full authority of commanding the forces under the name of Chen Yi. From late May through early July, under very difficult conditions, he completed the Yudong Campaign, fulfilling the task with time to spare, proving it’s better to fight there. Between this campaign and the Jinan Campaign in September, Mao said that the most difficult stage of the war had passed in a meeting with some military officials in August. The telegraph changed the course of the war.
15. Because a lot of GMD forces were drawn to the Yudong campaign, other CCP forces were able to win several campaigns in other areas during and after Yudong. After that, GMD lost the ability to launch large-scale attacks. When the Jinan Campaign started, less than half of Su Yu’s forces were attacking the city, the rest were waiting for possible relieving GMD armies between Jinan and Xuzhou, but the force never came close.
16. When the Jinan Campaign was almost over, Su Yu proposed the Huaihai Campaign (not the other way around). This plan was based on his own force (w/o considering Liu, Deng or Chen). There were several rounds of discussions with CCP leaders to modify and expand the plan. When Huaihai started, Su Yu and his chief of staff sent a telegraph to Mao (November 8 morning, 1948), suggesting to prevent the GMD forces from withdrawing to the Yangzi River and wipe out them in the current general area. Mao promptly approved. This and the later development made this campaign the decisive encounter of the civil war.
With those items said, I’ll continue with the specific problems in the book. The following are some errors I found, the list is by no means exhaustive, but still very long.
Page 8: "(after WWII) the (CCP) party’s main forces were still located in northwest China." If he meant Shaanxi, he’s totally wrong. The area was scarcely populated and not able to support a big force.
Page 37: The map is misleading by using current provincial borders, and missing some areas in central China and eastern China (north of Nanjing) controlled by CCP.
Pages 46-7: Situation in Dabieshan; by June 1946, the CCP area was completed encircled, fighting there was not a good idea (results would have been a total loss). The attack of this area was considered the start of an all-out civil war by CCP. Other than the force reaching northern Shaanxi after escaping, another brigade escaped to the east and eventually reached Jiangsu and became part of Su Yu’s army.
47-48: loss of areas: given the disparity of the forces, Mao himself said, loss of land was inevitable and even NECESSARY. The question was if CCP could destroy enough GMD forces in the process. Also refer to paragraph 4 above.
Page 112: about commissars. Both Peng Dehuai and Chen Yi held both titles (commander and commissar). “Reasonably equipped”: if that’s the case, the war could not have gone as bad as the author said in the previous pages. Also see paragraphs 8 and 11 above.
Pages 151-2: Yan’an: in the first part, Peng led a desperate resistance against the attackers just south of town, providing enough time for the CCP leaders to flee. A couple of paragraphs later, CCP had almost two weeks in which to complete the evacuation of Yan’an made it possible not only to save the party leadership but also move weapons…to the north and east. Those two just don’t square with each other.
Page 157-8: the author should have deliberated more about the fights in northern Jiangsu and southern Shandong in the winter of 1946-7. Had the CCP forces in other theater been able to accomplish something similar, CCP would have won much sooner.
Page 189: in June and July, Mao’s version remained a pipe dream. In fact, Yudong (and other fights benefited from it), described in pages 190-1, changed the situation completely (see paragraphs 14-15 above). From that point on, GMD forces no longer had the ability to launch any large-scale attack. So you could consider this as an anachrony.
Page 190: Chen Yi. He's no longer with Su Yu. From later 1947 on, Chen Yi's originally force was commanded by Su Yu. When Chen was in the field, he was mostly with Deng, and later with Deng and Liu in the midst of Huaihai.
192-3: Huaihai, not Huai River, it’s Huaiyin and Huai-an cities. "Huaihai occurred because of the extraordinary results of LiaoShen and Mao’s subsequent decision to throw caution to the winds and make one push to take control of all of China north of the Yangzi River." This is largely an exaggeration. It’s more than worth noticing that only after the Jinan Campaign that Lin Biao was finally determined to focusing on capturing Jinzhou. That’s exactly why Zhou Enlai said that Jinan was the prelude of the decisive campaigns.
194: "Lin’s caution was not misplaced. GMD forces in the region were still strong enough to defeat him." This was caution to the extreme. CCP enjoyed a very big advantage in Manchuria it didn’t have in other areas. With this kind of attitude, the war would last at least several more years. That’s why I said Lin’s performance was not much to brag about.
197: "The fall of the Northeast had cost Jiang's regime almost 400,000 of its best troops." As mentioned in paragraph 3, GMD didn't send enough troops to the Northeast, Du Yuming's small forces defeated Lin Biao's bigger one easily in late 1945 and early 1946. The author should do his research to the army (corps) level at least, and follow their strengths and weaknesses, deployment, performance in the battlefields. Jiang indeed sent some of his elite troops there, especially 2 of 5 crack units (army or reorganized divisions). The other 3 were in eastern China (and central plain later), including the unanimous No. 1: 74th reorganized division, wiped out during the Menglianggu Campaign in May 1947 (see paragraph 11 above). During the LiaoShen Campaign, GMD forces there were just a shell of former self in Northeast.
199: 3rd paragraph: “Mao could order his generals…to destroy all of the armies under the command of Liu Zhi and Du Yuming.” In fact, this was a reply to Su Yu’s telegraph mentioned in paragraph 16 above. At the end of the page, the author said that Mao was impressed with Su Yu's performance in the Jinan Campaign. Well in fact, Su Yu had performed superbly since the summer of 1946 (even he was with Chen, Chen was more of a figure head), especially the telegraph in the beginning of the year and the Yudong Campaign (more in paragraph 14).
201: "Wu Huawen’s 50k soldiers. Mao chose Su Yu to work out the preliminary strategy of Huaihai." On the contrary, Su did it himself (see paragraph 16). Wu didn’t have such a large force. PLA had been doing that for quite some time, it’s not a new invention. Wu's force had about 20K soldiers, even everything considered, there was no way to double the size by just incorporating former GMD soldiers. The Eastern China PLA forces was split info 4 in July 1947. For the Yudong Campaign, two of them merged. In the Jinan Campaign, Tan Zhenli's force joined as well. For the Huaihai campaign, the last of the 4 joined as well. That's why it got much bigger.
202: Chen was with Deng, commanding the larger chunk of Central Plain Field Army. 11/5, 7th army group WAS stationing in the area east of Canal. It’s the main target of the campaign (other targets were results of later developments). Huang Baitao was indeed waiting for part of his force to retreat from Haizhou. And the group fought fiercely. The problem was that the original GMD forces to the east of Xuzhou refused to wait for his arrival, so Huang's force was isolated.
207: Relieving 12th army group was not part of Du’s mission. Only after they were out of Xuzhou with ease, was Jiang becoming greedy and ordered Du to save the group. The order was dropped by a plane. Du was really upset. 3rd paragraph: “communist attacks began almost immediately by Deng’s order.” Deng’s force was much smaller than Su Yu’s, and he had no authority to command Su’s force. Deng played no role in pursuing Du at all. Even destroying the 12th army group needed a lot of help from Su Yu. Partly because of GMD’s change of plan, Su Yu’s forces were able to catch up with and then encircle Du’s forces.
207: paragraph 4: “exodus from Xuzhou had taken Mao by surprise.” This is completely wrong. CCP knew GMD would withdraw from Xuzhou, likely from spies inside GMD. One thing they were not sure was the direction of retreat. Intelligence was to the southeast. Instead, Du went to southwest, that’s the surprise.
208: 5 leaders meeting at Caiwa. “Almost bewildered at the thought if the final part of the campaign succeeded, all of China northern or the great river would be theirs.” This was definitely wrong, the author should have read the telegraph I mentioned in paragraph 16 (and Bjorge’s book).
241: “2 million PLA crossing the Yangzi River.” “Lin Biao’s aiming at Nanjing directly.” In April, 1949, only the 2nd (Liu Bocheng/Deng Xiaoping/Chen Yi) and 3rd Field Army (Su Yu/Tan Zhenlin) participated. Total was about 1 million. Su’s force captured Nanjing (ironically, by Wu Huawen’s unit). Lin Biao’s forces came in later (taking Wuhan and moving south).
283: The map had so many errors, it’s almost comical. Peng Dehuai never came to Wuhan at that time. PLA forces in eastern China didn’t go there either. And Lin Biao’s force didn’t go to Fujian from Guangdong.
2. A disclaimer: since my main interests were on the military aspect, I didn’t read the book cover to cover, instead, I just went through the military-related contents. And my assessment would be solely based on them.
3. To be frank, I’m deeply disappointed. I’d give it 2.5 stars. To summarize, the author fell into the same trap that CCP won mainly because of its victory in the Northeast (Manchuria). Instead of following others’ conclusions, he should have studied where the forces from both sides were deployed chronologically, and when and where the major fights occurred and their results and consequences. Apparently, he failed woefully short. GMD never sent enough troops to Manchuria, and the fiercest fights happened in Jiangsu, Shandong, and then central plain. As an extension, Lin Biao, the commander of CCP force in Manchuria, performed at average at best, far from brilliance.
4. Another important point is that the author’s failure in grasping CCP’s core principle in engaging the enemy forces. The most import thing to them was to wipe out opponents instead of controlling lands, even cities. This was opposite of Jiang.
5. So the war was decided by where and when most enemy armies were destroyed (both quantity and quality), especially in the early and middle stages, since those were the most difficult times.
6. Initially the war was mostly fought in Manchuria. CCP’s strategy was to control all of it. If that could be accomplished, they would be in a decent shape, even losing all the areas south of the Wall. That’s why some best units and a big part of high level officials were sent there from other areas. This strategy was based on the suggestion of a division commander of the New Fourth Army, and adopted during the time Mao was in Chongqing negotiating with Jiang. But what happened in late 1945 and first half of 1946 was far from realizing this aim.
7. From the view of CCP, the all-out war started in late Jun 1946, when GMD forces attacked Li Xiannian in central China (page 46-47). Around that time, Mao had a plan to attack certain cities and railroads in northern and eastern China (see page 46 below the box) to force new negotiations and better terms, but was not really put into operation. The main reason was that Su Yu was against the section for him and Chen Yi. The plan for the northern Shanxi province was executed, with disastrous results.
8. After WWII, Chen Yi was mainly in Shandong and northern Jiangsu, Su Yu was to the south (in central Jiangsu, northern bank of the Yangzi River). In the summer of 1946, soon after what happened in paragraph 7, Su Yu had several engagements with Jiang’s forces pushing north from Nanjing, and annihilated a big portion of it. This was probably what page 47 talked about Chen Yi defeating Li Mi (in fact, it’s Su Yu defeating Li Mo-an). However, that’s far from enough due to his big disadvantage in numbers. Still he was able to capture quite some US made weapons.
9. Shortly after that, Chen Yi suffered a series of loses in northern Anhui and northern Jiangsu, GMD was able to take advantage of the opponent’s weak area between Chen Yi (in the north) and Su Yu (in the south). It was too late when Su Yu (not Chen Yi, page 47, 3rd paragraph) arrived. At this point, CCP had to give up the areas in central Jiangsu and move to the north to join force with Chen.
10. It was during this period, several high-level officials in the region sent a secret telegraph to Mao, complaining Chen Yi’s incompetence. This was highly unusual. The developments led to another unusual arrangement: when Chen’s and Su’s forces were reorganized as the Eastern China Field Army, Chen was the command and commissar. However, the order was that Su Yu was the one in charge of operations, not Chen.
11. Given the serious situations, they fought and retreated north. In the process, they won some significant victories: Subei Campaign (never mentioned in this book), Yixian-Zaozhuang (end of page 157). The book did talk about Laiwu Campaign (page 158, 2nd paragraph), but it’s really hard to fathom, it didn’t cover Menglianggu Campaign, in which GMD’s number 1 crack unit (74th division, army size) was completely wiped out. To be fair this campaign was mentioned in Mao’s message (page 158, 4th paragragh).
12. Afterwards, Mao had some strange plans, initially splitting Chen and Su’s army into several parts, none was big enough to do much damage given GMD forces were quite concentrated. They tried to attack two towns (Nanma was one) at different times, but were not able to win either time. Then Mao asked Chen and Su to command the biggest portion of their force to attack west (and helping Liu-Deng, see next paragraph).
13. Liu-Deng’s offensive in summer 1947. Without doubt, the initial phase (July – early August) was a big success. But moving to Dabieshan was far from a good move. This opinion would have been heresy to CCP for a long time. Since it’s Mao who proposed it and it’s Deng (who later became supreme leader) who helped execute it, so official assessments were always good. In the last 2-3 decades, more and more doubts have been raised. The aim was to re-establish a base in that area, but this apparently failed, Liu and Deng actually split their forces and left Dabieshan separately in early 1948. It pretty much remained the same until the middle part of the Huanhai Campaign (middle November, 1948) when they reunited. When they started the attack, they had a force of about 120K. When they left Dabieshan, less than half remaining. This was one lesson Su Yu learned before he sent the pivotal telegraph mentioned in the next paragraph.
14. Because the tough situation Liu and Deng were in (some of the commanders even said the conditions were worse than during the Long March), the situation in the wider region overall was pretty much an impasse (but KMD had quite some mobile units for contingences). To break it, Mao came up with another plan of the same type in late 1947: asking Su Yu to take 3 columns/armies (~100K) across the Yangzi River and make trouble in GMD’s backyard. At that time, Chen Yi was with CCP leaders in northern Shaanxi (was away from commanding the CCP Eastern China force, and later, the 3rd field army). After deep thinking, Su Yu was against the plan and sent a long telegraph to Mao in early 1948. In my mind, this is THE MOST IMPORTANT document of the war. Part of the content was on the cover of “Moving the enemy: operational art in Chinese PLA’s Huai Hai Campaign” by Gary J. Bjorge. I doubt the author ever read it. Mao and Su discussed this for months, until a decision was made in April, 1948. At that time, Su Yu was asked to attend a meeting with top CCP leaders. The decision was a compromise: Su Yu didn’t have to cross the River as originally planned, instead, he’s given 3-6 months to destroy 6-12 enemy brigades. Basically it’s a prove-it plan, Su had to show that fighting in central plain would break the stalemate. He was given full authority of commanding the forces under the name of Chen Yi. From late May through early July, under very difficult conditions, he completed the Yudong Campaign, fulfilling the task with time to spare, proving it’s better to fight there. Between this campaign and the Jinan Campaign in September, Mao said that the most difficult stage of the war had passed in a meeting with some military officials in August. The telegraph changed the course of the war.
15. Because a lot of GMD forces were drawn to the Yudong campaign, other CCP forces were able to win several campaigns in other areas during and after Yudong. After that, GMD lost the ability to launch large-scale attacks. When the Jinan Campaign started, less than half of Su Yu’s forces were attacking the city, the rest were waiting for possible relieving GMD armies between Jinan and Xuzhou, but the force never came close.
16. When the Jinan Campaign was almost over, Su Yu proposed the Huaihai Campaign (not the other way around). This plan was based on his own force (w/o considering Liu, Deng or Chen). There were several rounds of discussions with CCP leaders to modify and expand the plan. When Huaihai started, Su Yu and his chief of staff sent a telegraph to Mao (November 8 morning, 1948), suggesting to prevent the GMD forces from withdrawing to the Yangzi River and wipe out them in the current general area. Mao promptly approved. This and the later development made this campaign the decisive encounter of the civil war.
With those items said, I’ll continue with the specific problems in the book. The following are some errors I found, the list is by no means exhaustive, but still very long.
Page 8: "(after WWII) the (CCP) party’s main forces were still located in northwest China." If he meant Shaanxi, he’s totally wrong. The area was scarcely populated and not able to support a big force.
Page 37: The map is misleading by using current provincial borders, and missing some areas in central China and eastern China (north of Nanjing) controlled by CCP.
Pages 46-7: Situation in Dabieshan; by June 1946, the CCP area was completed encircled, fighting there was not a good idea (results would have been a total loss). The attack of this area was considered the start of an all-out civil war by CCP. Other than the force reaching northern Shaanxi after escaping, another brigade escaped to the east and eventually reached Jiangsu and became part of Su Yu’s army.
47-48: loss of areas: given the disparity of the forces, Mao himself said, loss of land was inevitable and even NECESSARY. The question was if CCP could destroy enough GMD forces in the process. Also refer to paragraph 4 above.
Page 112: about commissars. Both Peng Dehuai and Chen Yi held both titles (commander and commissar). “Reasonably equipped”: if that’s the case, the war could not have gone as bad as the author said in the previous pages. Also see paragraphs 8 and 11 above.
Pages 151-2: Yan’an: in the first part, Peng led a desperate resistance against the attackers just south of town, providing enough time for the CCP leaders to flee. A couple of paragraphs later, CCP had almost two weeks in which to complete the evacuation of Yan’an made it possible not only to save the party leadership but also move weapons…to the north and east. Those two just don’t square with each other.
Page 157-8: the author should have deliberated more about the fights in northern Jiangsu and southern Shandong in the winter of 1946-7. Had the CCP forces in other theater been able to accomplish something similar, CCP would have won much sooner.
Page 189: in June and July, Mao’s version remained a pipe dream. In fact, Yudong (and other fights benefited from it), described in pages 190-1, changed the situation completely (see paragraphs 14-15 above). From that point on, GMD forces no longer had the ability to launch any large-scale attack. So you could consider this as an anachrony.
Page 190: Chen Yi. He's no longer with Su Yu. From later 1947 on, Chen Yi's originally force was commanded by Su Yu. When Chen was in the field, he was mostly with Deng, and later with Deng and Liu in the midst of Huaihai.
192-3: Huaihai, not Huai River, it’s Huaiyin and Huai-an cities. "Huaihai occurred because of the extraordinary results of LiaoShen and Mao’s subsequent decision to throw caution to the winds and make one push to take control of all of China north of the Yangzi River." This is largely an exaggeration. It’s more than worth noticing that only after the Jinan Campaign that Lin Biao was finally determined to focusing on capturing Jinzhou. That’s exactly why Zhou Enlai said that Jinan was the prelude of the decisive campaigns.
194: "Lin’s caution was not misplaced. GMD forces in the region were still strong enough to defeat him." This was caution to the extreme. CCP enjoyed a very big advantage in Manchuria it didn’t have in other areas. With this kind of attitude, the war would last at least several more years. That’s why I said Lin’s performance was not much to brag about.
197: "The fall of the Northeast had cost Jiang's regime almost 400,000 of its best troops." As mentioned in paragraph 3, GMD didn't send enough troops to the Northeast, Du Yuming's small forces defeated Lin Biao's bigger one easily in late 1945 and early 1946. The author should do his research to the army (corps) level at least, and follow their strengths and weaknesses, deployment, performance in the battlefields. Jiang indeed sent some of his elite troops there, especially 2 of 5 crack units (army or reorganized divisions). The other 3 were in eastern China (and central plain later), including the unanimous No. 1: 74th reorganized division, wiped out during the Menglianggu Campaign in May 1947 (see paragraph 11 above). During the LiaoShen Campaign, GMD forces there were just a shell of former self in Northeast.
199: 3rd paragraph: “Mao could order his generals…to destroy all of the armies under the command of Liu Zhi and Du Yuming.” In fact, this was a reply to Su Yu’s telegraph mentioned in paragraph 16 above. At the end of the page, the author said that Mao was impressed with Su Yu's performance in the Jinan Campaign. Well in fact, Su Yu had performed superbly since the summer of 1946 (even he was with Chen, Chen was more of a figure head), especially the telegraph in the beginning of the year and the Yudong Campaign (more in paragraph 14).
201: "Wu Huawen’s 50k soldiers. Mao chose Su Yu to work out the preliminary strategy of Huaihai." On the contrary, Su did it himself (see paragraph 16). Wu didn’t have such a large force. PLA had been doing that for quite some time, it’s not a new invention. Wu's force had about 20K soldiers, even everything considered, there was no way to double the size by just incorporating former GMD soldiers. The Eastern China PLA forces was split info 4 in July 1947. For the Yudong Campaign, two of them merged. In the Jinan Campaign, Tan Zhenli's force joined as well. For the Huaihai campaign, the last of the 4 joined as well. That's why it got much bigger.
202: Chen was with Deng, commanding the larger chunk of Central Plain Field Army. 11/5, 7th army group WAS stationing in the area east of Canal. It’s the main target of the campaign (other targets were results of later developments). Huang Baitao was indeed waiting for part of his force to retreat from Haizhou. And the group fought fiercely. The problem was that the original GMD forces to the east of Xuzhou refused to wait for his arrival, so Huang's force was isolated.
207: Relieving 12th army group was not part of Du’s mission. Only after they were out of Xuzhou with ease, was Jiang becoming greedy and ordered Du to save the group. The order was dropped by a plane. Du was really upset. 3rd paragraph: “communist attacks began almost immediately by Deng’s order.” Deng’s force was much smaller than Su Yu’s, and he had no authority to command Su’s force. Deng played no role in pursuing Du at all. Even destroying the 12th army group needed a lot of help from Su Yu. Partly because of GMD’s change of plan, Su Yu’s forces were able to catch up with and then encircle Du’s forces.
207: paragraph 4: “exodus from Xuzhou had taken Mao by surprise.” This is completely wrong. CCP knew GMD would withdraw from Xuzhou, likely from spies inside GMD. One thing they were not sure was the direction of retreat. Intelligence was to the southeast. Instead, Du went to southwest, that’s the surprise.
208: 5 leaders meeting at Caiwa. “Almost bewildered at the thought if the final part of the campaign succeeded, all of China northern or the great river would be theirs.” This was definitely wrong, the author should have read the telegraph I mentioned in paragraph 16 (and Bjorge’s book).
241: “2 million PLA crossing the Yangzi River.” “Lin Biao’s aiming at Nanjing directly.” In April, 1949, only the 2nd (Liu Bocheng/Deng Xiaoping/Chen Yi) and 3rd Field Army (Su Yu/Tan Zhenlin) participated. Total was about 1 million. Su’s force captured Nanjing (ironically, by Wu Huawen’s unit). Lin Biao’s forces came in later (taking Wuhan and moving south).
283: The map had so many errors, it’s almost comical. Peng Dehuai never came to Wuhan at that time. PLA forces in eastern China didn’t go there either. And Lin Biao’s force didn’t go to Fujian from Guangdong.
August 2, 2012
An excellent, painstaking but somewhat too short overview of one of the key conflicts of the 20th century: the Chinese Civil War that brought the communist party under Mao to power. The book concentrates on military aspects - and they were massive - but also delves into the political, social and cultural changes that took place. For me, the book was all too brief. I found myself longing for more details, but as such, it is an excellent introduction to the topic. For good or ill - mostly ill - the development of China, her society and her relationships with the outside world were forged in the fires of this struggle. Anyone with an interest in modern Chinese history has to have this work on their shelves.
March 13, 2014
Never thought I would read a 300+ page book on the Chinese Civil War, but it was assigned for class so had to. It was a good read though. It's a very interesting period of history that still shapes the world today.
February 15, 2022
I am particularly interested in East Asian history, and Odd Arne Westad’s The Chinese Civil War is the first book that I have read that is solely about the phase of the Chinese civil war from 1946-1950 so that gives it a few stars from the get go. This is a general book covering the whole of this civil war between the Nationalists and Communists. It is primarily focused on the domestic strategic-political aspects.
On these strategic-political drivers and policies this is a really effective book. Westad looks at how and why the Communists were able to win over vital communities; peasants, and more interestingly the middle classes in the cities. Corruption, bad command and control, terrible decision making all play a part.
This book takes us from the end of WWII to the beginning of the Korean war. International relations does of course come into it, both the USSR and USA are important players, but both try to be quite hands off. The Truman administration is particularly wary of getting into a quagmire supporting the nationalists resulting in the accusations that they “lost China”.
Despite this being a history of a civil war it is a disappointment as a military history in the operational sense. The battles in the civil war were huge, and are explained in very high level terms. Often with whole campaigns taking only a few pages – therefore I am sure it was much more chaotic on the ground than such a broad brush implies. To give an example the decisive Huaihai campaign lasting two months with millions of combatants, and the one covered in probably most detail in the book, only stretches to 10 pages including a bit on the consequences and politics of the campaign.
Certainly, from a military history standpoint there are some issues with this book – the perennial of military history few non-detailed maps being one. I would generally say I am pretty good at Chinese geography and could point to all the first order cities on a map, as well as the main geographical features. But too often we get army moving from place I vaguely know of to place I don’t know with nothing on a map to help. There is also an unusual lack of detail of figures – army sizes, production, losses – compared to much military history.
As the book moves chronologically it is quite easy to read without getting lost. I did however dislike the boxes with a longish quote or primary source which often broke the flow for me. I would have preferred they were integrated into the narrative. They made it feel rather like a textbook.
Given how important a conflict this is for today’s world where China is increasingly a big player I would say this is an important book to read. It is a conflict that is far less understood than WWII but has some equally important consequences for the oft proclaimed ‘Asian century’.
On these strategic-political drivers and policies this is a really effective book. Westad looks at how and why the Communists were able to win over vital communities; peasants, and more interestingly the middle classes in the cities. Corruption, bad command and control, terrible decision making all play a part.
This book takes us from the end of WWII to the beginning of the Korean war. International relations does of course come into it, both the USSR and USA are important players, but both try to be quite hands off. The Truman administration is particularly wary of getting into a quagmire supporting the nationalists resulting in the accusations that they “lost China”.
Despite this being a history of a civil war it is a disappointment as a military history in the operational sense. The battles in the civil war were huge, and are explained in very high level terms. Often with whole campaigns taking only a few pages – therefore I am sure it was much more chaotic on the ground than such a broad brush implies. To give an example the decisive Huaihai campaign lasting two months with millions of combatants, and the one covered in probably most detail in the book, only stretches to 10 pages including a bit on the consequences and politics of the campaign.
Certainly, from a military history standpoint there are some issues with this book – the perennial of military history few non-detailed maps being one. I would generally say I am pretty good at Chinese geography and could point to all the first order cities on a map, as well as the main geographical features. But too often we get army moving from place I vaguely know of to place I don’t know with nothing on a map to help. There is also an unusual lack of detail of figures – army sizes, production, losses – compared to much military history.
As the book moves chronologically it is quite easy to read without getting lost. I did however dislike the boxes with a longish quote or primary source which often broke the flow for me. I would have preferred they were integrated into the narrative. They made it feel rather like a textbook.
Given how important a conflict this is for today’s world where China is increasingly a big player I would say this is an important book to read. It is a conflict that is far less understood than WWII but has some equally important consequences for the oft proclaimed ‘Asian century’.
March 18, 2025
An outstanding introduction to the post-WWII stage of the Chinese Civil War and the Revolution of 1949. The sociopolitical failures of the Nationalists and escalation of the Communist insurgency are presented with objective clarity by the author, as are the diplomatic and military engagements that would result in the collapse of the Nanjing government and its exodus to Taibei.
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