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Episode 168 – Mao: The Sino-Japanese War with Carl Zha
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In the first of a three-part series about Mao Zedong and the Chinese revolution, Carl Zha sets the stage with its pre-revolutionary history. Carl, host of the Silk and Steel podcast, was born in China in 1976, one month after the death of Mao, placing him squarely in the first post-cultural, post-Mao generation.
The episode opens with Japan’s imperial expansion into China. After its defeat by Japan, there was a scramble to carve up China among the major world powers – France, Britain, Russia, Japan, and Germany. The US was a latecomer to the imperialist game. Fearing there would be nothing left…
“The US actually proposed a so-called open-door policy, which means all the imperialist powers should enjoy equal access to the Chinese market. And in the US textbooks, that is presented as some kind of heroic effort on the US side to save China’s territorial integrity.”
This is the China Mao Zedong was born into, around 50 years after the first opium war, when Britain forced China to legalize opium in order to create a market for the product from British India.
Carl tells the story of a nation teeming with predictable conflicts, odd alliances, and new conflicts. In the 1700s China had a quarter of the world’s GDP. By the time of the Chinese revolution, the country was desperately poor. From the Qing Dynasty to international imperialism, from the KMT/Guomindang to the Soviet Union and Chinese Communist Party, Carl paints a picture of China in conflict.
Carl Zha hosts Silk and Steel, a weekly podcast discussing history, culture and current events of China and Silk Road. Support him at patreon.com/silknsteel
@CarlZha and @SteelSilkn on Twitter
Macro N Cheese – Episode 168
Mao: The Sino-Japanese War with Carl Zha
April 16, 2022
[00:00:04.630] – Carl Zha [intro/music]
The US actually proposed a so-called open-door policy, which means all the imperialist powers should enjoy equal access to the Chinese market. And in the US textbook, that is kind of presented as some kind of heroic effort on the US side to save China’s territorial integrity.
[00:00:27.930] – Carl Zha [intro/music]
Mao, actually, in a newspaper clip, he read about another KMT campaign to wipe out the northwest communist base. That’s when he realized there was a communist base in the northwest.
[00:01:42.090] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]
Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.
[00:01:43.110] – Steve Grumbine
All right, everybody. It is Steve with Macro N Cheese. And this week, departing from the normal economics discussions, we’re taking another deep dive into another revolutionary period in history. We’ve talked about the Haitian revolution with Pascal Robert. We’ve talked about the Russian revolution with Esha.
And now we’re going to look at the Chinese revolution. We’re going to talk a little bit about Maoism, the history of Mao, some of the thinking of Mao and understanding better some of the factors that led to some of the greatest moments and some of the most awful moments in Chinese history. I’m very excited about this.
Carl Zha is the host of the podcast Silk and Steel, and he was recommended to me very highly. And so I devoured a bunch of the episodes that he has out there. And trust me, his podcast is worth investing your time in. Listen to this podcast. It’s fantastic. Support him as well. So without further ado, Carl, thank you so much for making the time to join me today. Tell us a little bit about yourself. The host of the podcast is great, but there’s more to your story.
[00:02:54.470] – Carl Zha
Thank you. So, I was born in China in 1976, one month after Mao died. So, I’m the first post-cultural generation in China to grow up. And I spent my elementary school years in China in 1980s. And I came to United States in 1990 at the age of 13. And then I spent almost the rest of my life in the US for almost 30 years. And for a while I thought I was living the immigrant dream.
This poor immigrant boy who came to US – because my family was very poor, because my dad was supporting the family of four on his postdoc salary. I qualified for free lunch at school. And my overwhelming drive back then was to climb the social ladder, join the middle class, be part of the American dream. And I finally made it into Caltech. I thought that was my American dream.
Look at me. This is a perfect validation of American dream, this poor immigrant boy who finally made it to Caltech. And long story short, I graduated in the midst of the first tech bubble. I got myself a tech job, which I did for almost 20 years, until 2018. And then I decided to take a sabbatical, traveling around Asia, visiting families.
And then by chance, I ended up in Bali because I love to surf. And that was July 4, 2019. That was my Independence Day, as it turns out. Because I love Bali so much, I decided to stay and settle here. So I’ve been in Bali for almost three years now. Now, I have a family. I have a wife and a kid. So here I am talking to you.
[00:04:47.550] – Grumbine
Your pictures on Twitter and your wedding was amazing. I love the garb you had on. It was beautiful. Tell me about your wedding.
[00:04:56.690] – Zha
Oh, it was fantastic. It’s a traditional Balinese wedding. So, I got done up, I got makeup put on. My wife told me Balinese man put on makeup for their wedding. So I thought, okay, when you in Rome, do as Romans. Yeah, the picture shoot was great. And I made sure to exercise for a couple of months before to get in shape for it. Yeah, so, I’m glad it turns out great.
The only regret is because of the pandemic, my parents weren’t able to join me from the United States. My mom saw everything through, like, FaceTime, but we recorded everything. Our wedding is on YouTube, on my YouTube channel. People can check it out if they’re interested to see what a traditional Balinese wedding is like.
[00:05:43.710] – Grumbine
I’m going to do that now. You know I’m going to. So, first of all, I really do appreciate you taking the time. I know it’s 12 hours different, so it’s 8:19 US Eastern time. So, that means it must be 08:19 a.m. Bali time. I appreciate you getting up, but we’re going to take a deep dive.
And I guess let’s just start off with China had to be ready for Mao to even come through the door. Let’s start this conversation before Mao took power, before the revolution and the march. Take us back. How did this even come to be? How did he even become a figure in China?
[00:06:22.710] – Zha
Mao was actually born at interesting time. He was born in the middle of the first Sino-Japanese War from 1894 to 1895, that is when China was defeated by Japan, which has long seen as kind of a student of Chinese culture. But Japan – after Commodore Perry forced itself to open to the outside world – Japan very quickly adopted Westernization, and they also adopted imperialism.
And through its efforts of modernizing – Japan quickly modernized – and they were able to defeat China, which was a feat that shocked many people. And most of all the Chinese. And ever since, China has gone through the period at the mercy of the foreign powers. After the defeat by Japan, there was a scramble to carve up China by the different world powers.
France, Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan all tried to carve up, so-called, the sphere of influences in China. And that’s where United States came in because US was a latecomer to the imperialist game and US didn’t want the other powers to carve up China so there’s nothing left for the US. The US, actually, proposed a so-called open-door policy, which means all the imperialist powers should enjoy equal access to the Chinese market.
And in the US textbook, that kind of presented as some kind of a heroic effort on the US side to save China’s territorial integrity. That’s the era that Mao was born into. Into depredation by imperialist powers. It was about 50 years after the first opium war, when Britain took Hong Kong and forced China to legalize opium trade, where Britain would import a huge quantity of opium from British India and sell it, making China a nation of addicts, basically.
So, back in the 1700s, China has a quarter of the world’s GDP. And before the opium war, China had about 40% of the world’s population. And, yet, by 1950, China was desperately poor. There was a huge gap in terms of quality of life if you’re a Chinese person living in China versus you grew up in the United States. That’s the timeline where Mao grew up.
Then, in 1900s, the foreign aggression against China continue, culminating in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Because the Chinese people are getting fed up with all the foreign privileges in China. They rose up in Boxer Rebellion, but they were put down by eight nation alliance, which included Britain, France, Russia, United States, Germany, Japan, Austria-Hungary, Italy. Basically, everybody.
And a lot of the Chinese gentry are starting to get fed up by the incompetence of the Qing Imperial government. And then 1911 revolution happened against that background because the Qing government lost the support of the Chinese gentry, who thought that the Imperial government was an obstacle to modernize China in the way that Japan did.
But, again, that was a revolution, kind of, at the top. It was mostly led by gentries and radical students. It succeeded to overthrow the monarchy, which had ruled China for 1000 years. But the basic underlying structural problem in China remained, actually got worse, because after the collapse of Qing Dynasty, China fell into the warlords period.
Different regional governors, they kind of asserted their own independence and they fought each other for control. This was an era from 1916 to 1927 where each warlord had their own navy, they had their own air force, and they fought each other with backing. The British/American interest may back some warlords, the Russians may back another one, and the Japanese may have their own candidate.
[00:11:06.720] – Grumbine
Proxy wars.
[00:11:07.960] – Zha
Exactly, exactly. Just imagine China as Afghanistan in a giant scale.
[00:11:14.130] – Grumbine
Wow, that sounds like a libertarian hellscape to me.
[00:11:18.270] – Zha
I was going to say, one of the problem with China is, actually, the Qing Dynasty was so weak, because it had, actually, the lowest tax rate among all major countries at the time. So my joke was, yeah, the Qing China was actually a libertarian paradise. Small government, low taxes, but which didn’t turn out great. England, for example, Britain was having high taxation, but they have an army and a navy that created a problem.
And China was in a bit of free fall until 1920. So in 1920s, Dr. Sun Yat-sen who was seen as leader of the Chinese revolution for 1911, he actually didn’t participate in the revolution to overthrow Qing government. He was in United States raising funds from the overseas Chinese community and he read about the revolution in Denver Hotel.
But he hurried back and he was still made the first provisional President of the Republic of China because he’s a well known figure and he’s very good at raising funds. But he was quickly pushed out of the power. By 1920s, he organized a new government in the south, in Canton or today’s Guangzhou. And this time he received support from the Soviet Union because, in 1920, Soviet Union was encircled by the different world powers.
It’s trying to break out its diplomatic isolation by supporting national liberation movements all over its periphery. First in Turkey, the Soviet Union supported Ataturk and it seemed to try to do the same in China by supporting Sun Yat-sen because they saw Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party as this party that could potentially be anti-imperialist.
So, the Soviet advisers came to Canton and they work out a deal with Sun Yat-sen where they will give Sun Yat-sen funding, training. And, one thing Soviet adviser told Sun Yat-sen is, look, the problem that you failed so many times prior because you don’t have an army of your own. So, you have to rely on various Chinese warlords who turn out to betray you at the end.
So, we will train an army that’s loyal to you and your party. So, in 1920, Sun Yat-sen formed the KMT, sometimes called Guomindang. It’s translated as Chinese Nationalist Party and Soviet adviser offered to train him a KMT army, army loyal to Sun Yat-sen and the KMT Party. But their price for this Sino-Soviet cooperation is that Sun Yat-sen must allow the Communist Party members to join his ranks, to join his government, to form a coalition government.
At that time, the Chinese Communist Party just got started. The Chinese Communist Party officially started in the early 1920s and they didn’t have a great number. Soviet Union thought the sure bet is to go with Sun Yat-sen and then use this opportunity to insert the Chinese Communist Party in the new government ranks and maybe eventually take over. That was the plan.
And that’s when Mao also participated in the Sun Yat-sen government in the south. This is, like, the first time alliance between the KMT and the CPC, the Communist Party of China. And as an end result, the Soviet adviser came. They created a military Academy, Whampoa Military Academy which trained a new generation of army officers who would lead the KMT army for Sun Yat-sen.
But Sun Yat-sen passed away in 1925 before he could see the unification of the country. And, at this point, there was a bit of a power struggle, a succession crisis. And the pro Soviet, Sun Yat-sen’s friend, who architected this whole pro Soviet policy, he was assassinated. And there was tension between the right wing KMT and the left wing and eventually they came up with a compromise candidate.
But, then, the real power start to shift to the army commander Chiang Kai-shek, who was one of Sun Yat-sen’s right hand man. But Chiang Kai-shek was appointed as the principal of the Whampoa Military Academy. And through the Whampoa Military Academy Chiang Kai-shek built his own loyal following of army officers. He used that to control the new army.
And Chiang Kai-shek started to grab more and more power to himself. But on the surface, the alliance between KMT and CPC still held. In fact, at one point, Mao was the propaganda chief for the KMT party [laughs] because, at the time, the communist members were allowed to join the KMT party and be part of it. And, then, the KMT-CPC alliance launched the Northern Expedition against Chinese warlords in 1927.
They quickly defeated the warlord armies in their push north. But, on taking Shanghai, Zhou Enlai, one of the Chinese Communist leaders, led a workers’ uprising in Shanghai to welcome the Northern Expedition army. But when Chiang Kai-shek marched into Shanghai he did 180 because he realized the communists are gaining power and he didn’t want his party apparatus to be taken over.
And, as soon as his army entered Shanghai, he did the so-called Shanghai massacre. He worked with the Shanghai Triad, the Shanghai gangs, to kill the communist union organizers. Over 5000 people were killed. That became the split between the Communist Party of China and the KMT. And, soon, the other KMT factions also follow suit. So, that’s a point where Mao led an uprising.
At the time, the communists tried to take the power back because, at that time, the Chinese Communist Party still took a lot of instructions from Soviet Union through Comintern. And their instruction was to stage insurrections against the KMT and to take cities. And where the goal was that they will march their army back to Canton, the original seat of the Southern government where they will receive direct Soviet aid via sea because Canton is a seaport.
And this was the origin of the People’s Liberation Army. Because the communist staged an uprising first on August 1, 1927. But on their march toward Canton, they were surrounded and they were defeated. The uprising that was led by the Canton Workers Union in Canton was also crushed by the local KMT forces. It was at this moment that Mao, who, also, participated in another uprising, the Autumn Harvest uprising, he made the decision that taking cities is unrealistic.
He took his remnant of the communist insurgent army into the mountains of Jiangxi Province, particularly at the Jinggang Mountains. And Mao established the first communist base in the rural areas. And that’s where he also realized the proletariat in China, the workers, the working class, actually consisted as a small part of the overall population.
90% of the population in China back then was rural, that if Communist Party were ever to win, they have to mobilize the peasantry and they have to start from the rural base and then gradually surrounding the city. That was Mao’s strategy, to take over the countryside first and then to link up with different communist base in the rural areas and then have these communist bases surround bigger cities, which is still controlled by the KMT.
But, on the other side, KMT continue the northern expedition. Much of the Northern China warlords folded. So, at the time, China was nominally unified under Chiang Kai-shek’s government. I say nominally because a lot of the warlords in Northern China and particularly northeast China in Manchuria, they still retain their own army and their own command structure.
They just pay lip service to a unified KMT government. They pledge allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nanjing government. But, in actuality, on the ground, China was still very much divided. There are still many warlords in Northern China and there’s communist insurgency in the countryside. And, then, against this background, the Japanese invaded.
First, in 1931 through the so-called Mukden incident in Manchuria, where the Japanese Kwantung Army managed to take over all of Manchuria. Because, before that, Japan gained the right to station their army in China. First as part of the settlement of Boxer Rebellion, the foreign powers gain rights to station their own troops in China to safeguard their so-called interest, so-called commercial interests.
[00:21:15.610] – Grumbine
Sounds like the US today.
[00:21:17.180] – Zha
Yes, yes. At that time, actually, China had very close to a US model because the foreign power is basically forcing the Qing government agreed to sell the railroad concessions to the foreign powers. So, different foreign powers like the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan, Russia, they will come to China, they will build railroads, but the railroads operation rights will belong to those foreign powers.
And, then, the land, I think it’s 20 km or maybe 10 miles around the railroad tracks will belong to those foreign powers. So, the foreign powers actually have the rights to station their troops all along the railroad to protect it, so to speak. Also, after the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, Japan just elbowed out Russia from southern Manchuria and gained the control of the Southern Manchurian railway.
And the Japanese also got the rights to station their own troops, to quote, unquote, guard the Southern Manchuria railway. So, Japanese troops was already on Chinese soil. And, then, in 1931, they stage a false flag attack.
[00:22:28.750] – Grumbine
What are those?
[00:22:29.160] – Zha
Yes, and they claim that they have been bombarded by the Chinese warlord army in Manchuria. And, so, they stage a takeover of the entire Manchuria in 1931. And they continue to push north ever closer to Beijing. But, against this environment, that’s when Chiang Kai-shek made his famous speech. He said, the foreign aggression is a disease of the skin.
But the communist insurgency is a disease of the heart. To be able to resist the Japanese invasion, first we need to put our house in order. By that, it means we need to stamp out the communist insurgency first. In the early 1930s, rather than conquering Japan, Chiang Kai-shek focus his efforts on stamping out the communist base that was first built by Mao in the countryside.
And there was, also, a big power struggle within the Communist Party of China ranks because, even though Mao was the one who first established a communist base in rural China, at the time, the Communist Party of China was still taking orders from Comintern from Soviet Union, basically. Its leadership are mostly based in big cities like Shanghai.
And, so, after KMT crackdown of the Communist leadership move out of Shanghai, move into the rural communist base, they push Mao to the side. And there were, like, struggle sessions. There were internal factional fighting because one of the things is the communist leadership at the time, also, adopted the policy of purging from Soviet Union.
So, a lot of the communist commanders were purged. Mao was lucky. He wasn’t killed. For a while, he was, kind of, under house arrest. He was shunted aside. But with the increasing KMT attack, eventually the KMT were able to overwhelm the communist base because the Communist Party of China, at the time, made a lot of mistakes.
After the shunted aside commanders with actual experience on the ground, like Mao, they imported this German adviser who was sent as a Comintern agent to China, employ him as a main military adviser. And I think his name is Otto Braun. And his idea is we must fight for every inch of the land, which is a drastic departure from Mao’s guerrilla tactics because Mao’s whole guerilla tactic was that we should avoid fighting set piece battles with superior enemy.
Instead, we should drew the enemy in, exhaust their supplies. When their supply lines get exhausted, we attack their supply lines, we attack them at their weak points. And, then, when they withdrew, we attacked them on the run. And that guerrilla tactic served Mao’s Army very well until Mao was, kind of, kicked off to the curb.
And under the new German adviser, the Communist Party adopted this trench warfare against the KMT army who, at the time, was actually, also, trained by Germany. Interesting fact, because Germany after World War One they were ordered to disarm. So, a lot of the German arms manufacturers, they found a way around that.
They found a way to survive by exporting weapons to China, to the KMT government. And Chiang Kai-shek also had his own German advisors. So, they are very familiar with kind of World War One trench warfare.
[00:26:14.490] – Grumbine
Well, let me ask you a question here because when I hear this, I always think about the Democrats in the US trying to be Republicans and Republicans do Republican better than the Democrats ever could. And, so, this group of armies different interests and Mao’s perspective work well for them. Now, they’re trying to emulate the tactics of the other side. And the other side has got plenty of experience, training, knowledge of these tactics. What would cause such a change? Why would they shift?
[00:26:47.190] – Zha
One of the reason is because this change in the leadership. For a while, the communist leadership were stationed in Shanghai. They issued orders but Mao was largely autonomous on the ground secure in his own base because, as the KMT increase their crackdown against the Communist underground in Shanghai, the top leadership moved from Shanghai into Mao’s communist base and that’s where they took over from Mao.
And it’s also because there’s also kind of blind belief in Comintern at the time, that’s why they employ this German guy to be their main military adviser. And, then, the result was predictable. The communist base was overrun. So, at that point, the Chinese Red Army had to embark what’s known as the Long March. Originally there was, actually, no concrete plan. They just wanted to escape in encirclement. So, they break out of the KMT encirclement and start this long, torturous journey all across southern China.
They first tried to link up with other communist bases but the other communist bases were also under attack and they pretty much took the Chinese Communist Army all over China. And, then, finally, Mao was able to come up ahead in the power struggle because, at one point, all the communist leadership got together when they’re in southwestern China in Guangxi in Qinzhou, they realize things are not working.
So, that’s when they finally sidelined the leadership that had led them to this fiasco and Mao was reelected as the leader because a lot of the army commanders trusted Mao’s experience and, now, it’s more pure military survival. So, they look up to Mao. That was first time, on the Long March, Mao became one of the top leaders of the Communist Party.
Before, he was just leader of his own communist base. But the experience of Long March affirmed his leadership. And, then, Mao made the decision that they should go to Northern China under the slogans of fighting Japanese. That would rally more popular support because, at the time, Japanese invasion was the most pressing concern.
And Mao, actually, in a newspaper clip, he read about another KMT campaign to wipe out the northwest communist base. That’s when he realized there was a communist base in the northwest. He made the decision to march across the Tibetan borderlands into northern China to join with the communists who had founded northwestern communist base and to establish his base there.
When that was done, Chiang Kai-shek didn’t relent on his attack. So, he ordered all his army to northwest China trying to wipe out the communist once and for all. But one of the generals he ordered was a Manchurian warlord, Chang Hsueh-liang, aka Young Marshal. The reason why he was called Young Marshal is because he inherited Manchuria from his father, the old warlord of Manchuria.
But it was under his watch that he lost Manchuria to the Japanese. And he was more interested to get Manchuria back rather than fighting the communists. And he soon realized the reason Chiang Kai-shek ordered him and his army to fight the communists was Chiang Kai-shek was trying to kill two birds with one stone. He’s trying to wipe out all these warlord armies and the communists at the same time.
So, Young Marshal didn’t want to be Chiang Kai-shek’s cannon fodder. And, then, in 1936, while Chiang Kai-shek was coming to Xi’an to inspect the front lines, Young Marshal actually established contact with the Communist Party through Zhou Enlai. And, then, Young Marshal stage a coup. He arrested Chiang Kai-shek and then forced Chiang Kai-shek to agree to form a coalition with the Communist Party again, to form a united front against the Japanese invasion.
This is the famous Xi’an incident when Chiang Kai-shek was arrested. And to secure his own freedom, he agreed to all the terms to form an alliance with the communists by the Japanese.
[00:31:52.260] – Intermission
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[00:32:18.290] – Grumbine
Is this the Manchurian Candidate? Is this where that comes from?
[00:32:23.150] – Zha
No, actually, Manchurian Candidate came from Korean War when some US POWs chose to go to China rather than come back to the United States. And the US media couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe how could any American soldier voluntarily go into China. They thought China must have brainwashed them. And, then, that’s where the, kind of, the Manchurian candidate came from. Like, the idea of Red China came up with all these brain control techniques.
[00:32:53.930] – Grumbine
I’m sorry, I just had to ask.
[00:32:55.820] – Zha
It’s fine, it’s fine. But Chang Hsueh-liang offered to fly Chiang Kai-shek back to Nanjing himself. And, of course, when he did that, Chiang Kai-shek arrested him, place him under house arrest for the rest of his life. But Chiang Kai-shek did stick with his promise of forming a united front against the Japanese. At the same time, Japan used another excuse to launch attack against Beijing in the so-called Marco Polo incident.
So, the second Sino-Japanese full scale war broke out. And this is a time when Mao’s communist base was already firmly established in northwest China. This, actually, presented a big opportunity because whether the KMT army or the Chinese warlords army, they were no match for the Japanese Imperial Army at the time. Japan was already an industrialized power.
China, at this time, was still 90% rural. And most of the Chiang Kai-shek elite division trained by his German adviser were wiped out in the battle of Shanghai. And that led to the Nanjing massacre soon afterwards. So, Japan quickly took over much of northern China. And that, actually, presented an opportunity for the communists because the communists will send in their units, their communist units, they break them up into small units and send in to the Japanese occupied area in northern China.
The thing is that Japan, their victory came so quick. They didn’t have time to establish a firm governance on the ground. So, a lot of times what Japan Imperial Army really controlled was the large cities. They controlled the railway links between these large cities. But in the countryside there was chaos. There was utter chaos because the former government officials all fled.
Different militias popped up for self-defense. It was under this kind of environment, the communists start to actively recruit and also to take over these local resistance groups. If you are local militia in northern China, you basically have only two choices because their support from Chiang Kai-shek, he was completely cut off at this point. So, you have two choices.
You either become Japanese collaborator or you become communist. Because there were a couple independent local militias in the beginning but, as a war wear on, they are forced to choose side, basically. You either go with the Japanese or you go with the communists. The communists are better organized. They’re much, much better organized than these local militia groups and they actually have a coherent ideology, whereas some of these local militias are no better than bandits.
So, the communists were able to either infiltrate, take over or drive them away. So, once you were defeated by the communists, you really ended up as Japanese collaborator. So, that was the situation in the northern China countryside. Japan may control the large cities, big towns, but, in the villages, the communists established a sort of shadow government.
So, the village were forced to, for example, to pay taxes to the Japanese occupiers. But, at the same time, the communists come at night, they collect their own taxes and the communists enforce their own brand of justice. So, they know who are the collaborators. So, when the Japanese Army leave, the communists come in, they take over. And that was the situation in much of northern China.
And that’s how communist gained a lot of popular support also at this time because the KMT presence, basically, was gone from northern China and a lot of the Chinese warlords were scattered. So, the communists became the only organized Chinese led resistance against the Japanese and they gained a lot of credit among northern China rural areas.
And, also, at the time, Mao put forth his own united front, which calls for, let’s put a stop to class struggle for the moment because now we need to face a common enemy, the Japanese. So, we need to unite all possible forces that can be united, including the national bourgeois, including even the landlords. Anyone who is against Japanese, we welcome to our ranks.
And that was a communist united front at the time. And this situation, basically, persisted throughout the war. In southern China, it’s a little bit different because there’s less communist presence in southern China. But in northern China, communists were able to take over much of the countryside. And, in fact, there are charges that communists didn’t fight all the big battles against the Japanese like the KMT did.
Which is true because communists didn’t have the strength to fight the Japanese, take Japanese on as a regular conventional warfare. Instead, they adopted guerilla tactics. There was one time in 1940 or 1941, communists did launch a big offensive called The Hundred Regiments Offensive. That’s when the communist commander Peng Dehuai mobilized, basically, entire communist force in northern China on a full scale, all out attack on the different Japanese occupied cities and towns.
But that actually exposed the strength of the Chinese communists in northern China. That made Japan spend next couple of years on this kind of pacification campaign in northern China. That’s where they adopted the Three Alls campaign, which is loot all, burn all, kill all. They created these kill zones where the Imperial Japanese Army could do as they please to wipe out the grassroots support.
They thought the communists relied a lot on popular support. We will just wipe out their support base by killing the peasants. And it’s very brutal guerilla campaign and counter insurgency. But, in the end, the brutality drives more people even to the communist side.
[00:39:14.290] – Grumbine
Yeah.
[00:39:15.060] – Zha
It’s kind of like for the US perspective, you can see that, like, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
[00:39:21.710] – Grumbine
Syria, everywhere.
[00:39:23.510] – Zha
Yeah. And we’re focusing on the communist part of the story. So, I’m, of course, skipping a lot of part of the actual Sino-Japanese war. But at the end of the World War II, when Japan surrendered in August 15, 1945, Japan still have more than a million man army in China. In Manchuria alone, they had 750,000 troops, at least on paper.
Most of the troops, by this time, were fresh recruits, young boys, old man, because a lot of the elite units have been sent to southeast Asia into the Pacific campaign. And, then, I was watching memoirs from the communist veterans that said back in 1939 it would take six people to face a Japanese soldier. They would have six people surrounding a Japanese soldier with spears to take them out, even if in close quarter combat.
But by 1944, they could take on Japanese soldiers one on one already because, by that time, the Japanese soldiers are teenage boys and old men fresh out of Tokyo. So, by that time, the Chinese communists already had close to 1.2 million men under arms. That’s including other local militias in 1945.
And, then, when the Japanese surrendered, there was a scramble to grab territory between the communists and the KMT. One of the reason is the KMT army and the KMT government has been driven to southwestern part of China mostly in the three provinces, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou, like, in the far corner, southwest corner of China. That’s where most of their army is located.
Whereas the communists because they already have bases, rural bases in northern China, they are much closer. They just need to march into the Japanese occupied towns to take the surrender. So, Chiang Kai-shek actually issued an order to all the Japanese occupation army in China that do not lay down your weapons, hold on to your towns and cities until we arrive.
Do not surrender to the communist, hold on to your control areas. And, in the meantime, US, also, got involved. Ostensibly, US was a neutral party to the Chinese civil war but US provided US Navy and US Marines came to China in the so-called Operation Beleaguer in 1945. The operation involving a total of 60,000 US servicemen placed on Chinese soil with a sense of purpose to evacuate the surrendered Japanese troops.
But one of their function is to hold these big cities in northern China before the KMT arrived to hold them until the KMT troops could get there. And also to ferry the KMT troops from southwest China to northern China. So, this is actually a point where US Marines actually came into several conflicts with the communist local troops in northern China because the US Marines were preventing the communists from taking over towns and railway hubs.
[00:42:48.050] – Grumbine
Let me ask you a quick question. The US was dropping nuclear bombs in Japan and they’re over there protecting and evacuating Japanese from China. Kind of a weird dichotomy there.
[00:43:01.750] – Zha
Well, yeah because, at this time, there were still millions of Japanese on China, both a million Japanese Imperial Army, their families and a lot of the Japanese settlers. So, for example, when Japan took over Manchuria in 1931, they turned Manchuria into a Japanese colony. So, they encouraged millions of Japanese settlers to come to Manchuria and, also, a couple of million Koreans under Japan occupied Korea also came to Manchuria.
That was Japan’s attempt to make Manchuria, like, the second Japanese homeland on the Asian mainland and they took away the best land from the Chinese peasants and give this to these Japanese settlers. So, in 1945, there’s still a lot of Japanese in China and the plan was to repatriate them to Japan and US military’s order, ostensibly, was to maintain order to repatriate all the Japanese back to the Japanese homeland.
But what they’re also doing, is to ferry the KMT troops to northern China from southern China. A lot of the KMT troops they boarded US Navy ships in Hong Kong and they sailed for the ports in northern China like Tianjin and the US Marines went to Tianjin and Beijing. They hold the railway junctions to allow the KMT troops to come to northern China by rail.
This is at the same time as the communists are going to the towns trying to take it over from the Japanese because, at this time, even though Japanese still hold a large area of China. But the Imperial Japanese Army morale it totally collapse after the emperor’s surrender announcement, they just want to go home. And there was an anecdotal story from my family.
At the time, my dad was a newborn baby at the time of Japanese surrender, he was one month old. And at that time there was a rumor in his town that the Japanese Army is coming and everybody is panicking because last time the Japanese Army came through my dad’s hometown, Haining in Zhujiang, they burned down the whole place.
So, there was a large panic and all the family are planning to flee. But because my dad was a newborn baby and people feel like crying baby will give away their position to the Japanese. They all urged my grandma to abandon my dad. But my grandma wasn’t about to give up her baby. So, she decided to keep my dad. And it turns out it was false alarm.
It turns out the Japanese troops were actually coming to town to assemble to get on the train to Hangzhou for the Japanese surrender. So, thanks to my grandma, I’m still here talking to you. My dad wasn’t thrown away in some ditch somewhere. So, this was a very chaotic time and there was a scramble for China between the communist side and the nationalist side because Japan occupied a lot of Northern China like I mentioned and there was no KMT presence.
So, it takes time for the KMT to get on the ships in Hong Kong and sail into northern China because the communists cut the railway links so they couldn’t take the train. So, they have to be either airlifted or ride the American ships into northern China and then in Manchuria was totally different because the Soviet Union declared war on Japan as result of the Yalta Conference deal in early August, 1945.
And this is a so-called August storm when a million man Red Army poured into Manchuria and very quickly take over the whole area from the Japanese Kwantung Army which just collapsed. And that’s also one reason for the Japanese surrender because they were hoping that Soviet will remain neutral and then maybe even help to mediate some kind of peace settlement between Japan and United States.
But when Soviet entered the war with Japan, all hope was lost. And, also, the reason the two atomic bomb was dropped in Japan was also for US to demonstrate to the Soviets that they got the atom bomb. And so both the atom bomb and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria prompted the Japanese surrender on August 15. But under the Soviet occupation at the time, the Communist leadership, Mao actually made a decision before the end of the war.
In April, 1945, the communists held a national meeting in their base in northwest China. At that time, Mao and his top leadership made a decision. The Communists must capture Manchuria because Japan tried to develop Manchuria as their second homeland on the Asian mainland. And they poured a lot of investment into Manchuria to build infrastructure, to build factories.
So, by 1945 90% of the industrial output of China is in Manchuria. So, in other words, Manchuria was already industrialized whereas the rest of China wasn’t. 90% of electricity generation was in Manchuria. 65% of the coal was produced in Manchuria. 90% of the steel production was in Manchuria. So, who controls Manchuria is going to be able to control China.
At that time, Mao said in a famous speech, even if we lose all our communist base south of the Great Wall, if we lose all the communist base in northern China, if we could capture Manchuria, that would be a victory for us. It will be worth it. It will be worth it to trade all the communist base that we currently have for the control of Manchuria.
So, after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, the communists made the decision to send their troops into Manchuria. And their order was for 100,000 communist troops plus 20,000 communist cadres to move into Manchuria and to establish government there because the Soviet Red Army was already in control. But the Soviet Red Army wasn’t very interested in governing.
They were there to liberate it from the Japanese but they were not very interested to actually governing the Chinese territory, the Chinese cities. And, also accompanying the Soviet Red Army, are some of the guerillas, the communist guerrillas who fought in Manchuria for many years and were forced to withdrew to Soviet Union in 1941.
They came with the Red Army as guides, as spearheads for the Soviet Red Army advance. So, they quickly got appointed important positions in the cities that’s taken over by the Red Army. They became, like, police chief. They became city government leaders and they very quickly established communication with the Communist headquarters in Yenon with Mao and telling Mao, come quickly, bring your troops.
And there was a scramble for northern China. There was another scramble for Manchuria. So, while US military were able to help Chiang Kai-shek’s Army to move into northern China using US Navy and US Air force, they couldn’t do much in Manchuria. And Chiang Kai-shek was, also, aware of the communist movement into Manchuria.
And Chiang Kai-shek turned to a negotiation with the Soviet Union. This became the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty in 1945. It was actually signed one day before the Japanese surrender. It stipulates that Soviet Union will respect territorial integrity of China but in return KMT government must recognize the independence of Outer Mongolia because Outer Mongolia has been de facto independent from China since 1920s, first 1911 and then later 1920s.
And it was due to close orbit of Soviet Union. So, Soviet Union want China to fully recognize independence of Outer Mongolia and, also, recognize a special Soviet privilege in Manchuria. Soviet wants to regain the privilege that the former Czarist Russia enjoy in Manchuria, that including the railway rights, operation rights of the Manchurian railway.
And the Soviet wants a Port Arthur or Dalian, which Czarist Russia lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Soviet Union want Dalian or AKA Port Arthur to become a Soviet naval base. So, they signed a long term lease with KMT government and in return by Chiang Kai-shek to recognize the Soviet sphere of influence in Manchuria and also in Xinjiang.
At the time, in 1944, Soviet supported a local rebellion in Xinjiang that for a brief period established the so-called second East Turkistan Republic in the northern three district of Xinjiang. And then Soviet said, okay, if you recognize Outer Mongolia, we’ll recognize Manchuria and Xinjiang as Chinese territory, we’ll respect the Chinese territory integrity.
So, the result of the deal, the East Turkistan Republic was ordered to take their name out. They rename their government, the government of three northern districts and to form a coalition government with the KMT Xinjiang government facing [inaudible 52:30:00]. So Xinjiang, nominally, was back under KMT control, under a coalition government with the Soviet back, the Uyghur Communists and the KMT army in the south.
And also Soviet Union promise not to aid Chinese Communist party. That’s important clause for Chiang Kai-shek. So, all was well and dandy. So, Soviet Union kind of flip-flopped a couple of times in their support of the Chinese communists. Initially, they rely on lot of the communists to maintain order in Manchuria. And that allowed the communists to sending 100,000 troops into Manchuria, taking various posts.
And they, actually, established their headquarters in Shenyang, largest city in Manchuria. But, then, after this treaty was signed with KMT government, the Soviet told the communists, okay, okay, you guys have to go. You cannot have your headquarters here in Shenyang pretending you are the local government here. You have to get out. KMT is coming in.
But what happened next is US, again, got involved. US Navy was shipping the KMT army into Manchuria. They shipped a half million KMT troops into Manchuria. So, that’s when Soviet Union got nervous. They realized Chiang Kai-shek was in bed with the United States interest and US Marines was already post in Beijing.
I mentioned there was already 60,000 US servicemen in northern China, very close to Manchuria, which Soviet considers its own backyard. At this time, this is, basically, the beginning of the Cold War. Yeah, this is the beginning of the Cold War in East Asia. The Soviet Union realized, okay, look, Chiang Kai-shek is too close to the US.
We don’t believe he will be able to keep the US influence from Manchuria. One of the treaty that they signed with Chiang Kai-shek is Manchuria should not allow the third party to come in, meaning it’s only China and the Soviet Union influence in Manchuria. They should not allow US interest into Manchuria. But what the Soviet Union has observed is that all these US warships is getting closer and closer to Manchuria because Soviets got their lease on Port Arthur.
They establish a naval base on the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula. People can look on the map to see where that is. But US Navy, for some odd reason, they thought, okay, we are going to move the 7th Fleet headquarters to China, and we’re going to put our headquarters right on the Shandong Peninsula in a place called Qingdao.
So, people can look at the map of China and see how close the Soviet naval base in Dalian at the tip of Liaodong Peninsula, and also Qingdao on the Shandong Peninsula. They’re right next to each other. The Soviet Navy, when they sail out of the harbor, they’re going to bump into the US Navy coming out of the 7th Fleet headquarters in Qingdao, right?
So, that’s when the Soviet Union got worried. Okay, what’s going on? The US is parking Marines in Beijing and they’re parking their Navies in Shandong. So, then they start to shift their position again to switch support to the communists. They told the communists, okay, here are these Japanese arsenals we capture. You can have their weapons.
[00:55:57.630] – Grumbine
Nice.
[00:55:58.180] – Zha
And so, when the KMT requested their troops to unload in the Soviet control port in Dalian in Port Arthur, the Soviets refused. They’re like, no, no, no, we can’t allow this American Navy to ship in. This is our naval base. Too much secret. We don’t want the American ships there. So, they told the KMT, okay, you can go to this other Port in Manchuria, Huludao.
So, the US naval ships have to reroute to drop KMT troops in a different part of Manchuria in Huludao. But when they arrive in Huludao, they found that Huludao and Yingkou, they found the Chinese Communist troops were setting up onshore with batteries manning the guns pointing at the US naval ships. Okay, is it going to go land? This is going to be a war.
So, they actually had to land in a place called Qinhuangdao, which is just south of the Great Wall. That’s the starting point of the Great Wall on the sea. And, then, the KMT army then started their attack into Manchuria. The first major battle of Chinese civil war was fought at the Great Wall Pass of Shanhaiguan, where the Great Wall begins. So, the Chinese Communist Party held the pass.
At that time, Mao’s slogan was, let’s hold the Great Wall, let’s hold the KMT south of the Great Wall. And we can have Manchuria all to ourselves, because then we will have our back towards Soviet Union, Mongolia and North Korea. Our back will be secure, and then we’ll establish a new communist government in Manchuria.
But that didn’t pan out because the KMT-US trained elite divisions, they quickly overwhelmed the communist defenders and they push into Manchuria. And then, basically, the Chinese Civil war begins.
[00:58:27.830] – End credits
Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Andy Kennedy. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.
Carl Zha – Guest
Podcaster who was born in China. His family moved to the US when Carl was a teenager. On his podcast, Silk and Steel he talks about all things China past and present.
Mao Tse-Tung
Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People’s Republic of China, which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976.
Commodore Matthew Perry
A commodore of the United States Navy who commanded ships in several wars, including the War of 1812 and the Mexican–American War. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854
Opium War
The First Opium War, fought in 1839–1842 between Qing China and the United Kingdom, was triggered by the dynasty’s campaign against the British merchants who sold opium in China. The Second Opium War was fought between the Qing and the United Kingdom and France, 1856–1860. In each war, the European force’s modern military technology led to easy victory over the Qing forces, with the consequence that the government was compelled to grant favourable tariffs, trade concessions, reparations and territory to the Europeans.
Boxer Rebellion
An uprising against foreigners that occurred in China about 1900, begun by peasants but eventually supported by the government. A Chinese secret society known as the Boxers embarked on a violent campaign to drive all foreigners from China. Several countries sent troops to halt the attacks.
Qing Imperial Government / Qing Dynasty
The Qing dynasty, officially the Great Qing, was the Manchu-led last dynasty in the imperial history of China. It was proclaimed in 1636 in Manchuria, in 1644 entered Beijing, extended its rule to cover all of China proper, and then extended the empire into Central Asia. The dynasty lasted until 1912.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen
He served as the first provisional president of the Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China). He is called the “Father of the Nation” in the Republic of China, and the “Forerunner of the Revolution” in the People’s Republic of China for his instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the Xinhai Revolution. Sun is unique among 20th-century Chinese leaders for being widely revered in both Mainland China and Taiwan
KMT /Guomindang (Chinese Nationalist Party)
The Kuomintang, also referred to as the Guomindang or the Chinese Nationalist Party, is a major political party in the Republic of China throughout its historical periods in both the Chinese mainland as well as Taiwan. It was the dominant ruling party of the Republic of China on the mainland from 1928 to 1949.
Chiang Kai-sheck
Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China from 1928 until 1949 in mainland China and then in Taiwan until his death in 1975.
Mukden Incident
The Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, known in Chinese as the 9.18 Incident, was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Otto Braun
Otto Braun was a German Communist journalist and functionary of the Communist Party of Germany with a long and varied career. His most significant role was as a Comintern agent sent to China in 1934, to advise the Communist Party of China on military strategy during the Chinese Civil War.
Long March
The Long March was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party, the forerunner of the People’s Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Army of the Chinese Nationalist Party.
Chang Hsueh-liang / Young Marshal
Known in his later life as Peter H. L. Chang, was the effective ruler of Northeast China and much of northern China after the assassination of his father, Zhang Zuolin, by the Japanese on 4 June 1928.
Zou Enlai
The first Premier of the People’s Republic of China serving from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and helped the Communist Party rise to power, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the Chinese economy.
Peng Dehuai
A prominent Chinese Communist military leader, who served as China’s Defense Minister from 1954 to 1959.
Operation Beleaguer
A major United States military operation led by Maj. Gen. Keller E. Rockey. He commanded 50,000 men of the III Marine Amphibious Corps that deployed to northeastern China’s Hopeh and Shantung provinces between 1945 and 1949.
Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty
a bilateral treaty of alliance, collective security, aid and cooperation concluded between the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on February 14, 1950. It superseded the previous Sino-Soviet treaty signed by the Kuomintang government.
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Show Notes
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In the first of a three-part series about Mao Zedong and the Chinese revolution, Carl Zha sets the stage with its pre-revolutionary history. Carl, host of the Silk and Steel podcast, was born in China in 1976, one month after the death of Mao, placing him squarely in the first post-cultural, post-Mao generation.
The episode opens with Japan’s imperial expansion into China. After its defeat by Japan, there was a scramble to carve up China among the major world powers – France, Britain, Russia, Japan, and Germany. The US was a latecomer to the imperialist game. Fearing there would be nothing left…
“The US actually proposed a so-called open-door policy, which means all the imperialist powers should enjoy equal access to the Chinese market. And in the US textbooks, that is presented as some kind of heroic effort on the US side to save China’s territorial integrity.”
This is the China Mao Zedong was born into, around 50 years after the first opium war, when Britain forced China to legalize opium in order to create a market for the product from British India.
Carl tells the story of a nation teeming with predictable conflicts, odd alliances, and new conflicts. In the 1700s China had a quarter of the world’s GDP. By the time of the Chinese revolution, the country was desperately poor. From the Qing Dynasty to international imperialism, from the KMT/Guomindang to the Soviet Union and Chinese Communist Party, Carl paints a picture of China in conflict.
Carl Zha hosts Silk and Steel, a weekly podcast discussing history, culture and current events of China and Silk Road. Support him at patreon.com/silknsteel
@CarlZha and @SteelSilkn on Twitter
Macro N Cheese – Episode 168
Mao: The Sino-Japanese War with Carl Zha
April 16, 2022
[00:00:04.630] – Carl Zha [intro/music]
The US actually proposed a so-called open-door policy, which means all the imperialist powers should enjoy equal access to the Chinese market. And in the US textbook, that is kind of presented as some kind of heroic effort on the US side to save China’s territorial integrity.
[00:00:27.930] – Carl Zha [intro/music]
Mao, actually, in a newspaper clip, he read about another KMT campaign to wipe out the northwest communist base. That’s when he realized there was a communist base in the northwest.
[00:01:42.090] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]
Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.
[00:01:43.110] – Steve Grumbine
All right, everybody. It is Steve with Macro N Cheese. And this week, departing from the normal economics discussions, we’re taking another deep dive into another revolutionary period in history. We’ve talked about the Haitian revolution with Pascal Robert. We’ve talked about the Russian revolution with Esha.
And now we’re going to look at the Chinese revolution. We’re going to talk a little bit about Maoism, the history of Mao, some of the thinking of Mao and understanding better some of the factors that led to some of the greatest moments and some of the most awful moments in Chinese history. I’m very excited about this.
Carl Zha is the host of the podcast Silk and Steel, and he was recommended to me very highly. And so I devoured a bunch of the episodes that he has out there. And trust me, his podcast is worth investing your time in. Listen to this podcast. It’s fantastic. Support him as well. So without further ado, Carl, thank you so much for making the time to join me today. Tell us a little bit about yourself. The host of the podcast is great, but there’s more to your story.
[00:02:54.470] – Carl Zha
Thank you. So, I was born in China in 1976, one month after Mao died. So, I’m the first post-cultural generation in China to grow up. And I spent my elementary school years in China in 1980s. And I came to United States in 1990 at the age of 13. And then I spent almost the rest of my life in the US for almost 30 years. And for a while I thought I was living the immigrant dream.
This poor immigrant boy who came to US – because my family was very poor, because my dad was supporting the family of four on his postdoc salary. I qualified for free lunch at school. And my overwhelming drive back then was to climb the social ladder, join the middle class, be part of the American dream. And I finally made it into Caltech. I thought that was my American dream.
Look at me. This is a perfect validation of American dream, this poor immigrant boy who finally made it to Caltech. And long story short, I graduated in the midst of the first tech bubble. I got myself a tech job, which I did for almost 20 years, until 2018. And then I decided to take a sabbatical, traveling around Asia, visiting families.
And then by chance, I ended up in Bali because I love to surf. And that was July 4, 2019. That was my Independence Day, as it turns out. Because I love Bali so much, I decided to stay and settle here. So I’ve been in Bali for almost three years now. Now, I have a family. I have a wife and a kid. So here I am talking to you.
[00:04:47.550] – Grumbine
Your pictures on Twitter and your wedding was amazing. I love the garb you had on. It was beautiful. Tell me about your wedding.
[00:04:56.690] – Zha
Oh, it was fantastic. It’s a traditional Balinese wedding. So, I got done up, I got makeup put on. My wife told me Balinese man put on makeup for their wedding. So I thought, okay, when you in Rome, do as Romans. Yeah, the picture shoot was great. And I made sure to exercise for a couple of months before to get in shape for it. Yeah, so, I’m glad it turns out great.
The only regret is because of the pandemic, my parents weren’t able to join me from the United States. My mom saw everything through, like, FaceTime, but we recorded everything. Our wedding is on YouTube, on my YouTube channel. People can check it out if they’re interested to see what a traditional Balinese wedding is like.
[00:05:43.710] – Grumbine
I’m going to do that now. You know I’m going to. So, first of all, I really do appreciate you taking the time. I know it’s 12 hours different, so it’s 8:19 US Eastern time. So, that means it must be 08:19 a.m. Bali time. I appreciate you getting up, but we’re going to take a deep dive.
And I guess let’s just start off with China had to be ready for Mao to even come through the door. Let’s start this conversation before Mao took power, before the revolution and the march. Take us back. How did this even come to be? How did he even become a figure in China?
[00:06:22.710] – Zha
Mao was actually born at interesting time. He was born in the middle of the first Sino-Japanese War from 1894 to 1895, that is when China was defeated by Japan, which has long seen as kind of a student of Chinese culture. But Japan – after Commodore Perry forced itself to open to the outside world – Japan very quickly adopted Westernization, and they also adopted imperialism.
And through its efforts of modernizing – Japan quickly modernized – and they were able to defeat China, which was a feat that shocked many people. And most of all the Chinese. And ever since, China has gone through the period at the mercy of the foreign powers. After the defeat by Japan, there was a scramble to carve up China by the different world powers.
France, Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan all tried to carve up, so-called, the sphere of influences in China. And that’s where United States came in because US was a latecomer to the imperialist game and US didn’t want the other powers to carve up China so there’s nothing left for the US. The US, actually, proposed a so-called open-door policy, which means all the imperialist powers should enjoy equal access to the Chinese market.
And in the US textbook, that kind of presented as some kind of a heroic effort on the US side to save China’s territorial integrity. That’s the era that Mao was born into. Into depredation by imperialist powers. It was about 50 years after the first opium war, when Britain took Hong Kong and forced China to legalize opium trade, where Britain would import a huge quantity of opium from British India and sell it, making China a nation of addicts, basically.
So, back in the 1700s, China has a quarter of the world’s GDP. And before the opium war, China had about 40% of the world’s population. And, yet, by 1950, China was desperately poor. There was a huge gap in terms of quality of life if you’re a Chinese person living in China versus you grew up in the United States. That’s the timeline where Mao grew up.
Then, in 1900s, the foreign aggression against China continue, culminating in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Because the Chinese people are getting fed up with all the foreign privileges in China. They rose up in Boxer Rebellion, but they were put down by eight nation alliance, which included Britain, France, Russia, United States, Germany, Japan, Austria-Hungary, Italy. Basically, everybody.
And a lot of the Chinese gentry are starting to get fed up by the incompetence of the Qing Imperial government. And then 1911 revolution happened against that background because the Qing government lost the support of the Chinese gentry, who thought that the Imperial government was an obstacle to modernize China in the way that Japan did.
But, again, that was a revolution, kind of, at the top. It was mostly led by gentries and radical students. It succeeded to overthrow the monarchy, which had ruled China for 1000 years. But the basic underlying structural problem in China remained, actually got worse, because after the collapse of Qing Dynasty, China fell into the warlords period.
Different regional governors, they kind of asserted their own independence and they fought each other for control. This was an era from 1916 to 1927 where each warlord had their own navy, they had their own air force, and they fought each other with backing. The British/American interest may back some warlords, the Russians may back another one, and the Japanese may have their own candidate.
[00:11:06.720] – Grumbine
Proxy wars.
[00:11:07.960] – Zha
Exactly, exactly. Just imagine China as Afghanistan in a giant scale.
[00:11:14.130] – Grumbine
Wow, that sounds like a libertarian hellscape to me.
[00:11:18.270] – Zha
I was going to say, one of the problem with China is, actually, the Qing Dynasty was so weak, because it had, actually, the lowest tax rate among all major countries at the time. So my joke was, yeah, the Qing China was actually a libertarian paradise. Small government, low taxes, but which didn’t turn out great. England, for example, Britain was having high taxation, but they have an army and a navy that created a problem.
And China was in a bit of free fall until 1920. So in 1920s, Dr. Sun Yat-sen who was seen as leader of the Chinese revolution for 1911, he actually didn’t participate in the revolution to overthrow Qing government. He was in United States raising funds from the overseas Chinese community and he read about the revolution in Denver Hotel.
But he hurried back and he was still made the first provisional President of the Republic of China because he’s a well known figure and he’s very good at raising funds. But he was quickly pushed out of the power. By 1920s, he organized a new government in the south, in Canton or today’s Guangzhou. And this time he received support from the Soviet Union because, in 1920, Soviet Union was encircled by the different world powers.
It’s trying to break out its diplomatic isolation by supporting national liberation movements all over its periphery. First in Turkey, the Soviet Union supported Ataturk and it seemed to try to do the same in China by supporting Sun Yat-sen because they saw Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party as this party that could potentially be anti-imperialist.
So, the Soviet advisers came to Canton and they work out a deal with Sun Yat-sen where they will give Sun Yat-sen funding, training. And, one thing Soviet adviser told Sun Yat-sen is, look, the problem that you failed so many times prior because you don’t have an army of your own. So, you have to rely on various Chinese warlords who turn out to betray you at the end.
So, we will train an army that’s loyal to you and your party. So, in 1920, Sun Yat-sen formed the KMT, sometimes called Guomindang. It’s translated as Chinese Nationalist Party and Soviet adviser offered to train him a KMT army, army loyal to Sun Yat-sen and the KMT Party. But their price for this Sino-Soviet cooperation is that Sun Yat-sen must allow the Communist Party members to join his ranks, to join his government, to form a coalition government.
At that time, the Chinese Communist Party just got started. The Chinese Communist Party officially started in the early 1920s and they didn’t have a great number. Soviet Union thought the sure bet is to go with Sun Yat-sen and then use this opportunity to insert the Chinese Communist Party in the new government ranks and maybe eventually take over. That was the plan.
And that’s when Mao also participated in the Sun Yat-sen government in the south. This is, like, the first time alliance between the KMT and the CPC, the Communist Party of China. And as an end result, the Soviet adviser came. They created a military Academy, Whampoa Military Academy which trained a new generation of army officers who would lead the KMT army for Sun Yat-sen.
But Sun Yat-sen passed away in 1925 before he could see the unification of the country. And, at this point, there was a bit of a power struggle, a succession crisis. And the pro Soviet, Sun Yat-sen’s friend, who architected this whole pro Soviet policy, he was assassinated. And there was tension between the right wing KMT and the left wing and eventually they came up with a compromise candidate.
But, then, the real power start to shift to the army commander Chiang Kai-shek, who was one of Sun Yat-sen’s right hand man. But Chiang Kai-shek was appointed as the principal of the Whampoa Military Academy. And through the Whampoa Military Academy Chiang Kai-shek built his own loyal following of army officers. He used that to control the new army.
And Chiang Kai-shek started to grab more and more power to himself. But on the surface, the alliance between KMT and CPC still held. In fact, at one point, Mao was the propaganda chief for the KMT party [laughs] because, at the time, the communist members were allowed to join the KMT party and be part of it. And, then, the KMT-CPC alliance launched the Northern Expedition against Chinese warlords in 1927.
They quickly defeated the warlord armies in their push north. But, on taking Shanghai, Zhou Enlai, one of the Chinese Communist leaders, led a workers’ uprising in Shanghai to welcome the Northern Expedition army. But when Chiang Kai-shek marched into Shanghai he did 180 because he realized the communists are gaining power and he didn’t want his party apparatus to be taken over.
And, as soon as his army entered Shanghai, he did the so-called Shanghai massacre. He worked with the Shanghai Triad, the Shanghai gangs, to kill the communist union organizers. Over 5000 people were killed. That became the split between the Communist Party of China and the KMT. And, soon, the other KMT factions also follow suit. So, that’s a point where Mao led an uprising.
At the time, the communists tried to take the power back because, at that time, the Chinese Communist Party still took a lot of instructions from Soviet Union through Comintern. And their instruction was to stage insurrections against the KMT and to take cities. And where the goal was that they will march their army back to Canton, the original seat of the Southern government where they will receive direct Soviet aid via sea because Canton is a seaport.
And this was the origin of the People’s Liberation Army. Because the communist staged an uprising first on August 1, 1927. But on their march toward Canton, they were surrounded and they were defeated. The uprising that was led by the Canton Workers Union in Canton was also crushed by the local KMT forces. It was at this moment that Mao, who, also, participated in another uprising, the Autumn Harvest uprising, he made the decision that taking cities is unrealistic.
He took his remnant of the communist insurgent army into the mountains of Jiangxi Province, particularly at the Jinggang Mountains. And Mao established the first communist base in the rural areas. And that’s where he also realized the proletariat in China, the workers, the working class, actually consisted as a small part of the overall population.
90% of the population in China back then was rural, that if Communist Party were ever to win, they have to mobilize the peasantry and they have to start from the rural base and then gradually surrounding the city. That was Mao’s strategy, to take over the countryside first and then to link up with different communist base in the rural areas and then have these communist bases surround bigger cities, which is still controlled by the KMT.
But, on the other side, KMT continue the northern expedition. Much of the Northern China warlords folded. So, at the time, China was nominally unified under Chiang Kai-shek’s government. I say nominally because a lot of the warlords in Northern China and particularly northeast China in Manchuria, they still retain their own army and their own command structure.
They just pay lip service to a unified KMT government. They pledge allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nanjing government. But, in actuality, on the ground, China was still very much divided. There are still many warlords in Northern China and there’s communist insurgency in the countryside. And, then, against this background, the Japanese invaded.
First, in 1931 through the so-called Mukden incident in Manchuria, where the Japanese Kwantung Army managed to take over all of Manchuria. Because, before that, Japan gained the right to station their army in China. First as part of the settlement of Boxer Rebellion, the foreign powers gain rights to station their own troops in China to safeguard their so-called interest, so-called commercial interests.
[00:21:15.610] – Grumbine
Sounds like the US today.
[00:21:17.180] – Zha
Yes, yes. At that time, actually, China had very close to a US model because the foreign power is basically forcing the Qing government agreed to sell the railroad concessions to the foreign powers. So, different foreign powers like the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan, Russia, they will come to China, they will build railroads, but the railroads operation rights will belong to those foreign powers.
And, then, the land, I think it’s 20 km or maybe 10 miles around the railroad tracks will belong to those foreign powers. So, the foreign powers actually have the rights to station their troops all along the railroad to protect it, so to speak. Also, after the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, Japan just elbowed out Russia from southern Manchuria and gained the control of the Southern Manchurian railway.
And the Japanese also got the rights to station their own troops, to quote, unquote, guard the Southern Manchuria railway. So, Japanese troops was already on Chinese soil. And, then, in 1931, they stage a false flag attack.
[00:22:28.750] – Grumbine
What are those?
[00:22:29.160] – Zha
Yes, and they claim that they have been bombarded by the Chinese warlord army in Manchuria. And, so, they stage a takeover of the entire Manchuria in 1931. And they continue to push north ever closer to Beijing. But, against this environment, that’s when Chiang Kai-shek made his famous speech. He said, the foreign aggression is a disease of the skin.
But the communist insurgency is a disease of the heart. To be able to resist the Japanese invasion, first we need to put our house in order. By that, it means we need to stamp out the communist insurgency first. In the early 1930s, rather than conquering Japan, Chiang Kai-shek focus his efforts on stamping out the communist base that was first built by Mao in the countryside.
And there was, also, a big power struggle within the Communist Party of China ranks because, even though Mao was the one who first established a communist base in rural China, at the time, the Communist Party of China was still taking orders from Comintern from Soviet Union, basically. Its leadership are mostly based in big cities like Shanghai.
And, so, after KMT crackdown of the Communist leadership move out of Shanghai, move into the rural communist base, they push Mao to the side. And there were, like, struggle sessions. There were internal factional fighting because one of the things is the communist leadership at the time, also, adopted the policy of purging from Soviet Union.
So, a lot of the communist commanders were purged. Mao was lucky. He wasn’t killed. For a while, he was, kind of, under house arrest. He was shunted aside. But with the increasing KMT attack, eventually the KMT were able to overwhelm the communist base because the Communist Party of China, at the time, made a lot of mistakes.
After the shunted aside commanders with actual experience on the ground, like Mao, they imported this German adviser who was sent as a Comintern agent to China, employ him as a main military adviser. And I think his name is Otto Braun. And his idea is we must fight for every inch of the land, which is a drastic departure from Mao’s guerrilla tactics because Mao’s whole guerilla tactic was that we should avoid fighting set piece battles with superior enemy.
Instead, we should drew the enemy in, exhaust their supplies. When their supply lines get exhausted, we attack their supply lines, we attack them at their weak points. And, then, when they withdrew, we attacked them on the run. And that guerrilla tactic served Mao’s Army very well until Mao was, kind of, kicked off to the curb.
And under the new German adviser, the Communist Party adopted this trench warfare against the KMT army who, at the time, was actually, also, trained by Germany. Interesting fact, because Germany after World War One they were ordered to disarm. So, a lot of the German arms manufacturers, they found a way around that.
They found a way to survive by exporting weapons to China, to the KMT government. And Chiang Kai-shek also had his own German advisors. So, they are very familiar with kind of World War One trench warfare.
[00:26:14.490] – Grumbine
Well, let me ask you a question here because when I hear this, I always think about the Democrats in the US trying to be Republicans and Republicans do Republican better than the Democrats ever could. And, so, this group of armies different interests and Mao’s perspective work well for them. Now, they’re trying to emulate the tactics of the other side. And the other side has got plenty of experience, training, knowledge of these tactics. What would cause such a change? Why would they shift?
[00:26:47.190] – Zha
One of the reason is because this change in the leadership. For a while, the communist leadership were stationed in Shanghai. They issued orders but Mao was largely autonomous on the ground secure in his own base because, as the KMT increase their crackdown against the Communist underground in Shanghai, the top leadership moved from Shanghai into Mao’s communist base and that’s where they took over from Mao.
And it’s also because there’s also kind of blind belief in Comintern at the time, that’s why they employ this German guy to be their main military adviser. And, then, the result was predictable. The communist base was overrun. So, at that point, the Chinese Red Army had to embark what’s known as the Long March. Originally there was, actually, no concrete plan. They just wanted to escape in encirclement. So, they break out of the KMT encirclement and start this long, torturous journey all across southern China.
They first tried to link up with other communist bases but the other communist bases were also under attack and they pretty much took the Chinese Communist Army all over China. And, then, finally, Mao was able to come up ahead in the power struggle because, at one point, all the communist leadership got together when they’re in southwestern China in Guangxi in Qinzhou, they realize things are not working.
So, that’s when they finally sidelined the leadership that had led them to this fiasco and Mao was reelected as the leader because a lot of the army commanders trusted Mao’s experience and, now, it’s more pure military survival. So, they look up to Mao. That was first time, on the Long March, Mao became one of the top leaders of the Communist Party.
Before, he was just leader of his own communist base. But the experience of Long March affirmed his leadership. And, then, Mao made the decision that they should go to Northern China under the slogans of fighting Japanese. That would rally more popular support because, at the time, Japanese invasion was the most pressing concern.
And Mao, actually, in a newspaper clip, he read about another KMT campaign to wipe out the northwest communist base. That’s when he realized there was a communist base in the northwest. He made the decision to march across the Tibetan borderlands into northern China to join with the communists who had founded northwestern communist base and to establish his base there.
When that was done, Chiang Kai-shek didn’t relent on his attack. So, he ordered all his army to northwest China trying to wipe out the communist once and for all. But one of the generals he ordered was a Manchurian warlord, Chang Hsueh-liang, aka Young Marshal. The reason why he was called Young Marshal is because he inherited Manchuria from his father, the old warlord of Manchuria.
But it was under his watch that he lost Manchuria to the Japanese. And he was more interested to get Manchuria back rather than fighting the communists. And he soon realized the reason Chiang Kai-shek ordered him and his army to fight the communists was Chiang Kai-shek was trying to kill two birds with one stone. He’s trying to wipe out all these warlord armies and the communists at the same time.
So, Young Marshal didn’t want to be Chiang Kai-shek’s cannon fodder. And, then, in 1936, while Chiang Kai-shek was coming to Xi’an to inspect the front lines, Young Marshal actually established contact with the Communist Party through Zhou Enlai. And, then, Young Marshal stage a coup. He arrested Chiang Kai-shek and then forced Chiang Kai-shek to agree to form a coalition with the Communist Party again, to form a united front against the Japanese invasion.
This is the famous Xi’an incident when Chiang Kai-shek was arrested. And to secure his own freedom, he agreed to all the terms to form an alliance with the communists by the Japanese.
[00:31:52.260] – Intermission
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[00:32:18.290] – Grumbine
Is this the Manchurian Candidate? Is this where that comes from?
[00:32:23.150] – Zha
No, actually, Manchurian Candidate came from Korean War when some US POWs chose to go to China rather than come back to the United States. And the US media couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe how could any American soldier voluntarily go into China. They thought China must have brainwashed them. And, then, that’s where the, kind of, the Manchurian candidate came from. Like, the idea of Red China came up with all these brain control techniques.
[00:32:53.930] – Grumbine
I’m sorry, I just had to ask.
[00:32:55.820] – Zha
It’s fine, it’s fine. But Chang Hsueh-liang offered to fly Chiang Kai-shek back to Nanjing himself. And, of course, when he did that, Chiang Kai-shek arrested him, place him under house arrest for the rest of his life. But Chiang Kai-shek did stick with his promise of forming a united front against the Japanese. At the same time, Japan used another excuse to launch attack against Beijing in the so-called Marco Polo incident.
So, the second Sino-Japanese full scale war broke out. And this is a time when Mao’s communist base was already firmly established in northwest China. This, actually, presented a big opportunity because whether the KMT army or the Chinese warlords army, they were no match for the Japanese Imperial Army at the time. Japan was already an industrialized power.
China, at this time, was still 90% rural. And most of the Chiang Kai-shek elite division trained by his German adviser were wiped out in the battle of Shanghai. And that led to the Nanjing massacre soon afterwards. So, Japan quickly took over much of northern China. And that, actually, presented an opportunity for the communists because the communists will send in their units, their communist units, they break them up into small units and send in to the Japanese occupied area in northern China.
The thing is that Japan, their victory came so quick. They didn’t have time to establish a firm governance on the ground. So, a lot of times what Japan Imperial Army really controlled was the large cities. They controlled the railway links between these large cities. But in the countryside there was chaos. There was utter chaos because the former government officials all fled.
Different militias popped up for self-defense. It was under this kind of environment, the communists start to actively recruit and also to take over these local resistance groups. If you are local militia in northern China, you basically have only two choices because their support from Chiang Kai-shek, he was completely cut off at this point. So, you have two choices.
You either become Japanese collaborator or you become communist. Because there were a couple independent local militias in the beginning but, as a war wear on, they are forced to choose side, basically. You either go with the Japanese or you go with the communists. The communists are better organized. They’re much, much better organized than these local militia groups and they actually have a coherent ideology, whereas some of these local militias are no better than bandits.
So, the communists were able to either infiltrate, take over or drive them away. So, once you were defeated by the communists, you really ended up as Japanese collaborator. So, that was the situation in the northern China countryside. Japan may control the large cities, big towns, but, in the villages, the communists established a sort of shadow government.
So, the village were forced to, for example, to pay taxes to the Japanese occupiers. But, at the same time, the communists come at night, they collect their own taxes and the communists enforce their own brand of justice. So, they know who are the collaborators. So, when the Japanese Army leave, the communists come in, they take over. And that was the situation in much of northern China.
And that’s how communist gained a lot of popular support also at this time because the KMT presence, basically, was gone from northern China and a lot of the Chinese warlords were scattered. So, the communists became the only organized Chinese led resistance against the Japanese and they gained a lot of credit among northern China rural areas.
And, also, at the time, Mao put forth his own united front, which calls for, let’s put a stop to class struggle for the moment because now we need to face a common enemy, the Japanese. So, we need to unite all possible forces that can be united, including the national bourgeois, including even the landlords. Anyone who is against Japanese, we welcome to our ranks.
And that was a communist united front at the time. And this situation, basically, persisted throughout the war. In southern China, it’s a little bit different because there’s less communist presence in southern China. But in northern China, communists were able to take over much of the countryside. And, in fact, there are charges that communists didn’t fight all the big battles against the Japanese like the KMT did.
Which is true because communists didn’t have the strength to fight the Japanese, take Japanese on as a regular conventional warfare. Instead, they adopted guerilla tactics. There was one time in 1940 or 1941, communists did launch a big offensive called The Hundred Regiments Offensive. That’s when the communist commander Peng Dehuai mobilized, basically, entire communist force in northern China on a full scale, all out attack on the different Japanese occupied cities and towns.
But that actually exposed the strength of the Chinese communists in northern China. That made Japan spend next couple of years on this kind of pacification campaign in northern China. That’s where they adopted the Three Alls campaign, which is loot all, burn all, kill all. They created these kill zones where the Imperial Japanese Army could do as they please to wipe out the grassroots support.
They thought the communists relied a lot on popular support. We will just wipe out their support base by killing the peasants. And it’s very brutal guerilla campaign and counter insurgency. But, in the end, the brutality drives more people even to the communist side.
[00:39:14.290] – Grumbine
Yeah.
[00:39:15.060] – Zha
It’s kind of like for the US perspective, you can see that, like, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
[00:39:21.710] – Grumbine
Syria, everywhere.
[00:39:23.510] – Zha
Yeah. And we’re focusing on the communist part of the story. So, I’m, of course, skipping a lot of part of the actual Sino-Japanese war. But at the end of the World War II, when Japan surrendered in August 15, 1945, Japan still have more than a million man army in China. In Manchuria alone, they had 750,000 troops, at least on paper.
Most of the troops, by this time, were fresh recruits, young boys, old man, because a lot of the elite units have been sent to southeast Asia into the Pacific campaign. And, then, I was watching memoirs from the communist veterans that said back in 1939 it would take six people to face a Japanese soldier. They would have six people surrounding a Japanese soldier with spears to take them out, even if in close quarter combat.
But by 1944, they could take on Japanese soldiers one on one already because, by that time, the Japanese soldiers are teenage boys and old men fresh out of Tokyo. So, by that time, the Chinese communists already had close to 1.2 million men under arms. That’s including other local militias in 1945.
And, then, when the Japanese surrendered, there was a scramble to grab territory between the communists and the KMT. One of the reason is the KMT army and the KMT government has been driven to southwestern part of China mostly in the three provinces, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou, like, in the far corner, southwest corner of China. That’s where most of their army is located.
Whereas the communists because they already have bases, rural bases in northern China, they are much closer. They just need to march into the Japanese occupied towns to take the surrender. So, Chiang Kai-shek actually issued an order to all the Japanese occupation army in China that do not lay down your weapons, hold on to your towns and cities until we arrive.
Do not surrender to the communist, hold on to your control areas. And, in the meantime, US, also, got involved. Ostensibly, US was a neutral party to the Chinese civil war but US provided US Navy and US Marines came to China in the so-called Operation Beleaguer in 1945. The operation involving a total of 60,000 US servicemen placed on Chinese soil with a sense of purpose to evacuate the surrendered Japanese troops.
But one of their function is to hold these big cities in northern China before the KMT arrived to hold them until the KMT troops could get there. And also to ferry the KMT troops from southwest China to northern China. So, this is actually a point where US Marines actually came into several conflicts with the communist local troops in northern China because the US Marines were preventing the communists from taking over towns and railway hubs.
[00:42:48.050] – Grumbine
Let me ask you a quick question. The US was dropping nuclear bombs in Japan and they’re over there protecting and evacuating Japanese from China. Kind of a weird dichotomy there.
[00:43:01.750] – Zha
Well, yeah because, at this time, there were still millions of Japanese on China, both a million Japanese Imperial Army, their families and a lot of the Japanese settlers. So, for example, when Japan took over Manchuria in 1931, they turned Manchuria into a Japanese colony. So, they encouraged millions of Japanese settlers to come to Manchuria and, also, a couple of million Koreans under Japan occupied Korea also came to Manchuria.
That was Japan’s attempt to make Manchuria, like, the second Japanese homeland on the Asian mainland and they took away the best land from the Chinese peasants and give this to these Japanese settlers. So, in 1945, there’s still a lot of Japanese in China and the plan was to repatriate them to Japan and US military’s order, ostensibly, was to maintain order to repatriate all the Japanese back to the Japanese homeland.
But what they’re also doing, is to ferry the KMT troops to northern China from southern China. A lot of the KMT troops they boarded US Navy ships in Hong Kong and they sailed for the ports in northern China like Tianjin and the US Marines went to Tianjin and Beijing. They hold the railway junctions to allow the KMT troops to come to northern China by rail.
This is at the same time as the communists are going to the towns trying to take it over from the Japanese because, at this time, even though Japanese still hold a large area of China. But the Imperial Japanese Army morale it totally collapse after the emperor’s surrender announcement, they just want to go home. And there was an anecdotal story from my family.
At the time, my dad was a newborn baby at the time of Japanese surrender, he was one month old. And at that time there was a rumor in his town that the Japanese Army is coming and everybody is panicking because last time the Japanese Army came through my dad’s hometown, Haining in Zhujiang, they burned down the whole place.
So, there was a large panic and all the family are planning to flee. But because my dad was a newborn baby and people feel like crying baby will give away their position to the Japanese. They all urged my grandma to abandon my dad. But my grandma wasn’t about to give up her baby. So, she decided to keep my dad. And it turns out it was false alarm.
It turns out the Japanese troops were actually coming to town to assemble to get on the train to Hangzhou for the Japanese surrender. So, thanks to my grandma, I’m still here talking to you. My dad wasn’t thrown away in some ditch somewhere. So, this was a very chaotic time and there was a scramble for China between the communist side and the nationalist side because Japan occupied a lot of Northern China like I mentioned and there was no KMT presence.
So, it takes time for the KMT to get on the ships in Hong Kong and sail into northern China because the communists cut the railway links so they couldn’t take the train. So, they have to be either airlifted or ride the American ships into northern China and then in Manchuria was totally different because the Soviet Union declared war on Japan as result of the Yalta Conference deal in early August, 1945.
And this is a so-called August storm when a million man Red Army poured into Manchuria and very quickly take over the whole area from the Japanese Kwantung Army which just collapsed. And that’s also one reason for the Japanese surrender because they were hoping that Soviet will remain neutral and then maybe even help to mediate some kind of peace settlement between Japan and United States.
But when Soviet entered the war with Japan, all hope was lost. And, also, the reason the two atomic bomb was dropped in Japan was also for US to demonstrate to the Soviets that they got the atom bomb. And so both the atom bomb and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria prompted the Japanese surrender on August 15. But under the Soviet occupation at the time, the Communist leadership, Mao actually made a decision before the end of the war.
In April, 1945, the communists held a national meeting in their base in northwest China. At that time, Mao and his top leadership made a decision. The Communists must capture Manchuria because Japan tried to develop Manchuria as their second homeland on the Asian mainland. And they poured a lot of investment into Manchuria to build infrastructure, to build factories.
So, by 1945 90% of the industrial output of China is in Manchuria. So, in other words, Manchuria was already industrialized whereas the rest of China wasn’t. 90% of electricity generation was in Manchuria. 65% of the coal was produced in Manchuria. 90% of the steel production was in Manchuria. So, who controls Manchuria is going to be able to control China.
At that time, Mao said in a famous speech, even if we lose all our communist base south of the Great Wall, if we lose all the communist base in northern China, if we could capture Manchuria, that would be a victory for us. It will be worth it. It will be worth it to trade all the communist base that we currently have for the control of Manchuria.
So, after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, the communists made the decision to send their troops into Manchuria. And their order was for 100,000 communist troops plus 20,000 communist cadres to move into Manchuria and to establish government there because the Soviet Red Army was already in control. But the Soviet Red Army wasn’t very interested in governing.
They were there to liberate it from the Japanese but they were not very interested to actually governing the Chinese territory, the Chinese cities. And, also accompanying the Soviet Red Army, are some of the guerillas, the communist guerrillas who fought in Manchuria for many years and were forced to withdrew to Soviet Union in 1941.
They came with the Red Army as guides, as spearheads for the Soviet Red Army advance. So, they quickly got appointed important positions in the cities that’s taken over by the Red Army. They became, like, police chief. They became city government leaders and they very quickly established communication with the Communist headquarters in Yenon with Mao and telling Mao, come quickly, bring your troops.
And there was a scramble for northern China. There was another scramble for Manchuria. So, while US military were able to help Chiang Kai-shek’s Army to move into northern China using US Navy and US Air force, they couldn’t do much in Manchuria. And Chiang Kai-shek was, also, aware of the communist movement into Manchuria.
And Chiang Kai-shek turned to a negotiation with the Soviet Union. This became the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty in 1945. It was actually signed one day before the Japanese surrender. It stipulates that Soviet Union will respect territorial integrity of China but in return KMT government must recognize the independence of Outer Mongolia because Outer Mongolia has been de facto independent from China since 1920s, first 1911 and then later 1920s.
And it was due to close orbit of Soviet Union. So, Soviet Union want China to fully recognize independence of Outer Mongolia and, also, recognize a special Soviet privilege in Manchuria. Soviet wants to regain the privilege that the former Czarist Russia enjoy in Manchuria, that including the railway rights, operation rights of the Manchurian railway.
And the Soviet wants a Port Arthur or Dalian, which Czarist Russia lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Soviet Union want Dalian or AKA Port Arthur to become a Soviet naval base. So, they signed a long term lease with KMT government and in return by Chiang Kai-shek to recognize the Soviet sphere of influence in Manchuria and also in Xinjiang.
At the time, in 1944, Soviet supported a local rebellion in Xinjiang that for a brief period established the so-called second East Turkistan Republic in the northern three district of Xinjiang. And then Soviet said, okay, if you recognize Outer Mongolia, we’ll recognize Manchuria and Xinjiang as Chinese territory, we’ll respect the Chinese territory integrity.
So, the result of the deal, the East Turkistan Republic was ordered to take their name out. They rename their government, the government of three northern districts and to form a coalition government with the KMT Xinjiang government facing [inaudible 52:30:00]. So Xinjiang, nominally, was back under KMT control, under a coalition government with the Soviet back, the Uyghur Communists and the KMT army in the south.
And also Soviet Union promise not to aid Chinese Communist party. That’s important clause for Chiang Kai-shek. So, all was well and dandy. So, Soviet Union kind of flip-flopped a couple of times in their support of the Chinese communists. Initially, they rely on lot of the communists to maintain order in Manchuria. And that allowed the communists to sending 100,000 troops into Manchuria, taking various posts.
And they, actually, established their headquarters in Shenyang, largest city in Manchuria. But, then, after this treaty was signed with KMT government, the Soviet told the communists, okay, okay, you guys have to go. You cannot have your headquarters here in Shenyang pretending you are the local government here. You have to get out. KMT is coming in.
But what happened next is US, again, got involved. US Navy was shipping the KMT army into Manchuria. They shipped a half million KMT troops into Manchuria. So, that’s when Soviet Union got nervous. They realized Chiang Kai-shek was in bed with the United States interest and US Marines was already post in Beijing.
I mentioned there was already 60,000 US servicemen in northern China, very close to Manchuria, which Soviet considers its own backyard. At this time, this is, basically, the beginning of the Cold War. Yeah, this is the beginning of the Cold War in East Asia. The Soviet Union realized, okay, look, Chiang Kai-shek is too close to the US.
We don’t believe he will be able to keep the US influence from Manchuria. One of the treaty that they signed with Chiang Kai-shek is Manchuria should not allow the third party to come in, meaning it’s only China and the Soviet Union influence in Manchuria. They should not allow US interest into Manchuria. But what the Soviet Union has observed is that all these US warships is getting closer and closer to Manchuria because Soviets got their lease on Port Arthur.
They establish a naval base on the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula. People can look on the map to see where that is. But US Navy, for some odd reason, they thought, okay, we are going to move the 7th Fleet headquarters to China, and we’re going to put our headquarters right on the Shandong Peninsula in a place called Qingdao.
So, people can look at the map of China and see how close the Soviet naval base in Dalian at the tip of Liaodong Peninsula, and also Qingdao on the Shandong Peninsula. They’re right next to each other. The Soviet Navy, when they sail out of the harbor, they’re going to bump into the US Navy coming out of the 7th Fleet headquarters in Qingdao, right?
So, that’s when the Soviet Union got worried. Okay, what’s going on? The US is parking Marines in Beijing and they’re parking their Navies in Shandong. So, then they start to shift their position again to switch support to the communists. They told the communists, okay, here are these Japanese arsenals we capture. You can have their weapons.
[00:55:57.630] – Grumbine
Nice.
[00:55:58.180] – Zha
And so, when the KMT requested their troops to unload in the Soviet control port in Dalian in Port Arthur, the Soviets refused. They’re like, no, no, no, we can’t allow this American Navy to ship in. This is our naval base. Too much secret. We don’t want the American ships there. So, they told the KMT, okay, you can go to this other Port in Manchuria, Huludao.
So, the US naval ships have to reroute to drop KMT troops in a different part of Manchuria in Huludao. But when they arrive in Huludao, they found that Huludao and Yingkou, they found the Chinese Communist troops were setting up onshore with batteries manning the guns pointing at the US naval ships. Okay, is it going to go land? This is going to be a war.
So, they actually had to land in a place called Qinhuangdao, which is just south of the Great Wall. That’s the starting point of the Great Wall on the sea. And, then, the KMT army then started their attack into Manchuria. The first major battle of Chinese civil war was fought at the Great Wall Pass of Shanhaiguan, where the Great Wall begins. So, the Chinese Communist Party held the pass.
At that time, Mao’s slogan was, let’s hold the Great Wall, let’s hold the KMT south of the Great Wall. And we can have Manchuria all to ourselves, because then we will have our back towards Soviet Union, Mongolia and North Korea. Our back will be secure, and then we’ll establish a new communist government in Manchuria.
But that didn’t pan out because the KMT-US trained elite divisions, they quickly overwhelmed the communist defenders and they push into Manchuria. And then, basically, the Chinese Civil war begins.
[00:58:27.830] – End credits
Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Andy Kennedy. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.
Carl Zha – Guest
Podcaster who was born in China. His family moved to the US when Carl was a teenager. On his podcast, Silk and Steel he talks about all things China past and present.
Mao Tse-Tung
Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People’s Republic of China, which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976.
Commodore Matthew Perry
A commodore of the United States Navy who commanded ships in several wars, including the War of 1812 and the Mexican–American War. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854
Opium War
The First Opium War, fought in 1839–1842 between Qing China and the United Kingdom, was triggered by the dynasty’s campaign against the British merchants who sold opium in China. The Second Opium War was fought between the Qing and the United Kingdom and France, 1856–1860. In each war, the European force’s modern military technology led to easy victory over the Qing forces, with the consequence that the government was compelled to grant favourable tariffs, trade concessions, reparations and territory to the Europeans.
Boxer Rebellion
An uprising against foreigners that occurred in China about 1900, begun by peasants but eventually supported by the government. A Chinese secret society known as the Boxers embarked on a violent campaign to drive all foreigners from China. Several countries sent troops to halt the attacks.
Qing Imperial Government / Qing Dynasty
The Qing dynasty, officially the Great Qing, was the Manchu-led last dynasty in the imperial history of China. It was proclaimed in 1636 in Manchuria, in 1644 entered Beijing, extended its rule to cover all of China proper, and then extended the empire into Central Asia. The dynasty lasted until 1912.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen
He served as the first provisional president of the Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China). He is called the “Father of the Nation” in the Republic of China, and the “Forerunner of the Revolution” in the People’s Republic of China for his instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the Xinhai Revolution. Sun is unique among 20th-century Chinese leaders for being widely revered in both Mainland China and Taiwan
KMT /Guomindang (Chinese Nationalist Party)
The Kuomintang, also referred to as the Guomindang or the Chinese Nationalist Party, is a major political party in the Republic of China throughout its historical periods in both the Chinese mainland as well as Taiwan. It was the dominant ruling party of the Republic of China on the mainland from 1928 to 1949.
Chiang Kai-sheck
Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China from 1928 until 1949 in mainland China and then in Taiwan until his death in 1975.
Mukden Incident
The Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, known in Chinese as the 9.18 Incident, was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Otto Braun
Otto Braun was a German Communist journalist and functionary of the Communist Party of Germany with a long and varied career. His most significant role was as a Comintern agent sent to China in 1934, to advise the Communist Party of China on military strategy during the Chinese Civil War.
Long March
The Long March was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party, the forerunner of the People’s Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Army of the Chinese Nationalist Party.
Chang Hsueh-liang / Young Marshal
Known in his later life as Peter H. L. Chang, was the effective ruler of Northeast China and much of northern China after the assassination of his father, Zhang Zuolin, by the Japanese on 4 June 1928.
Zou Enlai
The first Premier of the People’s Republic of China serving from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and helped the Communist Party rise to power, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the Chinese economy.
Peng Dehuai
A prominent Chinese Communist military leader, who served as China’s Defense Minister from 1954 to 1959.
Operation Beleaguer
A major United States military operation led by Maj. Gen. Keller E. Rockey. He commanded 50,000 men of the III Marine Amphibious Corps that deployed to northeastern China’s Hopeh and Shantung provinces between 1945 and 1949.
Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty
a bilateral treaty of alliance, collective security, aid and cooperation concluded between the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on February 14, 1950. It superseded the previous Sino-Soviet treaty signed by the Kuomintang government.