World War Questions, About Chinese Civil War Research Assignment

World War Questions
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World War Questions
Question 1
At the surrender of the Japanese from China’s mainland, two sides namely the nationalist government and the communists were left fighting each other for supremacy. The war against the two was so fierce that it left millions of people, both civilians and the military dead. By “1945, the nationalist government took title to regions of China that had been under the Japanese occupation, in some cases, since 1931 (Dreyer, 1995, p.312).” Its express purpose was to lock out the insurgency from the communist in their quest to gain supremacy and control. As a result of the weakened southern opposition, the communists managed to take the win. This happened when they had control of the North where they used the technique of mass mobilization that earned them prestige. They were more than willing to forge a cooperation with a willing side which included the war lords and the capitalists. The communists had an advantage of their stable political ideology which could bring about a united China, a phenomenon that had not been in existence since the collapse of the Confucian system. The communists thrived then because the nationalist government was not in a position of reviving the fifth encirclement campaign strategy. Chiang’s ideology failed to thrive since it remained in the shadows of the habit of “command” unlike the Communist’s approach which sought to develop a united front and a different leadership in the military (Dreyer, 1995).
The nationalists’ forces on the other hand, had support from the US government who provided logistics and weapons through the help of the newly appointed “US personal representative” to the US president, George C. Marshall. Their mission did not succeed by then since the communists in the North had strengthened their infantry army by increasing their numbers from the initial 475,000– 1,278,000 men and then further to 1,950,000 men (Dreyer, 1995). In 1946, the Nationalist forces under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, managed to defeat the communist, who later openly sought for a ceasefire and place the blame on the US government. The support from the US government enabled the Nationalists to occupy Manchuria and some cities of the North. Their assistance would have come with lavish weapons, training of the army, welfare, supplies and regular pay. This was not the case with his (Chiang) leadership (Dreyer, 1995). The leadership of Chiang was characterized by failure to control land reforms and inflation lack of cooperation with other generals who were non-Whampoa residents. Chiang had converted all the government revenues to warfare and made a postponement on national reconstruction, which led to unrest among the intellectuals (Elleman, 2001). As a result of this, the inflation hit china three-fold. Rice which had costed 12 yuan by 1937 increased in price up to 6.7 million yuan by the June of 1948 and further rose to 63 million yuan in August the same year. This made his reign unpopular to the people, hence their defeat (Elleman, 2001, p.248).
Despite his failure in a proper strategy, he continued with his unwillingness to delegate necessary a...