Following Japan’s unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945 and the end of World War II, Japan leaves China. China had been fighting wars against Japan on Chinese soil for eight years, and because of that China was in a debacle. Its economy was in atrophy, and a fifth of its population was expecting to migrate to another country. While fighting Japan, the Kuomintang (led by Chiang Kai-shek) had received the majority of the damage, and this had given the Chinese Communist Party a very unexpected opportunity to grow. Their growth was shown in their military force, expanding from 30,000 men in 1937 to 1 million regular troops, and 2 million militiamen in 1945.Mao ordered his troops, The People’s Liberation Army, to retrieve all equipment from the Japanese soldiers that had surrendered. Notification by the CCP, allowed the PLA to seize most of the land, as well as weapons, left by the Japanese. The Nationalist forces were spread very thing throughout China fighting battles so they were not expected to take control of a lot of land left by the Japanese, even though they were receiving aid from the Americans.
The threat of a civil war was becoming more and more real, so to avert that, Chiang Kai-shek invited Mao to negotiate in Chongqing. There was a U.S. special ambassador, George Marshall, present to mediate the negotiation. It seemed as though they had come to an agreement, which called for in 1946, a Political Consultative Conference to form a united government, and a national army. Unfortunately, being that the two sides had extremely different goals for the government, a civil war erupted. The KMT called for a national meeting to formulate a constitution, but the CCP refused to partake in the writing of it. When US president Harry S. Truman realized that he had
failed to unite China, he pulled Marshall back to the US in 1947. The US then just gave up, and forgot about China.
At the beginning of the war it seemed as though the Nationalists were ahead, because they had one most of the battles. They even captured the CCP capital of Yan’an in 1947. But the Nationalists faced a major problem, when Chiang resigned in 1948, the change in leaders to Li Zongren. The Nationalists failed to flourish with the new leader. On October 1 1949, Mao announced the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The KMT government along with any remaining soldiers fled to Taiwan, where the Republic of China remained.
The Chinese Civil War ended with the Communists victory, because of the communist military forces defeating the KMT forces. However, the there were many more contributing factors, such as Chinas ruined economy, inflation and corruption that were all blamed on the KMT. The CCP used the KMT’s failures, to win people over to their side with promises of economic reforms. The CCP also had the constant aid of the Soviet Union, who backed them up the entire time. While the KMT had the US aid, but they quickly abandoned the KMT when things turned for the worse.