The Sino-Japanese War & the civil war

From Mukden to Marco Polo Bridge

Japanese aggression escalated in three stages. The Mukden (Manchurian) Incident of 18 September 1931 gave Japan a pretext to seize Manchuria, where it installed the puppet state of Manchukuo (1932) under the last Qing emperor, Puyi. The Lytton Commission report (1932) condemned the action, prompting Japan to quit the League of Nations in 1933. Full-scale war began with the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugouqiao) Incident on 7 July 1937 near Beiping.

The Battle of Shanghai (August–November 1937) cost both sides heavily and ended in Japanese victory; the fall of the Nationalist capital produced the Nanjing Massacre (December 1937–January 1938), in which an estimated 200,000–300,000 Chinese were killed. The Nationalist government retreated up the Yangzi, relocating the capital to Chongqing after the loss of Wuhan in October 1938.

The Second United Front

The Xi'an Incident of December 1936—the kidnapping of Chiang Kai-shek by the warlord Zhang Xueliang—forced the Nationalists (GMD) and Communists (CCP) into the Second United Front against Japan. The cooperation was always fragile: the New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941 saw Nationalist forces attack Communist troops in Anhui, effectively ending meaningful collaboration.

During the war the CCP expanded enormously from its base at Yan'an, growing party membership and Red Army strength through guerrilla warfare, rural mobilisation, rent reduction, and the Rectification Campaign (1942–44) that consolidated Mao Zedong's leadership and codified Mao Zedong Thought (enshrined at the Seventh Party Congress, 1945). The Nationalists, bearing the brunt of conventional fighting, were ground down by inflation, corruption and battlefield losses, including the catastrophic Operation Ichigo (1944).

International dimension

China became one of the Allied 'Big Four' after Pearl Harbor (December 1941). The Cairo Declaration of December 1943 (Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang) pledged that territories Japan had taken from China—Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores—would be restored. Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 following the atomic bombings and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (8 August 1945), ending eight years of resistance. China recovered Taiwan after 50 years of Japanese rule.

The war's legacy was decisive: it shattered the Nationalist state's fiscal and military foundations while allowing the CCP to emerge as a mass organisation with a battle-tested army and territorial base—setting the stage for the civil war.

The decisive civil war, 1946–49

The Chongqing Negotiations (August–October 1945) between Mao and Chiang, producing the Double Tenth Agreement (10 October 1945), and the subsequent Marshall Mission (December 1945–January 1947) failed to prevent renewed conflict. General George Marshall's mediation collapsed amid mutual distrust; full-scale civil war resumed in 1946.

Initially the Nationalists held numerical and material superiority, capturing the CCP capital Yan'an in March 1947. But the tide turned. The CCP's land reform, launched under the Outline Land Law of October 1947, redistributed land from landlords to peasants, securing rural manpower and supplies. Lin Biao's forces gained control of Manchuria, and three campaigns proved decisive:

• Liaoshen Campaign (September–November 1948) secured Manchuria.
• Huaihai Campaign (November 1948–January 1949) destroyed the GMD's main forces north of the Yangzi.
• Pingjin Campaign (November 1948–January 1949) delivered Beiping (Beijing) and Tianjin.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA)—the renamed Red Army—crossed the Yangzi in April 1949 and took the Nationalist capital Nanjing on 23 April 1949.

Founding of the PRC

On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen Gate, declaring that 'the Chinese people have stood up.' The political framework had been set days earlier by the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which adopted the Common Programme as an interim constitution. Chiang Kai-shek's government retreated to Taiwan, where the Republic of China survived.

Why this matters for the exam

For the Guokao modern-history paper, this period is the causal hinge of the entire syllabus: it explains why the CCP won and the GMD lost, and it directly underpins the official narrative of the Party's legitimacy. High-yield, frequently-tested facts you must retain cold:

• The three decisive campaigns (Liaoshen, Huaihai, Pingjin) and their 1948–49 sequence.
• The dates of the Mukden Incident (1931), Marco Polo Bridge (1937) and PRC founding (1 October 1949).
• The Xi'an Incident as the trigger of the Second United Front, and the New Fourth Army Incident as its breakdown.
• The role of the CPPCC Common Programme as the provisional constitution before the 1954 Constitution.

Examiners reward candidates who can analytically weigh causes of CCP victory—land reform, organisational discipline, GMD inflation and corruption—rather than merely list events. Expect both objective (date-matching) and essay (cause-analysis) questions on this lesson.