Strengths And Weaknesses Of The Chinese Civil War

The cultural revolution is a strange period in Chinese history laced with intense struggle and anguish. The cultural revolution mobilized the all of society to compete for all opposing factions that they belonged to (Ong, 2016). Mao mobilized the young people of society during a background of political turmoil, which helped Mao to mobilize the students in order to enforce his political legitimacy and ideas (Ong, 2016). Mao’s charismatic authority created his personality cult and most defiantly leant a helping hand in mobilizing the red guard movement (Ong, 2016) (Weber, 1946) (Andreas, 2007). No matter which faction of the red guard they belonged to, they all mobilized against their common enemy; the better off, upper class. (Ong, 2016). Multiple ideologies within the youth led red guard movement explain why the movement gained momentum and became incredibly powerful (Walder, 2009).

“As one of the Red Guards in the middle school, I was given power through Mao to torture and humiliate our teachers, headmaster or anyone we didn’t like. I didn’t know it was wrong. I thought I was doing the right thing to continue the revolution, to fight and win the class struggle”- Zhao, Lin Qing. As a teenager Zhao was a Red Guard in Guangzhou during the Cultural Revolution. When asked what her impression was a member of the Red Guards, Zhao answered with two words: “naïve and senseless”. She refused answering anything more about her experience. She said, “The memories are still too painful to recall.”

Originally, Liang’s “parents were deeply involved in all the excitement of working to transform China into a great Socialist country” (4). Over a serious of unfortunate events, though, he became the child of a “Rightist’s cap” mother and a “Reactionary Capitalist stinking intellectuals” father (9, 51). Impacted by the shattering of his family and horrific bloodshed created by fighting, Liang Heng began to question the Cultural Revolution. He claimed that his “family had scarified so much… but it had given [them] nothing in return” (148). Liang Heng presents his shift in ideology to demonstrate that most Chinese were no longer in support of a Communist nation. His “troubles were common enough and anyone could see there was a discrepancy between the glorious words of the newspapers and [their] painful reality (232). Even Liang Heng’s father, after many years of devotion, found that he could no longer defend the Party’s policies after he experienced the ill-treatment of the peasants in the country

The Civil War was a very gruesome war. The war had become the Union (North) and the Confederacy (South). During the war the union and confederacy had many weaknesses and strengths. Some of them are technology, army/military and government.

Early on as an idealistic, young, and naive student Ma Bo set out on an epic journey to answer the call of China’s Great Leader, Mao Zedong. Even before this journey he had a history of answering such calls with great enthusiasm. This very overzealous student while in middle school even responded once by attacking his own mother to answer Mao’s call for ideological vigilance. He denounced her in public many times and even put up propaganda posters denouncing her, as well as taking part in searches of his own house. Then when Mao Zedong called for China’s youth to gain revolutionary experience in the new Cultural Revolution by going up to the mountains and down to the countryside making revolution. With that the young Red Guard fervently answered the call by joining the Production and Construction Military Corps, which was indeed a branch of the Chinese military. From that point he and his friends set out to Inner Mongolia to seek happiness from hard work and gaining revolutionary experience along the way. They did this by the reclamation of hundreds of thousands of acres of grassland. Through reclamation which involved harsh and exhausting labor, he and his friends at the time managed to lay to waste thousands of acres of grasslands completely desolating the countryside.

The Han dynasty was a golden era for China. It saw the greatest land confiscation of the nation’s history and economic success. In this paper I will be focusing on the structure of the national government, the monopolizing of iron and salt, the Yumen Pass and the Yellow Turban rebellion. Join me as we take a trip back in time to visit a time in Chinas history that is highly revered.

1865 was a year filled with hardships for the United States. Changes to the constitution were made, businesses formed, and leadership changed. This was also a year of controversy, dealing with racism. The United States’ strength was tested and proved to be strong with the end of the Civil War on April ninth. 1865 was an important year because of the Civil War, economic changes, and politics.

One of the most significant changes in the Communist Party has been the distribution of power. In the days of Deng and Mao, for instance, the leader held the majority of power in the Chinese political system. In more recent years, however, the Communist Party has dictated more of the government's actions while the leader, Hu, has relinquished a fair amount of power and authority. This shift is exemplified by the author's idea, “In Mao’s and Deng’s days, the leaders towered

At first these plans along with an extremely ingenious propaganda campaign stirred great optimism and productivity within the Chinese people, but as years went by the initial flare and excitement went out and few of these promises, reforms and goals had been reached. In some cases the promises were lies. The real actions of the Communist party showed quite a different picture than the lie of democracy that it was feeding the people. The new government never was a democratic one. As a matter of fact it was a dictatorship controlled by the China’s Communist Party (CCP). Throughout the years the communist government consistently and cruelly suppressed any attempts for the country’s democratization.

“The Party: The Secret World Of China’s Communist Rulers,” by Richard McGregor is a book which provides detailed insight into the Communist Party of China, revealing many of the secret underpinnings of how the party is run, and explores the question of how they have continued to stay in power for so long. While other strong socialist powers, such as the Soviet Union and Eastern Germany, fell at the end of the 20th century, the CPC was able to stay in control and ultimately come out of that period even stronger. In McGregor’s own words “the party picked itself up off the ground, reconstituted its armor and reinforced its flank. Somehow, it has outlasted, outsmarted, outperformed, or simply outlawed its critics, flummoxing the pundits who have predicted its demise at numerous junctures.” Instead of letting its own ideologies weaken its power, the CPC has continually adapted and transformed its policies and goals in order to maintain their stronghold over the nation. Through his impressive list of Chinese scholars and political contacts, McGregor is able to lay out the fundamental workings inside the Chinese government and the impressive actions they’ve taken to remain such a powerful organization.

Mao Zedong leader of the (CDC) advocated guerrilla fighting which he said is “a powerful special weapon with which we resist the Japanese and without which we cannot defeat them. And it can only succeed if employed by revolutionaries because it is a political and military style. guerrilla warfare is a way for the Chinese to expel an intruder that has more arms, equipment, and troops. Where the industrial nations stressed such tangible military factors such as arms, logistics and manpower; Mao focused on the intangibles which are time, space and will. Not being able to fight a well- equipped army in the field, Mao avoided battles by giving territory to the

At the end of the Sino-Japanese War the Guomindang held significant advantages over the Communists, with its widely recognised legitimate government controlling China, giving it the power to tax and conscript. On the other hand, the Communists could not match the Guomindang's troops in terms of training and equipment and could be "outgunned and outmanoeuvred in all major regions of the country" (Westad, 2003: 8). Furthermore, the Communist party was hardly represented in the cities at all, which of course was the power base of the Guomindang. However, the Communists also had successes resulting from the war with Japan including increasing their area of control and practiced evolving their strategies of protracted guerrilla warfare against the Japanese which in turn generated public support. Despite this the party's main forces were still located in North-west China and they were not in such a powerful position that a civil war with the Guomindang would be a mere formality in securing control of the country.

No one can deny from recent news that there has been a strong surge of Chinese nationalism, and that this nationalism has turned heads in the international community. The nationalism that the CCP has affected is taking on a life of its own. In its strategy of pragmatic nationalism, the CCP tried to blur the lines between love of country with love of the state and governing body. What has resulted is a whole new breed of nationalism that is very much independent of the Chinese Communist Party and in fact has caused the CCP great concern. This new form of nationalism is much more vibrant, passionate, virulent and uncontrollable than the government had intended with its post 1989 strategy of obtaining legitimacy through nationalism. This

Mao Zedong’s rise to political power as chairmen of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was made possible by the failings of the GouMinDan (GMD). After the fall of the Qing dynasty, in 1911, China fell into disarray where warlords had power, rather than a national government. Sun Yat-sen began a nationalist group whose militaristic tacts allowed them to unite china under a singular party, the GMD. Despite many revolutionary promises very little positive changes were made by Chiang Kai-shek, who became leader of the GMD in 1925.However because of the party’s lack of political knowledge and poor socio-economic abilities the GMD’s rule was a failure. Mao used this to project his own ideology on China in the form of Maoism. Mao’s ability to take advantage of China’s bad situation allowed him to receive the support he required in order to rise to power.

Throughout the history of China, the civil strife in China had marked a significant event. With two parties established; the Nationalist known as Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), conflicts between them began to erupt due to their difference in beliefs when CCP began to question to morality of democracy and capitalism. This led to the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). Although many see that, “early in the civil war it looked as though the Nationalists might prevail. They controlled key cities, their well-equipped troops far outnumbered Communist troops, and they had support from the United States,” (Tamura 180) the outcome of the war was not what everyone thought to be due to many