Yuan Teng Fei on the Chinese Civil War (and also Taiwan)

Yuan Tengfei is a history teacher that I’ve covered before, said by some to be “the best history teacher in China”, because he was well known for not teaching to the test, and instead actually covering history, and being a good storyteller. There was a lot of interest expressed after I translated his lecture on modern Chinese diplomacy a while back, and it’s taken me this long to get around to translating something else. Here’s a video to the reupload of the original lecture, since he deleted most of his material after getting beat up by the CCP:

For additional context, I need to remind you that almost all of his lectures on modern history in China was uploaded 2007-2009. His takes and his politics are very much placed in a 2008 context.

---

“Let’s continue our lecture. Last lesson, we talked about China’s anti-colonialism and the pursuit of democracy. It’s basically Modern Chinese History, and we’re just missing the last segment—China’s Liberation War, from August of 1945 to October of 1949. But actually, the Liberation War is different from the Liberation War Era. If you’re just talking about when battles took place, the battles started in 1946, but if you’re talking about the Liberation War Era, it starts in 1945.

Why do we count it this way? Because before the battles actually broke out, there was a….The Liberation War is split into several stages.

The first stage is “pursuing peace and democracy”, and it goes from August of 1945 to June of 1946. So you can imagine, the Second Sino Japanese War had just ended. Although China won, it was definitely a pyrrhic victory. We still took very heavy losses, whether in population or economy. 35 million casualties, 562 billion USD in economy loss. So when this war ended, what did China need the most? To rebuild its economy. Rest and recover. Regain its strength. But it didn’t take long after the 8 years of Sino-Japanese War ended to start on a 3 year civil war.

So how did this civil war erupt? It’s actually quite simple. Ask yourself, when would the Communists and Kuomintang work together? When they have a common enemy. Once that common enemy disappeared, the Communists and Kuomintang would have to fight.

The first time the Communists and Kuomintang joined hands, it was because they needed to overthrow the Beiyang Army. They needed to fight imperialism. And then as soon as the Beiyang Army fell, the Communists and Kuomintang went their separate ways again and started fighting each other.

The second time they joined hands was to create a united front against Japan. Once Japan surrendered, the Communists and Kuomintang need to go back to fighting each other again. But there is a buffer period before the war erupted. The Liberation War didn’t start as soon as the Sino-Japanese War ended. This is what we call the “pursuing peace and democracy stage”.

Two major events took place during this stage. The first is the Chongqing Talks and the “Double Ten Agreement”. What was the situation like at the time?

I don’t know if you still remember your World History, “After WWII, the world divided into two camps lead by America and Soviet Russia.” This is the Yalta system—where America and Russia split the world evenly. As for how they split it, where the borders are, consensus is that it’s from the Elbe in Germany to the 38th parallel in Korea, splitting Germany and Korea into two.

China is outside of this border. At the time, China was considered to be in America’s camp. So Americans believed that is the Chinese Communist Party got into power, then China will certainly join Soviet Russia’s side, because they’re both communist. That would be breaking the Yalta system’s balance, so America gave a lot of support to the Kuomintang.

At the time, America’s policy was “support China, suppress Japan.” They wanted Japan’s economy to go back to the 1920s. They wanted the Japanese people’s standard of living to be no higher than all the Asian countries that they invaded. They wanted to break down all of Japan’s machinery and equipment and give it to China as war reparations. They wanted to give what remained of the Japanese fleet to China. Some of those Japanese fleets served in the People’s Liberation Army until the 1980s. America didn’t expect China to change colour to quickly. When America saw that China had changed colour, they turned around and supported Japan to suppress China. Of course, you can’t apply “what ifs” to history. Should we have let the Kuomintang win? That’s not what I’m trying to say. But America held nothing back in its support of the Kuomintang.

America is very smart. During WWII, America was referred to as “the weapons factory of the democratic world”. It was able to manufacture astronomic numbers of military gear—297,000 military jets, 67,000 tanks, 101 aircraft carriers. Can you even imagine 300,000 jets? Even if jets back then aren’t as good as today’s, that’s still 300,000 of them! Can you imagine it? That’s horrifying.

After the war’s over, all of this military equipment was useless. What to do with them? Sell them? Who wants them? The war’s already over. Who can afford it, even? Any country that can afford it doesn’t need it, any country that needs it can’t afford it. Britain owed America 20 billion dollars after the war. Soviet Union owed 8 billion. Nobody could afford it. America had no options. It was costly to even try recycling them. It cost money to turn the tanks back to steel.

So America sank the tanks into coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean to help bolster the coral reefs, because if you have coral reefs, the surrounding area is your exclusive economic zone. But they don’t need that many coral reefs. So America came up with an idea—I can gift it away to whoever needs it. We’ll gift it to whoever benefits American interests the most, for example, the Kuomintang so they can defeat the communists.

The little M3 tank was just a light tank in the American military for scouting purposes only. Up against the German tanks, it was just as fragile as the dumpling-like Japanese tanks. [Thin skin, filled with meat—the ideal of a dumpling] But however useless it was against the Germans or the Soviets, it was a big deal in China. At least it’s better than the sheet metal Japanese tanks, right? They gave over a thousand to the Kuomintang, and every tank provided as much firepower as a whole battalion of the PLA. One 37mm cannon and two 7.62 machine guns was equal to a whole battalion of PLA soldiers.

You know how much America was throwing resources at China? What do you call those chocolate balls kids like these days? The ones that come in cans? At the time, in Shanghai, a whole tube of those chocolate balls were just 5 cents, because they were about to expire. That’s what American soldiers carried with them during war. They can dump it out and eat it for a quick boost of energy. They didn’t eat it after the war. Eating chocolate every day gives you diabetes. It’s too dangerous. They’re gonna eat shredded pork with garlic sprouts instead. So they gifted it all to China. Shanghai’s breakfast places didn’t serve wontons or noodles anymore. It’s all American bread, American powdered milk, American margarine. ‘Cause the war’s over, the Americans don’t need that stuff anymore. They want to drink real milk, not make milk from a powder. Who eats margarine anymore when they have real butter? Shanghai breakfasts were all hardtack and MREs. The rickshaw pullers in Shanghai, if you saw them from behind, you might think they were a particularly short American solders, because all the surplus uniforms were given to China for free. They just didn’t come with a helmet. You’d put on a uniform and boots four times your size and go out and pull your rickshaw.

So at the time, it wasn’t just that the Chinese government liked America. Almost all the people loved America. Why did China have to get into a war in Korea in 1950 even though they were just established? Because they wanted to suppress the widespread sentiment of loving America and fearing America. The communist party needed to show people that we absolutely can go to war with America. See, I beat them up. I won. That’s what they were going for.

So at the time, the Kuomintang were given enormous amounts of support from America, 45 whole Divisions of equipment, which they turned into 30 American-equipped Divisions and 30 half-American-equipped Divisions. That’s a level of resources that was unprecedented in Kuomintang history. So the Kuomintang thought they could win against the communists for sure. But most of the frontline fighting during the Second Sino-Japanese war was in the northwest and southwest of China. All of Dongbei, central China, southern China, everywhere else was taken over by the Japanese army. The Kuomintang didn’t have a presence in those areas. It was all communist guerilla fighting forces who were fighting behind enemy lines. So it’s going to take them time to move their troops to the front line, and they wanted to make the communists responsible for the war, so they invited Mao Zedong to come to Chongqing for negotiations.

Chiang Kai-shek invited Mao Zedong to negotiate because thought that Mao Zedong wouldn’t dare to come. That’s why he invited Mao. But Mao Zedong is like, “Chiang Kai-shek is stupid. You invited me, and you printed the invitation all over the news, so now the whole world knows that the only reason I’m in Chongqing is because you invited me there. That makes you responsible for my safety. If something happens to me, it’d be your fault.” So Mao decided that he would be safer in Chongqing than Yan’an. If he was in Yan’an, a Kuomintang spy might assassinate him, but if he was in Chongqing, all the Kuomintang spies would have to protect him.

So he came, and the two sides talked for 43 days, and they signed the Double Ten Agreement. But all the agreements were very vague. Like, “establish a country peacefully”, or “stop in-fighting”, but there’s no specific measures promised. The most significant thing in the Double Ten Agreement is to hold a “Political Negotiation Conference”. The Double Ten Agreement was signed on the 10th of October 1945, National Day for Taiwan. So they set the Political Negotiation Conference to take place in 1946 in Chongqing.

The two most heated arguments at the Political Negotiation Conference was nationalising the military and democracy. Although America didn’t want China to become communist, America also didn’t want China to fall into civil war. Because if China broke out into civil war, then America would have to choose a side, and they would have to support the Kuomintang. Although at the time, America believed that the Kuomintang has the better chance for victory anyways, but they would still be on the hook every time the Kuomintang wanted something. And if there needed to be boots on the ground, that’s completely against what the American people want and against America’s interests.

So President Truman sent Chief of Staff George Marshall to China to be a mediator. Have you guys heard of George Marshall? He became Secretary of State later and came up with the famous Marshall Plan. Marshall was a badass. Just how badass was he? Boys might know this better. There’s no Marshals in the US military, because the US military used to be very small. When they had their War of Independence, they only had Generals. You don’t have a Marshal when you only have a couple tens of thousands of people max. But come WWII, they had tens of millions of people in the military, and all their allies had a Marshal. If they don’t have a Marshal, their military brass would be one rank lower than all their allies’. So America had to create the Marshal rank for themselves. And George Marshall happened to be called Marshal. I don’t know what his name means, why he was named that. But if they made the Marshal rank, the first person it would go to would be George Marshall, because he was already the General of Generals. Of all the top Generals in the US military, only McArthur might possibly be his peer. Everyone else would be below him. A lot of the other Generals used to work under him. But then, it would be really awkward to introduce him to people, “This is Marshal Marshall.” It sounds super dumb. So just because he was named “Marshall”, they had to go with a different name. We don’t have Marshals, we have Five-Star Generals. We have General of the Armies.

For us, “Five-Star General” is a really weird round-about name for a Marshal, but it was just because of George Marshall. You can see how important he was. They changed the title of the highest commanding officer of the US military just to avoid making his name sound awkward.

So he came to China full of hopes. “President Truman sent me to China to mediate. How am I going to do that? I’m going to turn China into a country just like America—with democracy and a nationalised military.” For democracy, you can’t have just one party. You need multiple parties to compete for power. That’s how it is in America with the Republicans and Democrats. And the military would have to work for the nation. The American military doesn’t work for the Republicans or the Democrats—they work for America. No matter which party is in power, the military is loyal onto to the American government.

Who does the PLA work for? They work for the communists. I remember when Hong Kong returned to China in 1997. How old were you guys back then? Five? Still in kindergarten? You probably don’t remember. Hong Kong returned to China, and I remember a reporter interviewing the Political Commissar of the Hong Kong PLA Branch, and the political commissar said, “The People’s Liberation Army is a forced of armed people under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.” The PLA belongs to the party. You’ll know this when you go to college and go through mandatory training [a two-week program that every uni student has to go through, 军训, literally military training, but it’s more like a super short fitness program.] Any military unit larger than a Company has two commanding officers—one military commanding officer, one political commanding officer which is the political commissar. These two are the exact same rank as each other, it’s a dual-officer system. And during wars, the political commissar has the final say. It’s just like, who’s in charge of Beijing? It’s the Political Secretary. He’s got more power than the mayor.

So Marshall came to China to turn it into a country just like America. The problem was, Marshall knew nothing about China. The people here have been cultured by thousands of years of agricultural living on this land. They’re not Washington. There’s no way China would walk down that path. At the time, Chiang Kai-shek had more power than Mao. He had an army of 4.3 million strong, and Mao only had 1.3 million. And Chiang had better equipment. So they thought it would be no problem wiping out the communists. And so, the civil war broke out.

The second stage is “the strategic defense of the PLA”. This stage spans from June of 1946 to June of 1947. There’s several points under this. The first point is “crushing the total attack of the Kuomintang”. The Kuomintang started by launching a total attack against the central plains, and it was crushed by the PLA. The philosophy of the PLA was, “We don’t fight with the enemy over cities and towns. We focus on destroying the enemy’s ability to replenish themselves. If you want our cities, we’ll give them to you. But how many people are you going to lose taking this one city? And how many soldiers do you have to deploy to hold it once you take it?” This severely reduces the mobility of the enemy. The PLA never defends cities. They’re all based out of villages.

In Sun Tzu’s Art of War, he wrote, “The best attack with politics, those below attack logistics, those below attack soldiers, and the least desirable course is to attack cities.” You understand? The people who are the best at war are the ones who are good at scheming. “The best commander is not one who wins every battle, but the one who wins without any battles.” The most badass people gets you to surrender before they even begin fighting you. The next best option is to attack transportation networks. Then below that, “attack soldiers” means targeting the enemy’s renewable resources. The people who are the worst at war are those trying to attack cities and take territory.

So the Kuomintang take over a hundred cities and loses 710,000 casualties, and their total attack is crushed. And they switch to a plan of “key point attacks”, and they attack Northern Sha’anxi and Shandong. But that attack was crushed by the PLA too.

And once the Kuomintang’s attack has been crushed, the third stage, “the PLA’s strategic counterattack” begins. The first point here is the “the Liu Deng Army enters Dabie Mountains”. And the second point is the “Three Great Battles at Liaoning/Shenyang, Huaihai, and Pingjin and the decisive victory”. The PLA won the Three Great Battles one after the other, and with that, they’ve destroyed the main forces of the Kuomintang. All that’s left is disorganised, wounded units that the PLA needs to clean up. After their main forces are destroyed, the Kuomintang offers peace talks, so we have the “Peace Talks at Beiping”.

The second time the Kuomintang and the Communist Party negotiate in the Liberation War is the Peace Talks at Beiping. But, to use our words, the Kuomintang did not show enough sincerity at these talks and refused to sign the agreements, so the peace talks fell apart.

Once the peace talks fell apart, the PLA launched the Battle of the Yangtze, and they occupied Nanjing by April of 1949 and ended the 22 year reign of the Kuomintang. And that’s basically how the Liberation War went down.

The chances that the Liberation War comes up in the Gaokao is fairly slim. Even if they ask questions, it’s more likely to be about how the Kuomintang and Communist Party worked together, especially in the current political climate. We need to emphasise how the Kuomintang and the Communist Party work together against Taiwan Separationists to maintain a united China. So we can’t be dissing the Kuomintang all the time.

You know, I’ve heard people joke that there’s five mascot for the Olympics this time, and that’s too few. You can’t make enough money off of that. We should’ve made eight, to represent the Eight Immortals [a popular Daoist legend]. But eight is too few too. How about the 108 heroes in Water Margins? Or maybe the 500 Arhats? In my opinion, that’s all too unimaginative. If it was up to me, it would be the million army crossing the Yangtze. One million mascots! Imagine how much money you could make if you just charged people one cent each! You could make a million dollars selling at a buck each!

With that, we’ve basically wrapped up the “China’s History against Colonialism” part, and what’s next is modern history. And modern history is going to be mostly about political systems, economics, and diplomacy. There’s not a lot to talk about there. I can talk a little about “one country, two system”. …Or, well, that’s hard to talk about to. How can I say this…

If you tried to survey Taiwanese people about whether they like the “one country, two system” idea, Taiwanese people would first ask, “Which country is this one country?” If that country if the People’s Republic of China, then support for one country two systems would be close to zero in Taiwan. If the one country is the Republic of China, then support in Taiwan might reach 30%. That is, anyone who supports reunification in Taiwan wants to reunite the Republic of China. And about 20% of people support Taiwan Separationism. And the other 50% are who we’re trying to win over.

I don’t know if you’ve paid attention or not, but just look at the evening news. Is the news even talking about one country two systems anymore? No, they’ve dropped it. They’re using a new word now—“the 92 consensus”. “The 92 consensus” means “there’s only one China, and we’re both different expressions of it.” What’s interesting about this is that when the mainland talks about “the 92 consensus”, they emphasise, “there’s only one China.” And when Taiwan talks about “the 92 consensus”, they emphasise “different expressions”. We came up with “one country two systems” initially for Taiwan in particular. Later on, it solved the Hong Kong and Macau problem.

When I was little, in first grade, I learned these characters in my first Chinese class, “Mao Zedong forever lives on in our hearts.” And the illustration is the white jade statue of Mao Zedong in the Memorial Hall. And in my second lesson, I learned these characters, “We must liberate Taiwan.” The illustration was soldiers from the army, navy, and air force holding a red flag, with male soldiers on one side and female soldiers on the other, all sticking it into the island of Taiwan. That was the promotional poster.

When my Taiwanese friend visited, I told him about this, and he laughed and told me that Taiwan’s propaganda was exactly the same. They even had the same organisation. We have to join the Communist Youth. They have to join the Three Principles Youth League. When they join their league, they have to swear an oath that under the leadership of the Great Leader Chiang, they will unite and overcome all difficulties to restore the mainland, liberate their mainland brethren, and destroy the communist bandits. So over here, we talk about liberation every day. And over there, they talk about counterattack every day. Chiang Kai-shek issues an announcement every New Years and National Day and Veteran’s Day to encourage the Taiwanese people that it takes one year to prepare, two years to counter attack, and three years to clean up, and five years for success. This year, we’re preparing, but next year, the year after that, we’ll be able to have the Full Moon Festival in Nanjing.

This has caused a really interesting phenomenon. If we’re talking about liberation, and they’re talking about counter attack, it means that actually, on both sides, we all agree that there’s only one China. It’s really just a question of who really represents China. So it’s uncontested that there’s only one China. Were there separationists at the time? That didn’t exist. Chiang Kai-shek would hate separationists more than he hated communists. A Taiwanese separationist attempted to assassinate his son in America. The communists never even tried to assassinate his son.

Does Chiang Kai-shek know that he has no ability to assault the mainland? He knows that. But he has to keep saying it. Why? Look at how Zhege Liang explained why he had to march north in his “Chu Shi Biao” [basically a petition to the Emperor for permission to launch a military campaign]. “The Han cannot co-exist with the usurpers, and the Han cannot be displaced from its capital.” If you do not continue the war upon Cao Cao, then you have no reason to continue existing. It’s the same for Chiang Kai-shek. “I’m the President of the Republic of China. I’m supposed to be in Nanjing. I shouldn’t be in Taiwan. I’m not the Governor of Taiwan. So I have to keep yelling that I’m going to counterattack the mainland.”

To this day, Taiwan occupies two islands near the Fujian shoreline, Jinmen and Mazu. I don’t know if you’ve heard of these two islands. Have any of you been to Xiamen? You can look out to the sea from Xiamen with binoculars and read the big letters on Jinmen island, “Three People’s Principle, Unite China.” That’s where Taiwan is the closest to China. How close is it? 1600 metres. Supposedly, you could walk right over at low tide. In a war, even a heavy machine gun would be able to reach it. You don’t even need cannons.

Why do we let Taiwan keep these two islands? Because that’s how we keep a hold on them. “Don’t leave, bro, you still got territory to reclaim on the mainland.” So during the two Chiang period, the Republic of China was the most unique nation on Earth. It’s only got two provinces in the whole nation, and only two counties in each province. At the time, Taiwan only had two provinces—Taiwan and Fujian, each with a state government. And each state only had two counties. The Fujian state government only had jurisdiction over Jinmen and Lianjiang. These days, those two counties are hardcore Kuomintang supporters. There are no DPP supporters there. Everyone votes Kuomintang.

At the time, America tried to persuade the Kuomintang into giving up Jinmen and Mazu, and to split the strait down the middle with China. Then Taiwan would truly be independent. Chiang Kai-shek wouldn’t do it. Mao Zedong wanted it even less. So the two parties unanimously decided to fight it out on Jinmen in 1958. The PLA suddenly fired on Jinmen with all their cannons. After the first round of bombardment, they’d kill three Deputy Commanders at the Jinmen Military Base and killed over 600 people. And the Kuomintang starts to fight back. And from 1958, the two sides have been firing at each other across the sea between Jinmen and Xiamen, all the way until 1979. That’s a miracle in world military history—they bombarded each other for 21 years.

At first, they were fighting for real. Then as time went on, the PLA started broadcasting. “Our brothers in the Chiang army, we’ll fire on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and rest on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On odd days, we’ll fire, and on even days, we’ll rest. You can use the opportunity on even days to ship supplies, do laundry, and whatever, so long as you don’t let American ships escort your shipments. We’re all Chinese here, and let’s keep this between Chinese people.”

And then even later on, every time they were about to fire, they’ll start broadcasting, “Our brothers in the Chiang army, we’re going to fire on this and that location, you should take cover!” And we’ll fire where there’s no people. And the other side will do the same thing before they fire.

And then even later on, when either side fired cannons, they’d be firing propaganda materials at each other. BOOM! We’d launch a five star red flag over there with “Liberate Taiwan!” written on it. And BOOM! The other side would send back a Taiwanese flag with “Restore the mainland!” On holidays, we’ll even fire moon cakes and zongzi and tangyuan. See who has better food. See who’s really suffering.

In 1979, China stopped firing in Jinmen, and in the 80’s, Jinmen stopped firing on China. And both sides got ready to negotiate. Sadly, Chiang Ching-kuo suddenly passed away, and once Lee Teng-hui got into power, he took Taiwan further and further down the separationist path.

At the start of the 90s, the two shores were very close to each other. But after Lee Teng-hui took power, things got really cold. And now that the Kuomintang is back in power, things are getting friendlier again. But reunification is still very, very far away. There’s a lot of questions for what reunification even means. When Taiwan talks about reunification, they want freedom and democracy and mutual wealth. They only want reunification is there’s a similar amount of wealth on both sides of the strait. They want the Kuomintang to run for elections in the mainland. They want it to be possible for the Kuomintang to administrate in the mainland. Of course, the Communist Party can’t accept that. So there’s a lot of problems there.

What are we gonna call ourselves? Some say maybe the Federation of China. Or maybe the United States of China. Or maybe the Republic of the People’s Republic of China. What are we gonna do for the flag? Blue background, white sun, with five stars in the corner? Or do we just each get 50% of the flag? What about the capital? Beijing in the summer and Taipei in the winter? Our communications technology is improved a lot, after all.

So it’s hard to talk about reunification. You’ve solved the problem with Hong Kong and Macau, but that was easy. For one thing, they were colonised. And for another, it’s not as though Britain or Portugal are superpowers anymore. It’s not the Opium War days anymore where they can send a couple of rowboats and beat us up. Portugal doesn’t even have any forces deployed on Macau. They’re very small and they were formerly colonised. You tell them that the people of Hong Kong can run Hong Kong, and the people of Macau can run Macau, and they’re super happy. “We Hong Kong people used to be Britain’s servants, and now we’re independent and can decide for ourselves!”

But Taiwan had always been ruled over by China. Right now, Ma Ying-jeou walks around everywhere and people call him “President Ma.” And after reunification, he’s gonna walk around and people are gonna call him “Governor Ma”? Of course he doesn’t want that. You give him a seat on Standing Committee of the People’s Congress, of course he’s gonna be unhappy.

So that’s something that’s only gonna be in our imaginations. Actually doing it in real life is going to be very difficult. And it’s unlikely any of this is going to show up on an exam, so we won’t take any notes on it.