China spent the first half of the 20th century at war. Perhaps the most influential war of the period was the Civil War, which lasted over 20 years, ending in the retreat of the KMT to Taiwan.
The Chinese Civil War had two stages. From 1927 to 1937, the KMT government fought the Communist rebels and pushed them into the “Long March,” a retreat to Yan’an in Shaanxi. There was an interlude to repel Japan in WWII. Then, in four short years, the Communists gained the upper hand. The Civil War ended when, on Oct. 1, 1949, the People’s Republic of China was declared. Those four key years of change, from 1945 to 1949, have been analyzed in terms of military strategy, and historical, geographical, and human factors. Historians also pore over the personalities of the two rival leaders, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong.
Today on Taiwan History, we return to that era of extreme turbulence, to the “Crucial Years” of 1945-1949.
