Why did the civil war break out in China in 1927?
The seed that planted the Chinese Civil war lies in its social, political and economic instability within the Chinese society. During the period 1911-1927, China can be described to be a state of great "unease". The Chinese civil war was an armed conflict between two ideologically opposed forces - the Nationalists Kuomintang and the Communists People Liberation Army – to see who could ultimately restore power and regain central control over China. The civil war was fought in two separate phases, 1927-37 and 1946-49 respectively, as a result of the interruption of the Sino-Japanese war. Although there are many causes to the outbreak of the war, the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty coupled with the death of Sun Yat-Sei, which resulted in the rise in power of Chiang’s Kai-Shek’s, who was determined to rid China of left wing factions within the government at all costs, unleashed the ultimate trigger to the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War is. In the following, I shall analyze each of this maneuvers and how they sparked the ultimate outbreak of the Chinese Civil war.
The destabilization of China’s ruling regime, which ultimately set fire to the outbreak of the Chinese civil war, was heightened when European imperialist powers humiliated and exploited China in the early 20th century. Due to the defeat of the Opium Wars, the Europeans, Americans and ultimately, the Japanese carved up the Chinese Empire into spheres of influence. A humiliated China had been facing unequal treaties, which allowed imperialist powers to maintain great control over Chinese trade, territory and sovereignty. The great resentment, and Xenophobia, against “Spheres of Influence” caused extensive political societal divisions and highlighted the weakness of the central government, the uprising of numerous corruption and rebellions made Chinese politics as strained as ever.
The political weakness of the Manchu dynasty created a power vacuum which was a catalyst to the outbreak of the war. This political instability was intensified with the death of the Emperor and the succession of the two-years-old Pu Yi. October 1911 marked the failure of the government in repressing a military revolt, the centralized control of the ruling dynasty was overthrown in a military revolution known as the Double Tenth. This revolt marked the loss of control of the central government over the state. Although some attempt made by the Northern Army were used to suppress it, Yuan Shikai instead arranged a thoughtful deal with Sun Yixian and double-crossed them. An historian argued that the revolution was a movement away from centralized control which was described to be “a contest between central autocracy and local autonomy”. The instability faced in China, the impact of imperialism, anti-foreign sentiment and political weakness, which resulted in the revolution continued to ferment in the empire, it was not until 15 years later, that the political instability caught up with China and waged the civil war 15 years later.
A key cause of the civil war in China was the increasing lack of unity in the country by the second decade of the 20th century. In fact, China was carved up by regionalism or provincialism, which was a critical factor not only in causing the war, but also in its course and outcome. The lack of unity was to be exacerbated with the death of, who then seemed to be the only figure head, Yuan. As a result of a loss of centralized power, China was fragmented into small states, each controlled by a warlord and his private army, which possessed their own laws, taxation system and currencies. The warlord era, which divided China, saw uproar in widespread chaos and an increase in the sense of humiliation, coupled with their desire to get rid of foreign influence, led to an increase in nationalism during the decade of warlord rule.
The growing feeling of resentment towards foreign influence in China gave rise to political revolutionary movements in the warlord era. The May Fourth Movement began in 1919, where there was a violent student-led uprising and riot against warlords and traditional Chinese culture. The opposition was owed to the resentment against the Versailles settlement, which had humiliated the Chinese by awarding Germany’s former concessions in Shandong province to Japan. The May Fourth Movement highlighted the motive of revolutionary groups to restore China as a proud and independent nation. Hence, the increasing political movements against the central power paved the road to the Chinese Civil War.
In 1922, the two opposing ideological parties, the communist party, which believed in equal land ownership and no capitalism, and the nationalist party, which believed that the CCP would hamper a national revolution, joined together to form the First United front. Sharing a common goal to unify China and rid China from its foreign imperialist powers, the First United Front decided that their chief hindrance was the warlords, hence, within two years, the cooperate effort of the GMD and the CCP made it possible to destroy the power of the warlords. Although the Northern Expedition was a success, China was still partitioned and not unified. The United Front had only been a friendship of convenience to drive out the warlords and the end of the Northern Expedition once again paved the way to the two ideologically opposing parties. The fact that the communist gained mass support from the peasants and the industrial workers, led Chiang, who was more sympathetic to landlords and the middle classes, to see the need to crush down the CCP un order for China to be truly unified under the GMD. Chiang expelled all communists from the GMD, and his attacks on the communists, in what became known as the ‘purification movement’, the most deadly of these massacre was ‘White Terror’ in Shanghai April 1927. The political division amongst the two opposing ideological parties made societal tensions ever more strained, and the strive for power and sovereignty were to be decided on the battlefields in the Chinese Civil war.
To conclude, the Chinese Civil war was an outcome of a combination of immediate, short term and long term causes. These involved the Double Tenth Revolution, the establishment of the two opposing parties, the Nationalist and the communist, combined with the feeling of resentfulness toward foreign influence fostered the causes which led to the eventual outbreak of the Chinese Civil War. The death of Sun Yat-Sei is considered the main cause of the Civil War because it left a political vacuum big enough to gradually divide the political interests of the nationalists splitting up the party in two until the confrontation between the left and right faction in January 1927.