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The counter argument is that post-1949 communist rule has been an aberration in the amount of central control that the Communist Party has been able to exert. I

by cepth 9y ago

The counter argument is that post-1949 communist rule has been an aberration in the amount of central control that the Communist Party has been able to exert. In Chinese, there is a saying, “the mountains are high, and the emperor is far away”. If you took a hard look at Chinese history, I think you’d find that there has never really been central control. Governors and bureaucrats of the various provinces and regions have long been able to defy directives from Beijing, Nanjing, or wherever else the dynastic capital happened to be at the time. The sheer size of China, and the dizzying differences in language and culture, made true central control a fantasy until 1949. In a sense, maybe the greatest gift to the Communist Party was the outbreak of WW2 that set the stage for the subsequent civil war. Instead of dozens of regional warlords, you had a “clean” battle between two sides. When the Communists won, they finally assumed more or less total control of the country. Contrary to there being some kind of group think that dooms China every century or so, the more proximate causes of political turmoil have been intense, irresolvable infighting that occurs contemporaneously with a natural disaster or foreign invasion.

thanksgiving 9y ago
> In a sense, maybe the greatest gift to the Communist Party was the outbreak of WW2 that set the stage for the subsequent civil war. Instead of dozens of regional warlords, you had a “clean” battle between two sides. When the Communists won, they finally assumed more or less total control of the country. I hadn't heard this before. From what I've heard, the Communists has to fight at least in two fronts: against the government as well as against Japan.
- cepth 9y ago
  You’re correct in that the narrative of Mao and communist guerrillas fighting both the Japanese and Nationalist Army is a very common one in China. However, with the exception of the Hundred Regiments Offensive, the communist armies never engaged in the kind of the regular, brutal combat that occurred near China’s major cities against the Japanese. For political reasons, namely to portray the Nationalists as an ineffective and corrupt government, until the last decade there were few Chinese TV series or movies that depicted Nationalist armies effectively fighting the Japanese. When you look at Nationalist efforts to secure the critical Burma Road into Burma and India, and the hundreds of thousands of casualties involved in fighting rearguard actions as civilians and governments fled inland, the casualty counts are not even close. Nationalist military fatalities are generally estimated by historians to outnumber Communist military fatalities by nearly an order of magnitude. One of the reasons I wrote that WW2 set up the communists for a clean victory in the resumption of the civil war is that Japanese surrender left vast swaths of China under communist control, simply because there was not a nationalist presence in many of those areas. Hundreds of thousands of firearms, rounds of ammunition, and artillery pieces were surrendered by the Japanese to communist armies. As a result, the Communists were for the first time able to equip a large regular army, as opposed to fighting irregular war as guerrillas. I highly recommend reading Forgotten Ally by Rana Mitter. This is maybe the best popular history of China in WW2. P.s. I say this as the descendant of soldiers who fought on both sides of the civil war.
desireco42 9y ago
"the mountains are high, and the emperor is far away" Ha ha, this is so funny. This might be the origin of Serbian saying, "God is too high, Russia too far, rely on yourself and your horse." World was connected way before Internet.

by cepth 9y ago

thanksgiving 9y ago

> In a sense, maybe the greatest gift to the Communist Party was the outbreak of WW2 that set the stage for the subsequent civil war. Instead of dozens of regional warlords, you had a “clean” battle between two sides. When the Communists won, they finally assumed more or less total control of the country. I hadn't heard this before. From what I've heard, the Communists has to fight at least in two fronts: against the government as well as against Japan.

cepth 9y ago
You’re correct in that the narrative of Mao and communist guerrillas fighting both the Japanese and Nationalist Army is a very common one in China. However, with the exception of the Hundred Regiments Offensive, the communist armies never engaged in the kind of the regular, brutal combat that occurred near China’s major cities against the Japanese. For political reasons, namely to portray the Nationalists as an ineffective and corrupt government, until the last decade there were few Chinese TV series or movies that depicted Nationalist armies effectively fighting the Japanese. When you look at Nationalist efforts to secure the critical Burma Road into Burma and India, and the hundreds of thousands of casualties involved in fighting rearguard actions as civilians and governments fled inland, the casualty counts are not even close. Nationalist military fatalities are generally estimated by historians to outnumber Communist military fatalities by nearly an order of magnitude. One of the reasons I wrote that WW2 set up the communists for a clean victory in the resumption of the civil war is that Japanese surrender left vast swaths of China under communist control, simply because there was not a nationalist presence in many of those areas. Hundreds of thousands of firearms, rounds of ammunition, and artillery pieces were surrendered by the Japanese to communist armies. As a result, the Communists were for the first time able to equip a large regular army, as opposed to fighting irregular war as guerrillas. I highly recommend reading Forgotten Ally by Rana Mitter. This is maybe the best popular history of China in WW2. P.s. I say this as the descendant of soldiers who fought on both sides of the civil war.

desireco42 9y ago

"the mountains are high, and the emperor is far away" Ha ha, this is so funny. This might be the origin of Serbian saying, "God is too high, Russia too far, rely on yourself and your horse." World was connected way before Internet.