After ten months of off-and-on negotiations between the GMD and the CCP, a full-scale civil war finally broke out in June 1946. The timing of the conflict was very much determined by the Cold War. In fact, the tenor of GMD-CCP negotiations had been fluctuating directly in tune with that of US-USSR relations. As the Cold War set in - in part because of the suspicions the two sides had about each other’s East Asian policies - both the GMD and the CCP saw opportunities to take advantage of the contradictions and tensions that became increasingly evident as the superpowers pursued their overall goals.
After the Sino-Japanese War, the United States began sending troops to China -110,000 at their peak. Most of these troops were stationed in the north of the country. Even if unintended, the presence of the American forces, who assisted the Nationalist government with logistics and airlifting GMD troops to Manchuria, resulted in an intensified atmosphere of confrontation. In addition, American units had frequent skirmishes with CCP forces in northern China. It seemed clear to the CCP leadership that the US forces would risk getting involved in a Chinese civil war in order to help Jiang Jieshi recover his control. General Marshall typified Washington’s concerns. He was convinced that if China were to be riven by civil war, and if the Soviets profited by controlling Manchuria, then the United States would have failed to achieve its "major goal of entering the Pacific war." If the United States wanted to save JiangJieshi, on the other hand, it would have to take over China’s government and "shoulder endless duties."321 Ultimately, the Truman administration chose to mediate GMD-CCP conflicts as Roosevelt’s administration had before it.
Large numbers of Soviet troops had entered Manchuria once the USSR declared war against Japan in August, creating tension with US troops that had come into northern China. The USSR began withdrawing its forces from Manchuria that October, but the following month, when Jiang Jieshi shut down his northeast headquarters in Manchuria and ordered attacks on CCP forces in and around Shanhaiguan, Soviet troops quickly returned south and seized the major cities and traffic routes. The Red Army occupied the main ports in Manchuria and forbade US ships transporting GMD forces from docking there, but the Soviets also moved quickly to ease tensions with the GMD government in other areas and asked that economic issues in Manchuria be resolved through negotiation. The Soviets also limited their aid to CCP forces (while denying in public that any aid was given at all) and reiterated their position that GMD-CCP conflicts should be solved through negotiations.322 At the Moscow Conference, Soviet foreign minister Viacheslav Molotov again supported democratic unification "under the Nationalist government," and promised that the Soviet army would withdraw as planned.323
The United States and the Soviet Union seemed to move toward a new compromise at the end of 1945. However, US strategic worries about Soviet troops in Manchuria remained, as did Stalin’s anger over having been shut out of any role in Japan. The Truman administration had followed Soviet moves in Manchuria very closely, and Marshall considered forcing the Soviets out of Manchuria to be his primary task. But the Truman administration was not ready to pull the chestnuts from the fire for Jiang in Chinese domestic politics. Marshall asked Jiang to make political concessions, and urged the Nationalist government to accept the CCP’s request for a total ceasefire in northern China. The main objective of Marshall’s efforts was to permit Jiang to dispatch more troops to take over Manchuria.
Jiang Jieshi adopted the tactic of using political concessions to obtain Marshall’s support for the destruction of the CCP’s military potential. He also wanted to exploit the Americans’ suspicion of the Soviets to change US policy in the longer term. Jiang did not yet intend to commit his best troops to Manchuria. By improving relations with the Soviets, he hoped for their assistance in taking over the region. During the Sino-Soviet negotiations over Manchurian economic questions, the Nationalist government tried to win from the Soviets the promise of a trouble-fTee occupation of Manchuria in exchange for certain concessions. During his visit to Moscow in December 1945, Jiang Jingguo, Jiang Jieshi’s Soviet-educated son, further promised the Soviets that Manchuria would never become an anti-Soviet base and that no Chinese troops would be stationed on the Sino-Soviet border.324 With such efforts from both sides, Sino-Soviet relations showed signs of improvement. The Soviets concentrated on these negotiations. They did not intervene in Marshall’s mediation mission, but they did try to persuade the CCP to propose a ceasefire.
Sino-Soviet relations experienced a reversal after February 1946. With the GMD-CCP negotiations making some progress, the situation in north China stabilized. Marshall then wanted to apply more pressure on the USSR over Manchuria. He encouraged the Nationalist government not to make further concessions to the Soviets, and also recommended in a report to President Truman that more measures should be taken to force the Soviet troops out ofManchuria.325 On February 9, the United States told the USSR and China that it opposed handling Japanese property in Manchuria exclusively through negotiations between China and the USSR. Soon afterward the terms of the Yalta agreement were made public and the American and British press began to criticize Soviet behavior in Manchuria.
There is no doubt that American support encouraged Jiang Jieshi to change his policy of cooperation with the USSR. In February, anti-Soviet demonstrations broke out in Chongqing and other cities, instigated and assisted by the GMD, but reflecting anti-Soviet sentiment among parts of the public. These demonstrations added to the pressure on the government. Since he now believed he had US backing for sending GMD forces into Manchuria after the ceasefire, Jiang no longer wanted to yield to the Soviets. On March 5, the Nationalist government rejected Soviet demands on Manchurian economic issues.
The deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations coincided with increasing tension between the GMD and the CCP in Manchuria. Not only did Jiang notice the changes in US-Soviet relations, he also believed that Marshall was increasingly leaning toward the GMD in intra-Chinese mediation efforts. He thus took an increasingly hardline stance on all matters relating to Manchuria. At the critical moment of the battle of Siping in April 1946, Jiang rejected Marshall’s suggestion for a ceasefire. Even so, Marshall agreed to transport more troops to Manchuria for the GMD. Having made up his mind to completely destroy the CCP in Manchuria, Jiang took advantage of US efforts to constrain the USSR. Marshall at first acquiesced and then gave reluctant support to Jiang’s strategy. Gradually, the strategic visions of the United States and the GMD converged in Manchuria.
At the same time, the CCP’s policies in Manchuria were also changing. CCP leaders believed that a favorable strategic position in Manchuria was vitally important. Mao in particular wanted a secure position there in order to break fundamentally with the CCP’s perennial state of being under siege.326 Soon after the Chongqing negotiations in the fall of 1945, the CCP Central Committee mapped out a plan to seize all of Manchuria with Soviet support.327 But with the improvement of GMD-Soviet relations and the obstruction of the Soviet troops, the CCP had to abandon this plan. During the first two months of 1946, CCP leaders still adhered to the agreements reached at the GMD-CCP negotiations, and they told party members that “the tendency towards peace was now firm.”328 In this context, they reluctantly decided in late January to "strive for a peaceful resolution” of the Manchuria issue.329 The Soviets’ warning that a civil war in Manchuria would "provoke American involvement” deepened the worries of CCP leaders who thought that, even if their army defeated the GMD, the United States would still send its troops into Manchuria.330
However, the CCP had its own precondition for any peaceful resolution of the Manchuria issue - that the Nationalist government should recognize the legitimacy of the CCP’s presence in Manchuria. If that were not accepted, the CCP would have lost all of its hard-won gains from the war against Japan. In reality, Jiang Jieshi did not accept the CCP’s position and, after taking Jinzhou in western Liaoning in January, GMD forces constantly attacked and occupied areas controlled by the CCP. The CCP already had a substantial strategic interest in the protection ofManchuria, which the Central Committee insisted would be threatened by repeated concessions, leading to "discord within the party.”331 Indeed, there had always existed hardline voices in the CCP army that could not be silenced.
The Soviet army began its quick withdrawal in early March, but no agreement could be reached between the GMD and the CCP over Manchuria. The CCP Central Committee decided to begin implementing a strategy of controlling northern Manchuria in late March, that is, seizing major cities such as Changchun and Harbin as well as the Eastern China Railway.332 Certainly, the CCP’s policy had the support of the Soviet army in the northeast; its rapid withdrawal provided the opportunity for the CCP to implement this strategy in the north of Manchuria. In early April, GMD forces launched large-scale attacks on CCP troops in Siping. On April 18, CCP troops seized Changchun as planned, and later took Harbin and Qiqihaer. Akin to lighting a powderkeg, the CCP-GMD military conflicts in Manchuria quickly set off a nationwide civil war.
The outbreak of the Chinese Civil War marked the end of a distinct period of international politics concerning China. On one hand, both the United States and the USSR subordinated China with respect to their broader agendas, and both powers withdrew their troops from the country. On the other hand, in the northeast, strategic cooperation between the CCP and the Soviet Union had begun. Soviet troops not only provided the opportunity for the CCP to take over the north of Manchuria, but also furnished weapons and equipment to CCP forces. At the same time, the CCP had concluded that the United States was their primary external enemy. In this manner, the future patterns of the Cold War in East Asia had already begun to appear.
World History
