Early Communist China: Two Studies

This paper examines the insurgency tactics of Mao Zedong and the CCP,and considers the continued relevance of these tactics in modern conflict.

Mao Tse-tung was a truly influential leader in world history, but also to the revolutionary style of warfare, one that changed the course of history for China. This paper will look into the factors that made Mao's ideas so prolific.

Mao’s confidence in military confrontations with more powerful adversaries continues to inspire Chinese strategists more than half a century later. This article explores the origins and development of Mao’s thinking in this regard, focusing particularly on his years in Yan’an. Drawing on newly available sources, the analysis stresses the importance of experience, as opposed to ideology, in the development of Mao’s martial confidence. For much of his time in Yan’an Mao was relatively circumspect in his military ambitions. Yet towards the end of this period his confidence rose considerably after successes against the KMT offensive in 1946. In short, Mao’s martial confidence did not spring fully formed from his ideological convictions but emerged over time.

1969

Contains two detailed case studies. In “The Fu-t’ien Incident, December 1930,” Ronald Suleski describes the pivotal incident in the power struggle between Mao Zedong and the Communist Central Committee. Daniel Bays’s study of “Agrarian Reform in Kwangtung, 1950–1953” focuses upon the measures taken by the Chinese Communist Party to control and eventually collectivize rural elites in Kwangtung province.

Western military historians often describe the Chinese " way of war " as emphasizing a gradualist military strategy, tending to avoid battle except when victory was assured, and preferring to use subterfuge, maneuver, or psychological means to defeat the enemy without actually fijighting. The roots of this understanding of the Chinese way of war lie in selective readings of Sunzi's Art of War and Mao Zedong's writings on guerrilla warfare. The record of Chinese Communist operations in China's Northeast (Manchuria) from 1945 through 1948 instead suggests a Chinese approach to war that is characterized not only by close attention to strategy and maneuver, but also by a preference for offfensive operations leading to the ultimate destruction of the enemy in battles of annihilation. In the Northeast theater of China's civil war we also see that the Communist forces had to go through a process of transformation before they were able to carry out large-scale maneuvers, deploy overwhelming fijirepower, and conduct large-scale operations or campaigns of annihilation. In order to gain victory, the Chinese Communist forces in the Northeast under Lin Biao's command had to make the transition from guerrilla to conventional warfare, including the ability to attack cities. This transformation was achieved through a combination of factors: critical assessment of battlefijield performance, incorporation of new weapons and equipment, and techniques of stafff work. This suggests that any workable understanding of Chinese ways of war must go beyond cultural determinism to take account of the Chinese military's flexibility and capacity for learning.

Protest in the Vietnam War Era, 2022

China Review International, 2017