Under the terms of the Japanese unconditional surrender
dictated by the Allies, Japanese troops were to surrender to
KMT troops but not to the CCP, which was present in some of
the occupied areas. In Manchuria, however, where the KMT had
no forces, the Japanese surrendered to the Soviet Union.
Chiang Kai-shek reminded Japanese troops to remain at their
posts to receive the KMT, but Communist forces soon began
taking surrenders from the Japanese and fighting those who
resisted.
The first post-war peace negotiation, attended by both
Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, was in Chongqing from 28
August to 10 October 1945. Chiang entered the meeting at an
advantage because he had recently signed a friendly treaty
with the Soviet Union while the Communists were still forcing
the Japanese to surrender in some places. Both sides stressed
the importance of a peaceful reconstruction, but the
conference did not produce any concrete results. Battles
between the two sides continued even as peace negotiations
were in progress, until the agreement was reached in January
1946. However, large campaigns and full-scale confrontations
between the CCP and Chiang’s troops were temporarily
avoided.
Knowing their disadvantages in manpower and equipment, the
CCP executed a "passive defence" strategy. It avoided the
strong points of the KMT army and was prepared to abandon
territory in order to preserve its forces. In most cases the
surrounding countryside and small towns had come under
Communist influence long before the cities. The CCP also
attempted to wear out the KMT forces as much as possible.
This tactic seemed to be successful; after a year, the power
balance became more favorable to the CCP. They wiped out 1.12
million KMT troops, while their strength grew to about two
million men.
By late 1948, the CCP eventually captured the northern
cities of Shenyang and Changchun and seized control of the
Northeast after suffering numerous setbacks while trying to
take the cities, with the decisive Liaoshen Campaign. The New
1st Army, regarded as the best KMT army, was forced to
surrender after the CCP conducted a brutal six-month siege of
Changchun that resulted in more than 150,000 civilian deaths
from starvation.
In the campaigns in the northeast of China, the
Nationalists suffered large losses. Chen Cheng cannot be
blamed for the Nationalist failure because as early as 1946,
he had already realized the situation in northeast China was
impossible for the Nationalist and correctly suggested to
abandon the region to free more troops, so that when the
situation in other parts of China had improved, the salvaged
troops could be used to retake the region. However, Chen
Cheng’s good suggestion was denied because it was simply
impossible for Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists to give
up northeast China, one of the richest region in China, and
they were infatuated with holding on to the land as long as
possible, and gain more land as much as possible. This
doctrine stretched the Nationalist troops thin and provided
the excellent opportunity for the enemy to eliminate the
Nationalist garrisons one at a time, and as Chen Cheng
faithfully carried out Chiang’s impossible task, the failure
was inevitable
The capture of large KMT units provided the CCP with the
tanks, heavy artillery and other combined-arms assets needed
to execute offensive operations south of the Great Wall. By
April 1948, the city of Luoyang fell, cutting the KMT army
off from Xi’an. Following a fierce battle, the CCP captured
Jinan and Shandong province on 24 September 1948. The Huaihai
Campaign of late 1948 and early 1949 secured east-central
China for the CCP. The outcome of these encounters were
decisive for the military outcome of the civil war.
The Pingjin Campaign resulted in the Communist conquest of
northern China. It lasted 64 days, from 21 November 1948 to
31 January 1949. The PLA suffered heavy casualties while
securing Zhangjiakou, Tianjin along with its port and
garrison at Dagu and Beiping. The CCP brought 890,000 troops
from the northeast to oppose some 600,000 KMT troops. There
were 40,000 CCP casualties at Zhangjiakou alone. They in turn
killed, wounded or captured some 520,000 KMT during the
campaign
On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of
the People’s Republic of China with its capital at Beiping,
which was returned to the former name Beijing. Chiang
Kai-shek and approximately two million Nationalist soldiers
retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan in
December after the PLA advanced into the Sichuan province.
Isolated Nationalist pockets of resistance remained in the
area, but the majority of the resistance collapsed after the
fall of Chengdu on 10 December 1949, with some resistance
continuing in the far south.
During the retreat of the Republic of China to Taiwan, KMT
troops, who couldn’t retreat to Taiwan, were left behind and
allied with local bandits to fight a guerrilla war against
the Communists. These KMT remnants were eliminated in the
Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and the Campaigns
to Suppress Bandits.
In the end, the Communist military forces suffered 1.3
million combat casualties in the 1945?1949 phase of the war:
260,000 killed, 190,000 missing, and 850,000 wounded,
discounting irregulars. Nationalist casualties in the same
phase were recorded after the war by the PRC 5,452,700
regulars and 2,258,800 irregulars.
