Tangentially related, see "The Protracted Game: A Wei-Ch'I Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy", which argues that Mao was using Go principles (control the edges) while the Nationalists were playing Chess (aim for the center).
Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: “Do not march on Moscow”. Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: “Do not go fighting with your land armies in China”. It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives.
The difference is simply Mao sees a larger China and much better than Jiang. If you look at both men's life experience, you can easily see that Mao won't be nice to intercultural and Jiang will be very harsh to the poor. And in a power struggle, one who effectively mobilize the majority always won.
This by itself will make Mao the winner in the power competition.
As for other aspects, eg, Mao being a better military strategist. It's just a derived results of Mao knows the larger China better than Jiang.
What I'm saying is I don't find it useful to reduce complex real life positions or strategies into specific game terms like "ladder" or "ladder breaker" or "outpost" or whatever.
In the first example of controlling the middle vs the edges, well, there are chess openings with the strategy of explicitly giving up the center. A reply in a different chain on this post mentions these, known as hypermodern openings.
It does sound like a good book since I'm a fan of history, chess, and go, so I'll give it a read.