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Comment by temp8964 | Hacker News Reader

"In the eight years preceding their defeat, Japan’s most effective opponents had been the same communists suppressed by Chiang and Du 20 years before." This is just plainly laughable. The author must grow up in reading CCP's history textbook. The CCP's strategy has always been hiding behind to avoid confrontation with the Japanese army and let the Nationalist Party fight the Japanese. The only real battle they did is the Hundred Regiments Offensive, but the back story is more complicated. This wikipedia page is a fun read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Regiments_Offensive

"The communists, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, were immensely popular among China’s poorest, with the promise of land reform proving irresistible." This is also from CCP's history textbook. The Communists were never popular. Everywhere they went, they relied on force and coercion. And they repeatedly used internal purges to exterminate anyone question the leadership.

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The article also says that Chiang's strategy against the Japanese was also "nothing doing."

Seems like civil war is a great time to invade a country...

Chiang did try to avoid confrontation with Japanese after several huge battle losses, because it was obvious the Japanese army was far stronger than the Chinese army. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Chine...

Right strategy, wrong PR

Chiang avoid fighting the Japanese because of his calculation allies will fight the Japanese in China. And his real war is with Communist. Chiang is a cunning politician.

I agree. Chiang should fight the Japanese and win the war. Look how silly he was.

Your point is so funny, Mao’s army was very small to start with and you are saying through force and coercion they grew exponentially and turned the civil war 180? So it must be Soviet Union who’s helping them or communism is just magical?

The truth was the National Party was even worse and much more corrupted. The poor in China near the end of WWII was simply hopeless and the elite class also distrusted the government.

Did your history book explain why or just simply put it’s magic?

KMT get more assistance from USSR across the entirety of the WWII... The politics are quite complicated.

Yes, and Chiang's son was eventually a "guest" of the USSR in the Urals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Ching-kuo#Moscow

> So it must be Soviet Union who’s helping them or communism is just magical?

The USSR didn't help them. The name of the country which helped them was... USA

Read history books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_relations#The_KMT,...

The superpower chessboard has been going on since as long as human figured the art of politics...

Not only this, Mao openly encourage US to rearm Japan to confront USSR during cold war...

And plenty more...

The corruption accusation is a common playbook of Communists around the world, like in China, Vietnam, Korea, etc. All the power establishment were accused of being corrupt. The matter of fact is that in those countries, the power has always being deeply corrupt, because they never had a constitutional republic / democracy, which are later western inventions.

So in China, the National Party was corrupt, but not really that corrupt in the context of China's history. But surely very corrupt compared to western countries. Asking China to have a clean government at the time is like asking China to develop a moon landing project at the time. Communists of course understood these but they heavily targeted the U.S. government to spread the corrupt accusations. For example: "1944年6月罗斯福派副总统华莱士访华，冀全程陪同，提供了蒋、孔家族贪污腐败情况。"[1] 冀朝鼎(Ji Chaoding) was a CCP spy.

The whole "poor was hopeless and the elite class also distrusted the government" was Communists' propaganda too.

Remember, even though Communists at the time claimed they support democracy, but none of the Communist countries even attempted to establish democracy after they took power. All straight went to authoritarian hell.

[1] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/冀朝鼎 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji_Chaoding

We are talking about what happened in 1945-1949 and how communist won the civil war started from obviously the much weaker side. Do you think the people in China at that time believed both parties are corrupted and they just wanted to change? (It feels like same question how Trump won! Lol)

US helped Mao’s CCP at propaganda level at the best. I know CCP is a hell but you have to admit Chinese people landslide-ly chose CCP over national party in those years.

Again how CCP won? It’s a complicated matter that I don’t see any good explanation from “subjective” western history book

No. Chinese people did not landslide-ly chose CCP. Unless you meant won the battle == won the mind.

Communists always knew they didn't win people's mind, otherwise purge wouldn't be the first thing for Communists to do after took power. You think all the authoritarian things did by Communists were because they didn't know people chose them already?

From the article below:

The conflict over China’s politics was playing out on the ground in China, but also in the ranks of America’s diplomatic corps. During the war, American diplomats who had long experience and deep knowledge of China — dubbed the “China Hands” — felt that the Communists were more popular, more competent, and better positioned to lead China post-war. One of the China Hands, John S. Service, put it bluntly: “The Communists are in China to stay and China’s destiny is not Chiang’s but theirs.” Moreover, Service and his colleagues like John Paton Davies and O. Edmund Clubb felt that it was possible for the United States to build a constructive relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, and advised their government to do so.

https://supchina.com/2021/08/25/the-last-meeting-of-mao-zedo...

The CCP was and is very good at propaganda, U.S diplomats and the State Department were its major target. John S. Service was one of many fall for it. https://archive.is/S8owH

Then it makes no difference that it still makes more sense to work with CCP. It's not like rejecting CCP make them less evil...

> Moreover, Service and his colleagues like John Paton Davies and O. Edmund Clubb felt that it was possible for the United States to build a constructive relationship with the Chinese Communist Party

That didn't age very well did it?

What you mean?

Service were immediately demoted and labeled communist sympathizer, and lost his entire political career. And US only engage CCP after Mao died...

>And US only engage CCP after Mao died

Then who did Nixon and Kissinger met with?

Perhaps, like Churchill, there was a double called diplomao that was used for such occasions. Here is a picture:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/11/some-summits-soar-some-...

Of course that wouldn't explain why the meeting happened after Mao's death, so perhaps the diplomao knocked off the real Mao, which would account for why we've never seen both Mao and diplomao together in the same photo.

Or perhaps the GP is wrong and Mao was taken prisoner by his diplomao, and it was Kissinger that, in a courageous act of diplomaocide, knocked off the diplomao and met with Mao himself, thus earning Mao's loyalty and opening up China to the West.

We may never know.

Nixon, and Kissinger were communists

They do not seem showing any signs of believing communism though...

Sneaky bastards...

"Sneaky bastards..."?...

Well, I always tell people that CCP loved US more than USSR, but were rejected by US on ideology reasons. Then everyone just plainly cannot wrap their mind around the fact that working with CCP would more likely to create a less socialism country...

Service's records (the Dixie report) are pretty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Mission clear that CCP aspires to work with US, and Mao was a US fan.

Mao actually agreed to assign communist army under Stillwell to fight Japanese Joseph Stilwell is still well respected in CCP China. CCP has a museum for him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/world/asia/chongqing-jose...

John Service was a communist

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