Dear Teacher,
The Kuomintang came to take over. Their headquarters were in Chongqing. They wantonly plundered and took people’s property. The biggest embezzler and head of military police named Mei was finally executed to calm the people’s anger.
From 1945 to 1949 the Koumintang recovered and ruled. In these four years, cadres and troops disturbed people to the point of their not being able to tolerate it any longer.
Soldiers and disabled soldiers traveled or resided in public places. In the theater, they would enter with no admission ticket. They would ride a rick-shaw without paying. One day a government officer rode a rick-shaw and stopped before our school. He didn’t pay the fare, but instead hit the coulee. This aroused the indignation of many of my schoolmates. We over-powered the man, took his gun and handed him to our school military instructor. But, he was quickly released and we feared retaliation for weeks.
People hated bitterly the Koumintang for its corruption.
The Communist party launched a war against Koumintang. Prices skyrocketed and people could not support themselves. People broke into a rice store and others tried to seize a bank. Public order was in a state of chaos.
The Communist party enjoyed the ardent support of the people, especially the students. We all thought the Communist Party could save China. It was confusing when students held the first demonstration against the Chinese Communist Party and USSR because they had betrayed Mongolia.
I studied at the senior middle school grade three and my brother was at Tongji University. Shanghai students protested the Chinese Communist party betraying Outer Mongolia to USSR and held demonstrations. Before this all demonstrations had been against the Koumintang. There was a famous slogan:
We want democracy,
We want freedom,
We want food.
Sincerely, Robert
JOAN’S BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINA—PART IV
Bloodshed continued in China as an all-out civil war fighting for control of the country was waged. “At the beginning of open conflict the Communist Forces numbered a little more than one million, and the soldiers of the Nationalists were three times an many. Though Nationalist troops held the cities and railway lines, almost all the countryside was dominated by the Communists.” The United States was backing the Nationalists and the Soviet Union took a more devious line and supported the Communist Forces.
A dramatic power struggle began as the Kuomintang and Communist forces gathered in Manchuria for the final showdown. By 1948 the Communists had captured so much US-supplied Kuomintang equipment and had recruited so many Kuomintang soldiers that they equaled the Kuomintang in both numbers and supplies. Three great battles were fought in 1948 and 1949 in which the Kuomintang were defeated and hundreds of thousands of Koumintang troops joined the Communists. The Communists moved south and crossed the Yangzi and by October all the major cities in southern China had fallen to them.
In Beijing on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. Chiang Kaishek fled to the island of Formosa taking with him the entire gold reserves of the country and what was left of the air force and the navy. In addition, two million soldiers and refugees fled from the mainland. The United States, which had been backing Chiang Kaishek, protected his move and prevented further attack. President Truman ordered a protective naval blockade.
Another political situation that Robert mentions is what he calls the betrayal of Outer Mongolia. The New Chinese Communist Government had many disputes along the border with the Soviet Union. The two governments easily agreed that Xinjiang would remain Chinese. Other areas were not so easy to settle because the Chinese felt that in the past Russian imperialism and aggression had forced agreements on their predecessors.
Mongolia had been a long disputed region with its border literally drawn in the sand of the Gobi Desert. And it had long been divided with the Russian Empire setting up a “protectorate” over the northern part of Mongolia. The Chinese governed the rest of Mongolia until 1911 with the fall of the Qing’s, when it became an independent state. For a while it had the name, The Mongolian People’s Republic, but during the War between China and Japan, parts of it too were occupied by the Japanese. In 1936 Mao Zedong said that when the people’s revolution has been victorious in China, the Outer Mongolian Republic would automatically become part of the Chinese federation, at it’s own will. But, in fact, in February 1950 a treaty was signed settling the independence of Outer Mongolia and few Chinese people have accepted the loss of this territory.