22 CultureShock! China
recognising that they risked losing everything to yet another
foreign power, the KMT and Communist Party agreed to form
a united front in an effort to defeat this latest invader (though
only after Chiang’s own generals kidnapped him and forced
from him an oath that he would fight to defeat the Japanese
before battling his own countrymen).
The alliance could not have come at a better time, as
war with the Japanese broke out on 7 July 1937. A battle
between Chinese and Japanese troops at the Marco Polo
Bridge near Beijing started it, but the fighting spread rapidly,
with Japanese forces occupying first Beijing and then cities
along the coast with amazing speed. By 1939, most of China’s
coastal cities, from Shanghai to Guangzhou, had been overrun
by the invading forces.
From 1939 to 1943, the KMT desperately lobbied for
US intervention while the Japanese pulled the strings of
puppet governments, first in Beijing and then in Nanjing.
The communists were powerless to impact the situation as
Chiang Kai-shek had them blockaded in north-west China,
despite their supposed united front.
By the time of the Japanese surrender to the Allies in
August 1945, US aid to the KMT had been squandered or
misused, and China’s two parties quickly resumed their
civil war. A brief cease-fire went into effect in January 1946,
negotiated by US General George C Marshall. But after the
Communist Party’s proposal for a coalition government was
rejected outright by the KMT, civil war erupted yet again.
At this point, the Nationalists of the KMT were seen as
corrupt, saddled with a huge debt incurred during the war, and
poor economic managers. Hyperinflation, caused primarily
by the overprinting of currency in order to pay off KMT debt,
worsened the lot of an already war-torn populace.
The Communist Party, in contrast, was seen as a force
working for the people, their land reform measures having had
real impact on the lives of those in the countryside over the
years. A slow shift in the mood of the populace was palpable,
and the Communists took advantage of it. Mobilising their
rural base, by the fall of 1949, the Communists had taken
control of all mainland territory except Tibet.