CW: Xitter

hides in the mountains while nationalists fight off the Japanese

The KMT’s National Revolutionary Army was eating shit against the Japanese up until the point they got their priorities straight and ceased their “anti-bandit” operations against the CPC and scant remaining non-KMT-aligned warlords. Chiang “The Japanese are a disease of the skin, the Communists are a disease of the heart” Kai-shek literally had to be kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang, his own ally, to reform the United Front with the CPC. The United Front he broke in the first place after he overthrew the KMT-Left, who then went on to defect to the CPC (albeit with a minority joining Wang Jingwei’s Japanese collaborator government).

After that, the CPC and its supporters once again made up a not-insignificant chunk of the NRA (the whole 600000-strong Eighth Route Army being the most well-known), as well as the guerilla forces which disrupted Japanese activity in North China, and thus their war effort in the entire country, by an astronomical degree. Even if the CPC did nothing against the Japanese, it’s hardly their fault Chiang massacred them with little provocation and forced them to hide out in the mountains.

strikes nationalists at their weakest to seize power

Striking your enemies at their weakest? What is the world coming to?

Also, shockingly, wrong. Even after the KMT-loyal NRA got absolutely pummeled by the Japanese and the Soviets transferred control of Manchuria to the CPC, the KMT-led Republic of China out-manned and outgunned the North Chinese People’s Government by a considerable margin. It also enjoyed diplomatic recognition from the UN and material support from the US. Worth noting that Stalin was adamantly opposed the Chinese revolution from the start and urged the CPC to maintain peace with the KMT (something which the CPC criticizes heavily to this day). Ironically, had Chiang played along with Stalin’s proposal, he’d still be in power.

All of this is ignored because then he’d have to acknowledge the KMT lost the popular mandate and virtually threw away what little legitimacy it had among its population by siding with the landlords and waging the northern offensive. After that, the KMT’s power base relied on a very fragile coalition of warlords it cobbled together. The Chinese people, some of whom had lived under the CPC before the revolution, chose between the two sides’ programmes and it drives these people mad. Though, I do find the assertion that the CPC didn’t win over the people funny because it makes them seem like badass super soldiers who took out a conventional standing army by themselves.

Aside from that, the irony of framing it as le perfidious Chi-coms opportunistically striking the KMT at their weakest is that the opposite happened: the KMT restarted the civil war with the Northern Offensive after believing the CPC were at their weakest, knowing fully well the West was backing them and the Soviets would still recognize them if they had won. But if you bring that up to them, it is either met with crickets, “dirty but smart strategy” or “lol good. kill em commies”. This isn’t to be disingenuous and imply the CPC were passive in the lead-up but it takes a special kind of hoop-jumping to blame them as the aggressors in all this. And let’s not forget that the first phase of the civil war began in 1927 when the KMT backstabbed the CPC at Shanghai and massacred CPC members and their supporters alike (trade unionists, community leaders).

The post-civil war stuff is more or less the usual slop so I won’t get into it but I like how he thinks the Cultural Revolution happened before the mass collectivization and GLF. Or that the mass collectivization didn’t also happen before the GLF and was a massive success.

I fixate on the civil war because it’s much less well-known than events post-Revolution so Chud dipshits like this gimmick account can spew their garbage mostly unopposed, though I’m seeing a surprising level of pushback if not enough.