HI 168: Lecture 10
Dr. Howard Chiang

OVERVIEW
- Wartime GMD China
- Coalition Negotiations: 1945-46
- Civil War: 1946-49
- Taiwan before 1950
- The February Twenty-Eighth Incident

WARTIME GMD CHINA
- Many of the accomplishments of Chiang
Kai-shek’s Nanjing decade were destroyed in war: highways, railroads, industry, bridges, and roads
- Inflation: from 1937-45, rose 2,647 times the price
- Government simply printed more money
- Chiang’s commitment to the Second
United Front was weak: peasants and workers attracted to the CCP

COALITION NEGOTIATIONS
- The question of the surrender of
Japanese military units: the “rush” to
Northeast China between CCP and GMD
(backed by the U.S.)
- August 28, 1945: Mao Zedong and Zhou
Enlai flew to Chongqing from Yan’an with the US ambassador, Patrick Hurley
- August 29 to October 10, 1945:
Chongqing negotiations – Mao and
Chiang signed a memo of agreement

COALITION NEGOTIATIONS
- Ambassador Hurley resigned and replaced by George C. Marshall
- 1941: Federation of Democratic Parties opposed the GMD monopoly of government power
- Oct 1944: Democratic League (3 rd Force)
- Many of the League leaders were assassinated (most likely by GMD)  members flee to Hong Kong
- Oct 1947: Nanjing outlawed the League

CIVIL WAR
- May 1, 1946: Chinese People’s
Liberation Army (PLA)
- GMD outnumbered CCP in the beginning
- Late 1946: PLA under the leadership of
Lin Biao turned the tide
- Communists in control of the countryside: Nationalist-controlled cities  islands in a Communist sea
- Mid-1948: CCP and GMD equal numbers
- Communist victory in Manchuria, 1948

Lin Biao and his officers in Harbin (1946)

TAIWAN BEFORE 1950
- Indigenous population: Malay or
Polynesian origins (2% population today)
- 16 th & 17 th century: Han Chinese migration from Fujian province
(speakers of Minnan or southern Fujian)
- 15 th to 17 th century: commercal base for
Portuguese and Dutch merchants
- 1661-1683: Zheng Chenggong
- 1683: prefecture of Fujian province
- 1887: independent province

TAIWAN BEFORE 1950
- Treaty of Shimonoseki (17 Apr 1895):
Taiwan remained Japanese control until
1945
- Agreements signed in Cairo (Nov 22
1943) and Potsdam (July and Aug 1943):
Taiwan was to be returned to China
- Chen Yi: first governor of Taiwan in 1945 and established a new mainlander elite
- clashed with the Taiwanese elites (e.g., disposition of Japanese property)

Chen Yi

FEB TWENTY-8TH (2-28) INCIDENT
- Feb. 27, 1927: officials of Chen Yi’s admin. shot a cigarette-selling woman and a bystander
- Demonstration and strike the following day
- Taizhong (mid-West Taiwan): a citizens’ assembly proclaimed the formation of a
People’s Government
- Uprising suppressed with great brutality
- 1949: Chiang’s (2 nd ) White Terror