Chinese Civil War: Cultural Revolution
Throughout history civil war has been a catalyst for radical upheavals and major paradigm shifts in many societies. Civil wars are often the physical manifestations of ideological battles, battles of ideas, each competing for power. Consequently civil wars have the potential to bring about a new socio-political order in society, yet in order for this to be accomplished; the existing power structure must be sufficiently weakened and susceptible to change. Civil wars and the revolutions in thinking which instigate them, require a power vacuum in order to grow and be successful. The conditions for upheaval were present in Chinese society due to the fall of the dynastic system and the influx of new ways of thinking from abroad. The lack of a strong central authority left the ship of state without a helmsman, causing it to drift out of control due to tumultuous societal currents, bringing about almost forty years of successive revolutions and massive bloodshed.
The emergence of a Communist China in 1949 significantly altered the course of geo-politics for the next half century. China emerged as a competing source of authority in the Communist world leading to the Sino-Soviet split, a split which was exploited by President Richard Nixon’s ‘Ping-Pong’ politics, that led to the opening up of China. With retrospection, the emergence of a Communist China was a highly unlikely event, considering that China like Russia was unsuited for a Marxist revolution, with both lacking a capitalistic societal structure, large proletariat or developed bourgeoisie.
The Chinese Civil war was the product of the long standing undercurrent of societal dissatisfaction in China. This dissatisfaction led to China’s last emperor Pu Yi being ousted from power in 1911. On January 1st 1912 Sun-Yat-sen, long-time dissident and advocate of political and social reform, was appointed the first provisional president of the Republic of China. Sun’s sudden death in 1925 lead to an internal power struggle in which Chiang Kai-Shek emerged as the new leader of Sun’s Kuomintang Party (KMT) due to his control over the Whampoa Military Academy and subsequently virtually all of the military. Chiang used his influence to invoke martial law after accusing KMT leftists and Communists of conspiring against the state. This action and the purge of communists which followed it inevitably led to a split between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT who had been in an uneasy alliance since 1923.
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