Pause is not peace
1937-45 did not cancel 1927.
The Long March was a retreat. The three campaigns were a conventional annihilation of KMT main force. Both belong; they are not the same kind of campaign.
Crossing the Yangtze was political theatre as well as an operation -- the capital fell in the newsreels.
Principles
Legitimacy is logistics plus justice
Inflation can lose a war.
Rear areas decide
North China bases outgrew Chongqing's prestige.
Foreign aid is not a state
US equipment without a political compact failed.
Founding dates hide leftovers
1949 left a second government and a later Korean sequel.
Steps
- Alliance and split
United front, then 1927.
Sharing a march is not sharing a state.
- Rural survival
Soviets, encirclement, Long March.
A remnant can outlast a purge.
- Anti-Japanese interval
United front again; expansion in the rear.
A larger enemy can be a political opportunity.
- Failed mediation
Marshall 1945-47.
Great-power talks cannot invent a coalition.
- Conventional finish
Three campaigns, Yangtze, PRC.
Guerrilla parties can end as field armies.
- Leftover state
Taiwan, 1950 Fleet, long standoff.
Victory on a mainland can still leave a second capital.
Diagrams
1927-37 / 1937-45 / 1945-49 as three bars, one conflict.
Liaoshen-Huaihai-Pingjin as the end-game set.
Limits
Overlapping death counts
Japan war and civil war share years and victims.
PRC and ROC archives
Still political; figures stay in bands.
No live plan
Strait history is not an invasion manual.
Campaign names here are history. They are not a guide to fighting a civil war.
Urban uprisings in 1949 often followed military collapse, not the other way around.