Civil-war related dead
About 6-10 million across phases -- a wide band.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale72
Intensity76
Duration65
Tech shift40
Political impact88
Cultural memory52
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Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
How many died?
A wide band, often about 6-10 million for civil-war related deaths across phases, overlapping the Japanese war and postwar campaigns. Treat any single number as a false census.
Did Japan pause the civil war?
It forced a united front and moved the main enemy, but both parties positioned for the next round. 1945 was a restart, not a blank slate.
Why did the Communists win?
Rural organisation, KMT inflation and corruption, Manchurian campaigns, and a more coherent political-military command. US aid was real and insufficient to offset legitimacy collapse.
What happened on 1 October 1949?
Mao proclaimed the PRC in Beijing. The ROC government relocated to Taipei. Both claimed to be the government of China.
How does this connect to the Korean War?
The new PRC intervened in Korea in October 1950. The US interposed the Seventh Fleet in the Strait, blocking an immediate Taiwan campaign.
The 6-10 million band is wide because famine, massacre and battle overlap. Local studies (e.g. some 1947-48 campaigns) still move the totals.
Refugees to Taiwan and later to Hong Kong and the US are a demographic cost and a new politics.
Bands
1946-49 military
Hundreds of thousands to more than a million, depending on the study.
Refugees to Taiwan
About 1-2 million in the late-1940s withdrawal band.
Later campaigns
Tibet, the southwest, and suppression -- sometimes bundled, sometimes not.
Korean sequel dead
Counted on the Korean War page, caused in part by this victory.
Regions
Jiangxi / south
Early soviets and the March's start.
Yan'an / north
Wartime CCP core.
Manchuria
The 1948 decision space.
Yangtze cities
1949 political theatre.
Taiwan
The leftover state.
Korea 1950
The first foreign war of the new PLA/PVA.
Key numbers
PRC founding1 Oct 1949
Deaths (band)about 6-10 million
Main restart1946
Long March1934-35
Makers
Soviet aid / 1945 vacuum
A geopolitical workshop in the northeast.
US equipment pipeline
The KMT's industrial rear, insufficiently political.
CCP land cadres
The rural "makers" of allegiance.
Print and inflation
Money as a collapsing Nationalist institution.
Hong Kong watching post
A British-colonial observation deck for the war's end.
Later museums
PRC and Taiwan as rival makers of the story.
Land reform's violence is part of the revolutionary bill, argued over in later historiography.
KMT White Terror on Taiwan (228, 1947, and martial law) is a ROC after-cost of the lost mainland war.