Mao Zedong
Mao led the party from the Long March through 1949 and then the PRC. His civil-war craft was political-military; his later rule is a different ledger.
Yan'an
3
PRC
3
Role
3
Mao and Chiang are the paired portraits. Soong Mei-ling is how US newsreels personalised the KMT. Marshall is how US memory personalised failure.
Peng Dehuai ties this file to the Korean War file -- one career, two atlas pages.
People
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang unified much of China in the 1920s, lost the mainland in 1949, and ruled Taiwan under martial law. He is also a Second World War Allied face.
Northern Expedition
3
Retreat
3
Died
3
Zhou Enlai
Zhou negotiated, organised, and later ran PRC diplomacy -- including the Korean War period. The civil war made his state.
Role
3
1949
3
Korea
3
Lin Biao
Lin's northeast campaigns were decisive in 1948. His later political fall (1971) is a PRC sequel, not a civil-war verdict.
Theatre
3
Campaigns
3
Later
3
Zhu De
Zhu De is the professional-military name beside Mao's political name in early Red Army history.
Role
3
Partner
3
State
3
Soong Mei-ling
Soong's English lobbying in wartime Washington made her the civil war's most famous diplomat in US memory -- and a symbol of the KMT's American hope.
Stage
3
Role
3
After
3
Peng Dehuai
Peng fought the civil war and then commanded in Korea -- a bridge figure in this atlas.
Civil war
3
Korea
3
Later
3
George C. Marshall
Marshall's 1945-47 mission failed to produce a coalition government. His later Plan in Europe is a different fame; in China his name means a failed peace.
Mission
3
Result
3
Later
3
Debate
Could the KMT have won after 1945?
Counterfactuals invoke less corruption, more reform, or a different US policy. Most specialists still put Chinese social and military facts first.
Revolution or mere conquest?
1949 was both a conventional victory and a social revolution -- picking one word is a political act.
PRC museums and Taiwan's later democratised museums tell incompatible civil-war stories. Both are primary sources of memory.
"Who lost China" is an American iconography, not a Chinese one.