Chinese Civil War (1950): Strait standoff

After Japan's surrender, US-mediated talks failed. The 1946-49 phase was decided in Manchuria and on the mainland railways: Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin (1948-49) wrecked KMT field armies. Mao proclaimed the People's Republic on 1 October 1949; Chiang's Republic of China withdrew to Taiwan.

Deaths across the civil-war years are a wide scholarly band, often about 6-10 million when combat, massacre and associated famine are bundled -- figures overlap the Japanese war and later campaigns. The unfinished legal war across the Strait still structures East Asian security, including the Korean War's Chinese intervention in 1950.

Two parties, one China, an interrupted war The civil war was a social revolution and a conventional war, paused by Japan and finished in 1949 with two Chinese states still claiming one sovereignty. Sun Yat-sen's KMT had accepted Soviet aid and a CCP alliance. After the Northern Expedition, Chiang turned on the Communists in Shanghai in April 1927. Rural soviets, the Jiangxi period, and the Long March (1934-35) kept a CCP remnant alive in Yan'an.