Chinese Civil War (1948): Three campaigns · 413

A 1927-49 struggle between Nationalists and Communists that, after Japan's war, produced the PRC and a Republic of China on Taiwan. The Chinese Civil War, in its conventional dating, runs from the 1927 Shanghai massacre and the collapse of the First United Front to the Communist victory of 1949 -- interrupted, but not erased, by the war against Japan (1937-45). Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government (KMT) and Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party fought for the same country with different social programmes and foreign backers.

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.