How China became communist: to understand why Mao triumphed, it is necessary to look beyond the battlefields in China to the fateful decisions emanating from Yalta and Washington.(HISTORY--PAST AND PERSPECTIVE)

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The People's Republic of China has become a formidable player on the world stage. It threatens the United States both economically and militarily. Its economic clout, and how that clout was acquired despite the fact that it remains a communist country mired in central planning and socialism, is examined in two earlier articles in this issue (pages 10 and 16).

But how did China fall to the communists in the first place, setting the stage not only for the subjugation of Mainland China but also the Korean and Vietnam Wars? The liberal view is that Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung (now known as Mao Zedong) was able to triumph over Nationalist (anti-communist) leader Chiang Kai-shek because of the former's agrarian reforms and perseverance and the latter's oppression and corruption. In truth, Mao was a mass murderer, and Chiang was a man who helped lead China away from domination by warlords and brought China's millions a measure of freedom that was previously unknown in that vast land.

So how was Mao able to defeat Chiang on Mainland China? As we shall see, the answer, simply stated, is that U.S. government policies made it possible for him to succeed and Chiang to fail.

Chiang Kai-shek Fights for Unity

In 1911, long before Chiang became China's leader, he was a 24-year-old studying at a military school in Japan. Dr. Sun Yat-sen had just launched a revolution to wrest control of China from dictatorial war lords. The future Chinese leader hurried home and immediately became a trusted lieutenant in the fledgling revolutionary government.

Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Kuomintang (National People's Party), was always a Chinese patriot. His favorable view of socialism, however, caused him to trust the agents of Soviet leaders Stalin and Trotsky, who were busily working in China to establish communist control. Sun Yat-sen became enamored of those he believed to be China's "friends" but who were really Soviet Russia's infiltrators. In 1923, he sent one of his government's most able lieutenants, Chiang Kai-shek, to Moscow for training. Chiang returned after only four months with a decidedly unfavorable view of what he learned about communist-style tyranny.