IB History Reasons for the Outcome of the Chinese Civil War Key Definitions

The Guomindang government's last attempt to stop hyperinflation, replacing the fabi currency with a new gold yuan in August 1948. Citizens were required to surrender their gold, silver, and foreign currency in exchange for gold yuan at fixed rates. The reform collapsed within months as the government continued printing money to fund the civil war. The resulting hyperinflation destroyed middle-class savings, wiped out urban support for the GMD, and contributed decisively to its political collapse.

Leader of the Guomindang and the Republic of China from 1928 until his death in 1975. Jiang unified China under GMD rule through the Northern Expedition, suppressed the CCP after 1927, and led China's resistance to Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War. His failure to carry out land reform, his reliance on corrupt local elites, and his military missteps in the Civil War (including the defection of key commanders) contributed to the GMD's defeat. He retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and governed the Republic of China there until his death.

The CCP's redistribution of land from landlords to poor peasants during the Civil War and immediately after the PRC's founding. In CCP-controlled areas, land reform was used to mobilise peasant support and recruit soldiers: peasants who received land had a direct stake in Communist victory. The process involved "struggle sessions" in which landlords were publicly denounced and often killed. The policy was enormously effective at building a loyal rural base for the CCP.

The ideological system attributed to Mao Zedong, combining Marxism-Leninism with Chinese revolutionary experience. Key elements include: the primacy of the peasantry rather than the industrial proletariat as the revolutionary class; protracted people's war; the mass line as the method of party organisation; and the use of ideology to overcome material disadvantage. Mao Zedong Thought was adopted as the guiding ideology of the CCP in 1945 and remains enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

A CCP policy of maintaining close contact with the broad mass of the people. Party cadres were expected to gather ideas from the masses, interpret them through Marxist theory, and return them as policy.

The state established by Mao Zedong on 1 October 1949, following the CCP's victory in the Civil War. The PRC replaced the Republic of China government, which retreated to Taiwan. The PRC was initially recognised only by the Soviet bloc and developing nations; the United States continued to recognise the ROC on Taiwan as the legitimate Chinese government until 1979. The PRC has governed mainland China ever since its founding.