Modernization Interrupted? Total War, State Breakdown, and the Communist Conquest of China

Abstract

A state-centered perspective in studies of revolutions holds that international pressures contribute to outbreak of revolutions, assuming that the magnitude and intensity of international pressures vary from case to case. This study argues that in the paradigmatic communist revolutions of the 20th century, such as the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, the role of the exogenous factor of war was paramount. After outlining a war-centered framework for studying communist revolutions, this research shows how the devastating experience of total war against Japan (1937–1945) undermined the Kuomintang state in China and created structural conditions for the communist takeover.

NOTES

Notes

¹ The very event of taking power by the communists, as we know, does not ensure that the communists stay in power. The takeover of power by radical socialists aimed at expropriating private property is usually accompanied by the fierce resistance of propertied classes, which typically takes the form of civil war. Under which conditions communists are able to win civil war is a separate issue to be addressed elsewhere. At this point, I limit my analysis to the communist seizure of central state authority and do not go any further.

² Joseph Stilwell, an American military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, and Theodore White, an American journalist in wartime China, left particularly critical accounts of the KMT government.