Why the Chinese Nationalists Lost China in the 1940s

Chinese Nationalist Party (aka Kuomintang, KMT), a political party which ruled China for many years. However, it failed so quickly that nobody could imagine at that time. What led the nationalists’ failure in Mainland China? I read many books about modern Chinese history. The three reasons I found are – loose organization, weak society control, and defective thought.

First is a loose organization. Kuomintang was established in 1924, by Dr Sun Yat-sen. Before that, the revolutionary party was about to lose. It is not competitive under the great power of the Peking government. The place the nationalists could control was only some small cities and villages around Canton, a major export harbour in history. What’s more, it was threatened by provincial warlords. In fact, Canton revolutionist government had long been a puppet controlled by warlords. To seek independence, Sun decided to learn from Russians. Coincidently, Russia has just finished the communist revolution, and not a single nation wanted to have a relationship with this new regime except Sun. Sun copied Russian Communist Party in every aspect. Even let China Communist Party members join KMT, which finally became a time bomb in the party. Sun learned Russians but not thoroughly. He kept the constitution he wrote and remain a weak management level. Almost everyone could join the party, without any kind of examination. On the contrary, CCP is well-organized and disciplined.

Next reason is the weak society control. KMT is a militarism party. After it won China, it adopted a kind of military dictatorship led by Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang didn’t follow Sun’s will. He wanted whole worship him and obey his dictatorship. Therefore, the whole society was led by Chiang personally, rather than KMT. On the basic level, the power of the army is much higher than that of the government, or in other words, Kuomintang. Militants are usually those uneducated, rude, cruel men. They exploit grass-root citizens’ property uncontrollably. People couldn’t stand the army’s government for one more day.

Finally is the thought issue. KMT’s mission was the Three People’s Principles, which are Nationalism, Democracy, and the People’s Livelihood. It is not real for most of Chinese. At the beginning of the twentieth century, almost 99% of the Chinese lived in rural areas. Their biggest wish was to have enough to eat and wear. Nationalism couldn’t impress them at all. Kuomintang’s inclination towards the rich let them disappointed. However, the communists gave them hope again. CCP led the land revolution, killing and torturing landlords, and divided the land to poor villagers. In this situation, KMT lost people’s hearts and CCP won.

In a nutshell, KMT is a tragedy, who lost China because of its organization, social control, and thought. The nationalists wanted to establish a democratic, progressive China but ended up in weak autocracy. It seemed that KMT had learned from its failure and did better in Taiwan. However, it was beaten by Democratic Progressive Party – a Taiwan independence party – again and again in recent years, which shows that KMT had not changed enough.