Mao Tsu-tung formally announced the establishment of The People's Republic of China in the Autumn of 1949 following five years of bloody civil war against Chiang Kaishek's nationalist government the Kuomintang. In trying to understand why the Communists were victorious over a more than considerable opponent it is necessary to look to the years preceding the civil war (1945-1949) itself and at the conditions that prevailed in China. It is reasonably clear that the communists enjoyed …showed first 75 words of 1436 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1436 total…a man who has something to fight for, and he will fight to preserve it against any enemy, Japanese or Chinese". Bibliography  K Hartford and S. Goldstein eds, Single Sparks: China's Rural Revolutions (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1989).  Wilson, D, China's Revolutionary War, Weidenfield and Nicolson (London, 1991).  Jun, Li Xiao, The Long March to the Fourth of June (Duckworth, London, 1989).  Sheridan, James E., China in Disintegration: The Republican Era in Chinese History, 1912-1949 (New York, 1975).