George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
This article will help readers avoid repeating mistakes by examining four examples from the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces and the Republic of China (ROC) forces that involved two city sieges and two island invasions. The city sieges compared are Changchun (May to October 1948) and Beiping (November 1948 to January 1949, renamed Beijing after its capture), and attempts to invade Kinmen (October 1949) and Hainan (April 1950). Comparing and contrasting these examples, we can learn how Taiwan may prevent a war with Communist China, and, if deterrence fails, to fight Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aggression successfully.
The sieges of Changchun and Beiping were pivotal moments in the Chinese Civil War, and they played out in different ways. The 1948 Siege of Changchun was a brutal military blockade that highlighted the CCP’s ruthless strategy to force a Nationalist surrender at any cost, including mass civilian starvation. It resulted in one of the civil war’s worst humanitarian disasters. In contrast, the Pingjin Campaign — which included the strategic encirclement of Beiping in late 1948 — culminated in a peaceful transfer of power in early 1949, displaying the CCP’s shrewd use of negotiation to avoid unnecessary bloodshed and preserve a symbolic, historic city.
From May to October 1948, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) under Lin Biao (林彪) encircled the Nationalist garrison in Changchun, cutting off supplies to the city. The CCP’s strategy was to “use the enemy’s food,” preventing civilians from leaving the city to put pressure on the Nationalist troops’ diminishing supplies. The five-month blockade of the city resulted in 150,000 to 330,000 civilian deaths from starvation. The blockade and its humanitarian catastrophe crippled the Nationalist garrison, which also faced internal morale problems and desertions. The Nationalist commander, Zheng Dongguo (鄭洞國), surrendered after a portion of his troops mutinied.
The fall of Changchun was a decisive victory for the Communists, effectively ending Nationalist control over Manchuria and setting conditions for their southward advance. The CCP’s ruthless methods cast a shadow over its legitimacy. Even today the CCP hides the starvation of Changchun civilians from history books.
In late 1948, the PLA strategically isolated Beiping by seizing the surrounding cities and cutting off escape routes, effectively trapping the Nationalist forces. The CCP conducted secret negotiations with the Nationalist commander, General Fu Zuoyi (傅作義), who faced a challenge like that of General Zheng at Changchun. The CCP secretly had recruited General Fu’s daughter, and she applied emotional pressure on him during the negotiations. General Fu agreed to “total disarmament and the redistribution of the Nationalist forces into the Communist Army.” On Jan. 31, 1949, the PLA marched into the city unopposed. The CCP named the city Beijing and designated it the PRC’s capital.
What happened to Fu Zuoyi and his 250,000 troops? The CCP did not treat him as a war criminal. After the war, Fu was appointed Minister of Hydraulics, and later Vice-Chairman of the 4th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee. The CCP absorbed his 250,000 Nationalist forces and reorganized them into PLA units. Mao later used them, and other PLA converted Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) soldiers, as “cannon fodder” in the Korean War. After the Korean War, 14,342 of the 21,451 Chinese prisoners of war requested to be repatriated to Taiwan instead of the PRC. This request revealed the number of surviving KMT soldiers who understood what their fate would be upon returning to the PRC and was the major factor in delaying the Korean Armistice for two years — Mao and the CCP were embarrassed by the soldiers’ defections to Taiwan.
What would happen to the military-age adults in Taiwan if the CCP — God forbid — annexed Taiwan? Would the CCP force them to be cannon fodder for the next CCP war? Russia also uses this cannon fodder tactic in its current war on Ukraine to reduce the number of non-White Russians under its control.
The sieges of Changchun and Beiping are contrasting examples of CCP strategy during the Chinese Civil War. The brutal attrition of Changchun demonstrated the Communists’ willingness to use any means to achieve victory. The peaceful capture of Beiping was a propaganda victory for the CCP. These events illustrate the dual nature of the CCP’s rise to power: a ruthless military force capable of great cruelty and a sophisticated political machine adept at exploiting opportunities.
Official CCP accounts of the five-month Changchun blockade ignore or downplay the immense civilian death toll from starvation and disease. Similarly, official CCP accounts of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre ignore the PLA’s murder of more than 10,000 peaceful protesters. There are no official monuments or memorials to the Changchun civilian victims. Survivors have spoken of a “long-buried trauma,” and younger Chinese are unaware of the details.
Originally published in 1989 by the PLA, Lieutenant Colonel Zhang Zhenglung’s (張正隆) book, White Snow, Red Blood: The Historical Truth of the Kuomintang-CCP Decisive Battle in Northeast China, documents the deliberate starvation of civilians. White Snow, Red Blood was banned in China after 100,000 copies had been sold. Zhang wrote “Changchun was like Hiroshima. The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months.”
The 1949 Kinmen (Guningtou [古寧頭]) and 1950 Hainan invasions were amphibious assaults by the PLA on KMT strongholds following their retreat from mainland China. The battles’ contrasting outcomes — a decisive KMT victory at Kinmen and a swift PLA triumph at Hainan — are attributed to differences in preparation, intelligence, and morale.
The PLA relied on a “people’s flotilla” of wooden junks and fishing boats in both invasions to transport troops across the straits, facing the KMT’s superior navy and air force. The KMT forces defending the islands were remnants of the mainland campaigns and had low morale and were poorly supplied. The engagements were part of a larger campaign to secure China’s offshore islands after the Communist victory on the mainland, preceding the KMT’s final entrenchment on Taiwan.
After their mainland victories, during the Kinmen campaign, PLA commanders underestimated the KMT’s strength on Kinmen. They failed to conduct thorough reconnaissance or secure enough transport vessels, leading to a single, poorly coordinated assault wave. The KMT had reinforced Kinmen with veteran troops and tanks shortly before the invasion. An accidental tripwire alerted defenders, who used their coastal defenses, aircraft, and tanks to significant effect against the stranded PLA forces.
Kinmen was too small to support a significant Communist guerrilla force; there was no internal assistance to support the PLA landing. The KMT forces annihilated the PLA landing force, a major embarrassment that ended immediate Communist plans to invade Taiwan and preserved Kinmen as an anti-communist outpost.
Learning from the Kinmen defeat, the PLA conducted extensive reconnaissance and pre-battle training against Hainan Island. They conducted small-scale landings over months to reinforce local guerrillas and test defenses before the main assault. The KMT garrison was larger but poorly led and comprised low-morale troops. The high command in Taiwan denied requests from Hainan for reinforcements, which resulted in an ineffective defense.
A strong local Communist guerrilla movement, the Hainan Independent Column, provided crucial intelligence, helped secure beachheads, and harassed KMT forces from the interior. The Communists overwhelmed KMT forces and conquered the island in just over two weeks. It was a successful amphibious operation that provided valuable experience for the PLA.
The PLA studies the historical examples of Kinmen and Hainan and other military campaigns against islands, such as their successful capture of Taiwan’s Yijiangshan Islands (一江山島) (1955) and other World War II battles in the Pacific and in the Mediterranean such as Crete and Malta. I encourage Taiwanese to explore these and other historical examples.
The message regarding these four historical case studies reminds me of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. His book’s lesson is that a ruling class’ unchecked tyranny and oppression inevitably leads to widespread suffering and violent revolution. We can hope that mainland Chinese who suffer from the CCP’s unchecked tyranny and oppression will contribute to the CCP’s collapse with minimal suffering. However, while the CCP still holds its grip around the throat of the PRC, Taiwan needs to prepare for all contingencies, including war.
Interestingly, the PRC 2005 Anti-Secession Law outlines violent and non-violent options for taking Taiwan: These options are historical reminders of the CCP’s conquests of Changchun and Peiping.
President William Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) concept of whole-of-society resilience (WOSR) is a comprehensive national security strategy that integrates military defense with extensive civil preparedness for natural disasters and potential conflicts with Communist China. The initiative aims to increase Taiwan’s deterrence and resistance capabilities by empowering the civilian population and fostering cooperation across government, the private sector, and civil society. As WOSR develops, Taiwan will make it more difficult for the CCP to make Taiwan suffer the fates of Changchun’s starvation and the capitulation of Beiping. Furthermore, by encouraging a stronger Taiwanese identity, service before self, and Taiwan nationalism, I hope that Taiwan can learn to avoid the historical example of Hainan’s loss and be inspired by the historical heroic and successful sentinels of Kinmen that served as an example of Taiwan’s political will and resolve against Chinese communist coercion.
Guermantes Lailari is a retired US Air Force Foreign Area officer specializing in counterterrorism, irregular warfare, missile defense, and strategy. He holds advanced degrees in international relations and strategic intelligence. He was a Ministry of Foreign Affairs Taiwan Fellow in 2022, a visiting scholar at National Chengchi University and National Defense University in 2023, and is a visiting researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in 2024.
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