From the outbreak of full-scale civil war in June 1946 through July 1947, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army waged defensive warfare for over a year and effected a fundamental change in the balance of forces between the Guomindang and the CCP. Between July and September, the PLA shifted from the strategic defense to the strategic offense. On October 10, PLA General Headquarters issued, “A Declaration of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army “ that proclaimed, “Down with Chiang Kai-shek, for the liberation of all of China,” and presented an eight-point political outline. This marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of the Chinese revolutionary movement. Thereupon, the PLA launched sustained, large-scale offensives against Nationalist-held territory. From September 1948 through January 1949, the PLA conducted the three great Liaoshen, Pingjin, and Huaihai campaigns, and liberated the Northeast, most of North China, and a large part of the territory north of the Yangtze River.
The Chinese Communists faced two major problems during this entire period. First, at the time the fundamental shift occurred in the GMD-CCP balance of forces, would they be bold enough to move from the strategic defensive to the strategic offensive? Second, at the historical moment they achieved decisive military victory and there was no turning back, would they dare to use military force to unify all of China? In a deeper sense, these two issues were linked with the question of the future of the Chinese revolution.
From the outbreak of full-scale civil war until the PLA shifted to the strategic offensive, CCP leaders consistently held that there was no more important problem inside the Chinese revolutionary camp than that of overestimating enemy strength, particularly that of the United States, and underestimating the people’s strength. Addressing this problem, the Central Committee pointed out to all party members that, “The rightist danger inside the party consists of underestimating the strength of the people’s anti-Chiang forces, and fearing U.S. imperialist support of Chiang’s civil war. The consequences of this are lack of faith in mobilizing the masses, thoroughly implementing land reform, opposing U.S. imperialism, and carrying out the anti-Chiang struggle to the end...”[1] The “fear America” thinking that existed inside the CCP was linked to various viewpoints in the party concerning trends in the international situation. The main one was doubt about the following two questions. First was whether the progress of the Chinese revolution would lead to increased U.S. support for Chiang Kai-shek in fighting the civil war or even to direct U.S. military intervention. Second was whether, in the increasingly tense international situation, the Chinese civil war would lead to a Soviet-American conflict or even touch off a new world war. Communist leaders paid serious attention to these questions whenever they engaged in making strategic decisions. Now the doubts existing within the revolutionary camp made them realize the need to provide clear answers to these questions.
In planning a strategic counterattack, Communist leaders had already considered how the U.S. would respond. They predicted that direct U.S. military intervention was almost out of the question, and that it would be difficult for the United States even to increase its military assistance to the Nationalist government. In June 1947, on the eve of the Liu-Deng army’s march into the Dabie Mountains, Deng Xiaoping pointed out at a military cadres’ meeting that there indeed was a possibility that the United States might “send troops to help Chiang Kai-shek,” but this was presently a very small possibility. “This is not a real problem... [because] it is not a national, but an international issue.”[2] In September, Zhou Enlai delivered a report on the current situation to a cadres’ conference in northern Shaanxi. In sketching the international conditions for carrying out a full-scale counterattack, he focused on providing a detailed explanation of U.S. policy. Zhou said, “We must destroy the idea that there is something extraordinary about the United States.” The U.S. is not even able to provide the Nationalist government with sufficient military and economic assistance. The possibility of direct U.S. military intervention is very small, and “the atomic bomb cannot be used to deal with a peasant war.”[3]
Just when the CCP decided to carry out a strategic counteroffensive and was conducting ideological mobilization in this connection, Soviet-American rivalry sharpened, and the changes this brought about in the international political environment created favorable external conditions for the development of the Chinese revolutionary movement. In the spring of 1947, after painstaking preparations, President Truman, responding to Britain’s request to help the Greek government, addressed the U.S. Congress. He asserted that the world was now divided into two antagonistic camps. On one side was dictatorship and on the other side “the free world.” “In the contemporary world, almost all countries must choose between these two modes of existence.”[4] [CHERCK ORIGINAL TEXT OF TRUMAN DOCTRINE]
An important dimension of the Truman doctrine was its attempt to prove that intervention in the internal affairs of other countries was justified by the need to counter Communist expansion. As soon as the U.S. determined that a “communist threat” existed in a particular place, it had the responsibility to intervene. On June 5, Secretary of State Marshall, speaking at Harvard University, outlined the European Recovery Plan that had been long in the making. The essence of this plan was to use American financial and economic aid to help postwar European economic recovery in order to prevent the Soviet Union from taking advantage of social disorder and unrest to expand Communist influence. On April 2, 1948, amidst a wave of opposition to Communist “expansion,” Congress passed the Foreign Aid Act of 1948.
The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan buoyed the anticommunist forces of the European capitalist states. In France and Italy, the postwar high tide of Communist participation in governing coalitions rapidly receded, and Communist ministers were relieved of their posts. Soon afterwards, the French and Italian governments suppressed large-scale strikes in their countries. At the same time, East European states found themselves under attack as a result of the Marshall Plan. Signs of political stability appeared everywhere.
Moscow resolutely confronted Washington’s diplomatic offensive. Beginning in July, the Soviet Union pressured the East European countries to boycott the conference in Paris convened to discuss the Marshall Plan. Meanwhile, it signed a large number of bilateral trade agreements with these same countries. Finally, in January 1949, it established the Soviet-dominated Council of Mutual Economic Assistance. By strengthening its economic ties with Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union effectively checked U.S. infiltration. In the political realm, the Soviet Union supported the purge by East European communist parties of capitalist representatives from their governments in order to consolidate the political power of the East European regimes.
After the turbulent and divisive summer of 1947, Europe wound up split into two camps headed respectively by the U.S. and the USSR. From September 22 to 27, delegates from nine Communist parties, those of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, France, and Italy met in Poland. The conference passed a “Declaration on the International Situation,” based on a report by Soviet representative Andrei Zhdanov. The declaration stated that following World War II, the world had seen the formation of two camps. One was the democratic and anti-imperialist camp headed by the Soviet Union whose goal was to destroy the imperialist order and strengthen the democratic order. The other was the imperialist and antidemocratic camp headed by the United States whose goal was to establish American global supremacy and destroy the democratic order. In this new international situation, the fundamental task of all communist parties now was to raise high the banner of national independence and protection of state sovereignty, and oppose imperialist slavery and aggression. The main danger for the working class was to underestimate its own strength and overestimate the strength of the imperialist camp. Therefore, all the communist parties had to strengthen their leadership, “rally all the democratic and patriotic forces in their countries,” and carry out a resolute struggle against the forces of imperialism.[5] On October 10, Pravda announced the formation of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) consisting of European worker and communist parties. This announcement evoked intense reactions from both East and West, and the Cold War in Europe became increasingly acute.
