Campaign to Suppress Bandits in Northeast China

Part of the Chinese Civil War

Date	November 1945 – April 1947
Location	Northeast China
Result	Communist victory

Belligerents

National Revolutionary Army

Chinese Red Army

Commanders and leaders

Li Huatang

Xie Wendong

Zhang Yuxin

Wang Naikang

Jiang Pengfei

Strength

110,000+

100,000+

Casualties and losses

110,000+

Several thousands

Campaign to Suppress Bandits in Northeast China (东北剿匪) was a counterinsurgency / counter guerrilla campaign fought between the bandits turned guerrillas allied with nationalists and the communists during Chinese Civil War in the post World War II era, and resulted in the communist victory.

Both sides had made grave miscalculations initially, but the communists were quicker to correct their miscalculation and immediately adjust their strategy to achieve final victory. The nationalists, on the other hand, were overconfident and did not modify their strategy quickly enough, resulting in their failure. This had serious consequences later on as their communist enemy had successfully stabilized their rear area when winning the campaign.

Just as the nationalists had attempted to fight guerrilla and insurgency warfare against the communists after being driven from mainland China half a decade later, the grave strategic mistake made by the nationalists contributed at least equally if not greater than the enemy’s political and military pressure to the nationalist defeat in this campaign. The very first strategic mistake made by Chiang Kai-shek and his followers was when they had neither the sufficient troops nor enough transportation assets to be deployed into the Japanese-occupied regions of Northeast China. Unwilling to let these regions falling into communist hands, Chiang’s government ordered these bandits to fight communists in any way they could. This grave strategic miscalculation resulted in alienation and resentment to the nationalists by the local population, which had already blamed the nationalists for losing the regions to the Japanese invaders during the war. However, the bandits were deeply feared and hated by the local populace they plagued for so long, and nationalist troops left behind joining the bandits certainly did not help them win the support of the general population. In fact, it served the exact opposite, it caused Chiang’s government to lose popular support to the least, if not strengthening the popular support of their communist enemy.

The second grave strategic miscalculation made by the retreating nationalists was also similar to the one the nationalists had made when it attempted to simultaneously solve the warlord problem that had plagued China for so long with the problem of the exterminating communists together: Those warlords allied with Chiang’s nationalist regime were only interested in keeping their own power and defected to the Japanese side when Japanese invaders offered to let them keep their power in exchange for their collaborations. After World War II, these forces of former Japanese puppet regimes once again returned to the nationalist camp for the same reason they defected to the Japanese invaders. Obviously, it was difficult for Chiang to immediately get rid of these warlords for good as soon as they surrendered to Chiang and rejoined nationalists, because such move would alienate other factions within the nationalist ranks, and those bandits and former Japanese puppet regime's warlords could still help the nationalists to by holding on to what was under their control and fighting off communists, and they and the communists would both be weakened. Similarly, the bandits Chiang’s government had failed to exterminate were obviously not good candidates for neither joining the regular troops nor being honorably discharged, and using them to fight communists appeared to be the only logical alternative. If the communists were great weakened by the bandits, then it would the nationalists would have easier time in their counterattacks to retake China. If the bandits were defeated, then the nationalists would have easier job to eradicate them later after retaking China. However, just like those warlords, these bandits were mostly only interested in keeping their own power also, and thus did not put any real efforts to fight the communists like some of the nationalists who were dedicated to their political cause. The eradication of bandits by the communist regime only strengthened its popular support since previous governments dating back from Qing Dynasty had failed to do so.

...
Wikipedia