Victory for Chinese Democracy (A Global Wikipedia-Style TL with Daily Updates)

[Sabot Cat]

VICTORY

FOR

CHINESE DEMOCRACY


A Global Wikipedia-Style Timeline with Daily Updates

​

PART I: 1947-1952

Regional Focus: Eastern and Southeastern Asia


Chinese Revolution of 1947


The Chinese Revolution of 1947, named the Thirty-Six Revolution domestically because it occurred on the 36th year of the Minguo calendar, was a series of popular uprisings that ended the dictatorship of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, then Chairman of the National Government. The revolutionaries brought about an end to the Civil War and ensured major socioeconomic reforms to restore fiscal solvency and protect the civil liberties enumerated in the Constitution of the Republic of China.


Background


The Second Sino-Japanese War caused 17,000,000 to 22,000,000 civilian deaths, over a million military casualties, and a sharp decline in the standards of living for the average Chinese citizen since the prosperity of the Golden decade (1927-1937). After hostilities concluded with Japan, an offensive was launched against the Communist Party of China, which had set up operations in the northern provinces. Under the tenure of the aforementioned Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang (KMT) or the Chinese Nationalist Party fell victim to rampant corruption and increased brutality against its people, although some argue that Chiang was not personally responsible, and that he was made a scapegoat for the difficulties that the government had in those trying circumstances. Regardless, economic hardship continued, and the government's standard response to a lack of military or administrative funding was the printing press, allowing the gap between tax revenue and expenditures to widen unabated. Thus even after the Second World War had ended, inflation continued to increase as the price levels for common goods skyrocketed.


Late in 1946, unemployment was as high as 20% in Canton and 30% in the capital of Nanjing, while labor unrest exploded in frequency, with 1716 strikes in Shanghai for that year alone. The Chiang regime responded by instituting wage and price controls in the first months of 1947. These were effective at first, but prices were soaring again by April, as rice almost doubled in price within three months. These attempts at curbing inflation proved to be ineffective, and were abandoned by May 1947.


Protests and responses


The 228 Massacre


Main article: 228 Massacre


Beginning of the protests in Northern China


Students began to protest the government for its widespread graft and the ongoing conflict with the Communists. On 17-18 May 1947, authorities shut down seventeen universities across Nanjing, Shanghai, Beiping, Hangzhou and Jinhua, as protesters demanded peace, increased subsidies, and more rations. In the waning days of that month, student leaders met in Nanjing to coordinate a nationwide general strike for June 2nd, which would be “Anti-Civil War Day”.


The burgeoning movement contacted three popular Shanghai newspapers Wenhuibao, Lianhebao, and Xinmin Wanbao to write about the planned Anti-Civil War Day. These media outlets were then shut down by the authorities after they had done so, as the students began to propagandize in the streets in order to reach the rest of the people with their anti-government message. Several thousand students were arrested by authorities, with the KMT launching a terror campaign against student protesters, some using nail-studded planks and in one instance killing three young students with rubber bullets in a Wuhan campus raid.


This kind of brutal suppression was not unknown, but many Shanghai workers struggling with increasingly high costs for even basic supplies sympathized with the student protesters and their struggle. On May 27th, workers from the Shanghai Customs Collection Agency and a dozen major department stores went on strike with the demand for the arrested students to be freed. KMT authorities ignored their wishes and began to fill their jails with hundreds of strikers.


This combined with the end of the wage and price controls were taken as signs that the government would no longer be responsive to the demands of laborers, thus expanding the scope of the strikes. As they had in 1946, the workers at the Shanghai Power Company refused to work and prevented others from going into the plant. Suddenly the French Tram, Power and Water Company, the Dalong Machine Factory, as well as various cotton and textile mills, were paralyzed in their operations by the next day. The workers camped out at their workplaces and resisted attempts at arrest, which became increasingly impractical as the number of protesters swelled. In the neighboring city of Nanjing, a meeting of the Kuomintang was called in response to the unrest, and it was agreed that the Central Executive Committee would depart to Chongqing until the crisis had passed, with Zhang Qun, the President of the Executive Yuan (or Premier), and Sun Ko, the President of the Legislative Yuan in attendance. Generalissimo Chiang stayed behind, and sent a notice to K.C. Wu, Mayor of Shanghai, instructing him to declare martial law in the city by tomorrow.


Mayor Wu rejected the necessity of this. As a strong liberal opponent of police brutality, he viewed the ongoing and planned response to be a disproportionate and inappropriate use of force that crippled free expression. He thus arranged for all of those that had been arrested for striking or protesting to be immediately freed on May 31st 1947.


Anti-Civil War Day


Uprisings in Shanghai and Nanjing


Many of the recently freed student protest leaders and organizers left to Nanjing, as Generalissimo Chiang learned of K.C. Wu's actions and dispatched Yu Hung-Chun to be the new Mayor, who declared Martial Law upon arrival on June 1st. Remaining leaders in the Shanghai labor and student protest movement were arrested again on the pretext that they were Communist collaborators, while a city-wide curfew was imposed with the aid of the Army. Thirty-six alleged Communist infiltrators were to be executed the next day, while K.C. Wu was assassinated as he returned home in the evening.


In the early morning of Monday, June 2nd 1947, news of Wu's death caused a spontaneous vigil to be observed, in violation of the curfew. Students refused to return to their schools while workers refused to go to their workplaces. Instead, they marched down the streets of Shanghai in solemn protest. The Shanghai garrison ordered the dispersal of the crowds before opening fire, beginning a massacre of the unarmed protesters. News quickly spread to Nanjing by eyewitnesses, as student leaders had already begun to lead the city in protest, which soon morphed into a revolutionary mass strike in a show of support for those being killed in Shanghai.


Troops in Nanjing refused to fire on the tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, even as they shouted slogans against government corruption and the war. The Nanjing soldiers instead helped the protesters seize the Presidential Palace, and placed Generalissimo Chiang under arrest, among other critical administrative and financial buildings captured that day. The Nanjing garrison then marched to Shanghai with millions of civilian volunteers, who bloodlessly forced the Shanghai garrison to surrender. All of those responsible for the massacre, including Yu Hung-Chun, were placed under arrest.


Establishment of the RCCP


The Revolutionary Committee for Constitutional Protection (RCCP) was established on June 3rd by known reformist politicians, who pledged themselves to organizing relief for the fiscal crisis and supervising new elections according to the Constitution of the Republic of China.


Zhang Lan, chairman of the China Democratic League, was appointed as the provisional President of the RCCP. He promulgated its first major resolution that day: the Emergency Ordinance to Restore Solvency, which created an independent central bank known as the Chinese People's Central Bank (CPCB) with exclusive powers to print money and mint coins.


The new Chinese yuan was pegged at a 2:1 ratio with United States Dollar, backed by dollar reserves and over half a billion ounces of gold captured in Nanjing and Shanghai. The fact that the RCCP did not have to foot the bill for the military budget of the ROC while being able to collect taxes from the most profitable ports in the nation also helped the new bank in reducing the deficit. Workers were also guaranteed work at government-owned cooperatives, and all citizens promised a basic amount of food. Thousands of young adults united to form the National Salvation Volunteer Army (NSVA) to defend the RCCP so it could organize a peace settlement in the Chinese Civil War, although their funding was very poor.


Reaction of the KMT


President Sun Fo, along with Premier Zhang Qun and Chief of the General Staff Chen Cheng, filled the power vacuum left by Chiang after his arrest. They became known as the "Chongqing Troika", unified by their common effort in saving their ship of state from sinking through reconciliation with the revolutionaries and rapid reforms after failed attempts to negotiate terms for Chiang’s release as had happened in the Xi’an incident.


The Troika first led the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang in its extraordinary session in Chongqing to name President Sun Fo as the new Director-General of the party. He pledged to pass reforms to improve the economy, set up elections, and end the war as soon as possible. He then led the KMT to pass a resolution condemning Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek for his brutality, and the corruption that emerged during his rule. He along with Mayor Yu Hung-Chun, former Governor-General of Taiwan Chen Yi, the Shanghai garrison, and the troops responsible for the 228 Massacre, were to stand trial for their various alleged crimes.


The Nanjing soldiers were also to be honored for their heroism. Soong Ching-ling, a leftist member of the KMT and the widow of Sun Yat-sen who was residing in Shanghai during the time of the Revolution, was designated the official party representative to the RCCP. The incumbent members of the KMT government privately feared that a more widespread revolution would be an opportunity for Communist takeover, and thus they would do all they could to make popular concessions to remain in power.


Finally, the Kuomintang ordered the Republic of China Armed Forces to hold their positions against the People’s Liberation Army and to assert control over national territory liable to breaking away. Ma Bufang, a warlord who served as the Governor of Qinghai, was specifically tasked with intimidating Tibet. Governor Ma thus massed his troops on the Tibetan border and threatened to bomb its cities if it issued a declaration of independence amidst the turmoil in Nanjing and Shanghai.


End of the Second Phase of the Chinese Civil War


Gu Zhutong, Commander-in-Chief of the Republic of China Army, was ordered by President Sun Fo to deliver a ceasefire as a pretext for further negotiations in hopes of preventing the revolution from spreading to urban centers. Communist intelligence meanwhile claimed to their leadership that they had successful instigated the Shanghai and Nanjing uprisings through agents in the labor movements, and that the RCCP could be trusted. The Central Military Commission, headed by Chairman Mao Zedong of the Communist Party of China, sent political commissars from the People's Liberation Army who were then successfully received by the National Salvation Volunteer Army. However, these commissars were not given command over the NSVA, nor significant political influence, despite being treated as important military officers.


Nonetheless, Chairman Mao welcomed the peace settlement, emphasizing the fact that he predicted the revolutionary overthrow of the Chiang Kai-shek regime in his May 30th, 1947 article “The Chiang Kai-Shek Government is Besieged by the Whole People”, wherein he praised the “great and righteous student movement” which “will inevitable promote an upsurge of the whole people's movement”. Hostilities ended as a ceasefire was agreed to by the KMT, the CCP, and the RCCP by June 8th.


The June 23rd Armistice


President Zhang Lan and President Sun Fo met with Chairman Mao Zedong on June 9th 1947 to arrange for a more permanent armistice. President Zhang brought with him two major members of the China Democratic League: Zhang Bojun and Huang Yanpei. The two had met with Mao in 1945 to mediate greater cooperation with the KMT and the CCP; Huang even wrote a book on his conversation with the Communist leader, which was about the cycle of governments rising and falling in the last sixty years, to which his host replied that a new path was already being forged by the people to escape this.


Chairman Mao judged their presence as confirmation that a friendly government had been installed in Nanjing, and after two weeks of talks, the war formally concluded with the June 23rd Armistice. Observing the signing was General George C. Marshall, returning from his earlier mission on behalf of the United States government, and Ambassador Nikolai Roshchin, from the Soviet Union.


The terms of the agreement, called the Twelve Points, were as follows:


1. National elections shall be free and fair, and each party reserves the right to send political representatives to observe the casting and counting of the ballots.

2. No parties shall be privileged politically in the army or government of the Republic of China.

3. No arbitrary arrest or cruel punishment will be imposed upon Chinese citizens.

4. A free press shall be maintained throughout the country.

5. All political prisoners will be released on both sides.

6. The Double Tenth Agreement or the Summary of Conversations Between the Representatives of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China shall be honored again, with the CPC being a legal party on all ballots.

7. A second Political Consultative Conference shall be convened in Chongqing with delegates from the Kuomintang, the Communist Party of China, the China Democratic League and other parties to evaluate the Constitution of the Republic of China.

8. Chiang Kai-Shek will be tried and punished for his war crimes, along with others who have committed atrocities, in a national war tribunal organized by the RCCP. None charged in these trials shall be able to hold any position in the national government again regardless of the outcome.

9. The People's Liberation Army will not be forcibly incorporated into the national army, dissolved or in any way punished or attacked.

10. The jurisdiction of the PLA shall be determined on a uti possidetis basis as of June 8th 1947.

11. No political army (i.e. the PLA) shall expand its jurisdiction by extra-legal means such as terror or warfare, nor be involved in any foreign expeditions or disruptive activities, nor receive special military aid from other nations (i.e. the Soviet Union) unless the ROC armed forces are receiving the same.

12. Land reform will be implemented in the Chinese countryside, and the army will also be reorganized.


The 1947 Political Consultative Conference


Main article: 1947 Political Consultative Conference


The National Military Tribunal for China


Main article: National Military Tribunal for China

 

[Sabot Cat]

1947 Political Consultative Conference


The 1947 Political Consultative Conference or the 1947 PCC, was a meeting of the major political parties in the Republic of China in Chongqing, pursuant to the Twelve Points of the June 23rd Armistice which concluded hostilities in the Chinese Civil War. The Political Consultative Assembly convened from July 15th to August 6th 1947, and created the Common Program of the United Front, which called for the First National Census for the Republic of China (1947) and canvassed the Chinese Constituent Assembly election, 1948. The 1947 PCC also implemented the Three Reforms, which were vital for the postwar recovery and stabilization.


Participating Parties


Kuomintang


The Chinese Nationalist Party or the Kuomintang (KMT) under Director-General and President Sun Fo participated in the agreements, along with a delegation representing the left-wing (Soong Ching-ling or Madame Sun Yat-sen), the right-wing (Lin Sen) and others (Chen Cheng). The KMT was adamant about not abrogating the 1947 Constitution out of hand, and hoped to play a major role in the new government of China as they had with the previous regime.


Revolutionary Committee for Constitutional Protection


The Revolutionary Committee for Constitutional Protection, which hadcontrol of the capital Nanjing as well as other major cities nearby following the 1947 Chinese Revolution, sent President Zhang Lan to represent its government. His was the only multi-party delegation, with members from the China Democratic League's constituent parties, as well as the Young China Party and the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party.


Communist Party of China


The Communist Party of China (CCP) had been carrying out an insurgency against the ROC government for more than a decade with their primary strongholds in the northern provinces and a peasant base. They had also participated in the last Political Consultative Conference in 1946 with the KMT. Mao Zedong secretly viewed the conference as a lead-up to winnowing legitimately competitive parties after forming a pseudo-democratic coalition, as had happened in the Eastern bloc. Stalin personally sent a telegram to Mao advising that they cooperate to form a “national revolutionary-democratic coalition”, and eschew the Soviet example of a single-party government. They hoped to eliminate the ROC Constitution, which was adopted in ostensible violation of the 1946 PCC.


Common Program


The Common Program of the United Front was passed by the Political Consultative Assembly with near unanimity on August 6th, which acted as the de facto constitution for the next couple years, some of which still remains law in the Republic of China today.


Northern Armistice Area


The parties at first could not agree upon a name for the Communist-controlled northern areas of the nation, as the CPC's initial proposals seemed to suggest sovereignty or political independence for that region e.g. the Chinese Soviet Republic or the People's Republic of China. Designations such as the Manchurian Area or just Manchuria were also rejected, both because it reminded too strongly of the Manchukuo puppet state and for the fact that the People's Liberation Army jurisdiction did not encompass all of that region.


The “Northern Armistice Area” was thus agreed upon as a neutral geographical descriptor. The Basic Policies for the Northern Armistice Region reaffirmed the jurisdiction of the People's Liberation Army and the Communist Party of China. In addition to the terms negotiated in the June 23rd Armistice, the CPC agreed not to produce its own currency or counterfeit the official Yuan. It would also accept (unarmed) ROC officials and extradite criminals from outside of the region when necessary.


First National Census and the Constituent Assembly Election


The First National Census for the Republic of China was conducted as soon as the PCC concluded its work, from 1947 to 1948 in all of the provinces, areas and direct-controlled municipalities in the Republic of China, with the supervision of officials approved by the assembly. The Constituent Assembly elections were agreed to be held after the census was concluded, after which Provincial Governments were to create Prefectures.


Every Province would have at least five Prefectures, but if they had a population greater than 3,000,000, there was to be a Prefecture for each additional 1,000,000 people. The Political Consultative Assembly would then be convened in a second session of the 1947 PCC to approve these divisions. This second session approved 570 Prefectures and 12 direct-controlled Municipalities on October 27, 1948 with only minor revisions.


Each Prefecture would elect one delegate to the Chinese Constituent Assembly on the basis of First Past the Post (FPTP), while the direct-controlled Municipalities would elect them by Party Block Vote (PBV). Only parties attending the PCC would be afforded a place on the ballot, and would have absolute authority in approving candidates. A two-thirds majority of the assembly would be necessary to approve any Constitutional articles.


The Three Reforms


The “Three Reforms” were first formulated and presented by the "Chongqing Troika" in a resolution passed by the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee immediately after the 1947 Chinese Revolution. Turning these pledges for change into actionable initiatives was perhaps the most crucial work done in the PCC to strengthen the internal stability of the Republic of China.


New Bank Reform


The first reform was the "New Bank Reform": the Political Consultative Assembly officially recognized the Chinese People's Central Bank (CPCB), created by the RCCP on June 4th 1947, as the sole national financial institution able to legally produce official currency. The new Chinese yuan through its fixed convertibility with the United States Dollar would put an end to the hyperinflation that had plagued the economy since the Second Sino-Japanese War. The issue of military spending was not touched upon, and the separate budgets of the RCCP and the KMT government in Chongqing continued.


Stronger Defense Reform


Broad changes were to implemented for the army according to the "Stronger Defense Reform". Military conduct was to be in line with Mao Zedong's the Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention, which called for greater respect for civilians than had previously been typical for the ROC. A single, national payroll was also to be implemented for all soldiers aside from those in the PLA, ending the practice of sending the money through a warlord middleman. However, for fear of destabilizing a fragile domestic and military situation, the warlords were put on the national government’s payroll by other means and their effective control was not challenged in practice.


Land-to-the-Tiller Reform


The third and final reform was the "Land-to-the-Tiller Reform", a formula first articulated by Sun Yat-sen and to be carried out by the newly created and independent Commission on Rural Reconstruction, with Chen Cheng as Chairman and Y.C. James Yen as Vice Chairman. Chairman Chen, the current 1st Chief of the General Staff of the ROC Armed Forces and Commander in Chief of the ROC Navy, had previously carried out a moderate land reform program when he was Governor of Hupeh. From March to July 1948, after an extensive survey of rural conditions, he helped negotiate new contracts between the landlords and the tenants so that rent would be higher than 37.5% on the total yield of main crop. Public land with fertile soil was also sold to tenant farmers, among other reforms to urban and private farmland.


Vice Chairman Y.C. James Yen was a Yale and Princeton graduate who earlier worked to implement literacy and agricultural reforms in the countryside as a member of the Rural Reconstruction Movement, a principal interest group in the China Democratic League. He lobbied the U.S. Congress to fund the Commission in the China Aid Act of 1948, giving it greater autonomy from the government. It also provided its staff with above-average pay scales for more effective work. In harmony with Chairman Chen's policies, rent was reduced, tenant security was guaranteed, and new agricultural cooperatives were formed. Irrigation and flood control, rural credit systems, and improvements to livestock were all pursued, as well as auxiliary policies such as healthcare, birth control and literacy programs for the peasants.


Adoption and Implementation


The Communist Party of China refused to sign off on any of the Three Reforms in full, believing them to be insufficiently radical. They were thus written as recommendations separate from the Common Program, and not directly implemented by the Political Consultative Assembly. Instead they were supervised by President Sun Fo, the man with the “iron neck”, because as the son of Sun Yat-sen, he made an unappealing target for the landlords and warlords who would take issue with the Three Reforms.

 

[Sabot Cat]

National Military Tribunal for China


The National Military Tribunal for China was established in Nanjing on October 18th 1948, pursuant to the terms of the June 23rd Armistice to try war criminals of the Chinese Civil War, most prominently Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. The Revolutionary Committee for Constitutional Protection organized the trial and appointed its judges on behalf of the Republic of China. They used Nuremberg principles to give legitimacy to what contemporary critics dismissed as a “kangaroo court”. The tribunal was dissolved on December 31st 1948.


Background


National Commission for Investigating War Crimes


The RCCP established the National Commission for Investigating War Crimes (NCIWC) on June 4th 1947, charged with the task of building evidence for a case against those who had been arrested during the 1947 Chinese Revolution for their role in massacring civilians. Taiwan and Shanghai would be the initial locations for its fact-finding mission due to the 228 Massacre and the violent suppression of peaceful assemblies in Shanghai on Anti-Civil War respectively. The Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party appointed their own observers to the NCIWC after the conclusion of June 23rd Armistice.


The NCIWC was extremely thorough in its research and documentation, interviewing tens of thousands of people to build its case. The CCP repeatedly complained that its operation was deliberately lethargic, while the KMT obstructed its efforts as much as possible by repeatedly questioning evidence and insisting on collecting its own documents. Critics within the KMT and even the China Democratic League complained that its conclusions were prejudiced in respect to Chiang Kai-shek due to the June 23rd Armistice, wherein the RCCP, the KMT and the CCP mutually agreed that he would be tried for war crimes and the implicit threats from Mao Zedong that his death was necessary for their continued cooperation.


Context in the Chinese Civil War


Most historians now believe that the CCP was correct in its assessment of the Commission's deliberate slowness. The RCCP privately and repeatedly requested the NCIWC to expand the scope of its investigation, as they feared that the trials could cause a resumption of the Chinese Civil War by one of the two major parties. The Kuomintang was much more transparent about attempting to buy time, as it needed to implement its land reform program and other policies negotiated in the 1947 Political Consultative Conference to rebuild popular support for the party against the Communists. Eventually the CCP secretly threatened to unilaterally resume the Civil War, with the rationale that the Armistice would be violated in absence of not only a trial but an execution for Chiang Kai-shek before the elections were to be held. The NCIWC thus officially concluded its work on October 11th 1948, and entered its evidence for use by the National Military Tribunal.


Trial


Defendants

• General Yasuji Okamura of the Imperial Japanese Army, Commander-in-Chief of the China Expeditionary Army (1944-1945), military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek (1946-1947)
• Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, former Chairman of the National Government for the Republic of China (1928-1931; 1943-1948), Chairman of the National Military Council (1931-1946), Director-General of the Kuomintang (1938-1947) and Premier (1930-1931; 1935-1938; 1939-1945; 1947)
• Chen Yi, former Governor-General of Taiwan (1945-1947)

• Yu Hung-Chun, former Mayor of Shanghai (1947)
• Commanding officers of the Taiwanese garrison during the 228 Massacre
• Commanding officers of the Shanghai garrison during the 1947 Chinese Revolution

Charges


The National Military Tribunal began the trial on October 18th by reiterating the various war crimes that Yasuji Okamura was convicted of during the earlier Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. These included mass rape and forced prostitution during the occupation of China, and implementing the Three Alls Policy which caused the deaths of over 2.5 million civilians as Commander-in-Chief of the China Expeditionary Army. He also carried out orders to use chemical weapons in the Battles of Changsha, Nanchang and Wuhan. However, Yasuji Okamura was not sentenced for these crimes due to the personal intervention of Chiang Kai-shek, who appointed him as a military adviser.


Preventing a convicted war criminal from coming to justice was only the first of the case against Chiang, with a long list for his entire administration over the last two decades. The Tribunal found him to be culpable of starting the Chinese Civil War by massacring unarmed civilians who belonged to the CCP in Shanghai on April 12, 1927, for which he was condemned by the Central Committee of the Kuomintang, one of the most outspoken of which was KMT delegate to the RCCP Soong Ching-ling, who testified against Chiang.


He was also found to be criminally negligent in his conduct of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The 1938 Yellow River flood deliberately caused by Chiang in his efforts to stymie Japanese advances lead to the deaths of over 800,000 Chinese civilians. He was also found guilty of starting the 1938 Changsha fire, one of the largest and most destructive acts of arson in history. 30,000 civilians died, over 90% of the city's buildings were destroyed and the economic losses neared a billion due to the blaze consuming its industrial machinery and crops.


Finally, he was held responsible for the deliberate massacre and rape of unarmed civilians in 1947. The 228 Massacre of the Taiwanese and related atrocities carried out by former Governor-General Chen Yi were widely reported on by the international press, including The New York Times and The Daily News in Perth. The total deaths caused therein were put between 10,000 to 30,000 according to the NCIWC. The massacres in Shanghai carried out by the military garrison under the command of Mayor Yu Hung-Chun during the 1947 Chinese Revolution also had a similar death toll, and Chiang was personally blamed due to his commanding role in both incidents by the prosecution.


Defense


The defense counsel attempted to seek a dismissal of all charges for Chiang, and reduced sentences for everyone else except for General Yasuji Okamura. They began by admitting that Chiang's judgments were sometimes questionable, but never criminal. As Chairman of the National Government and its chief executive, he had legal authority over the sentencing of General Okamura, and thus intervening on his behalf could not be a crime. The Generalissimo, they alleged, had nothing to do with the arson, the flood, the 228 Massacre, or the violent suppression of the Shanghai protests in 1947. They did admit that he suppressed the Communists in 1927, but that they were allegedly armed and seeking to overthrow the government.


Verdict


After a protracted trial with hundreds of defendants, most of whom were members of Shanghai and Taiwan military garrisons, verdicts were handed down on December 2nd 1948. General Yasuji Okamura was to be immediately sentenced to death by firing squad. However, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Governor-General Chen Yi and Yu Hung-Chun were all given “death sentences with reprieve”. This is a suspended sentence for execution, wherein the accused will have two years to earn life imprisonment by not committing further crimes. All other defendants were sentenced to immediate life in prison.


Aftermath


Domestic reaction


The Kuomintang dismissed the lawful nature of the court, but praised the execution of General Yasuji Okamura as “necessary and proper”. Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party was reportedly furious with the verdict, and ultimately cited it as a violation of the Armistice before resuming hostilities in the Chinese Civil War. The Chinese public's views on the trial were and are diverse, but supporters of Chiang Kai-shek demonstrated outside of his holding facility in Nanjing with portraits of him and large banners calling for his release.


United States reaction


The United States were generally distrustful of the RCCP, whom they viewed as Communist puppets. They further viewed the entire trial process as distressing, and repeatedly made attempts to covertly rescue Chiang Kai-shek from his captivity in Nanjing. When the final verdict was reached, American policymakers were flummoxed by the results. Subsequent relations between the U.S. and the ROC were frosty and remained full of mistrust.


Final fates of the defendants


Chiang Kai-shek, Chen Yi and Yu Hung-Chun were not ultimately executed, but they remained in prison along with the soldiers that carried out their orders. Nonetheless, Chiang at least remained an active voice for the far-right in the politics of the ROC, as his prison writings were usually bestsellers and his supporters remained as loyal as ever. His continued imprisonment would remain a contentious political issue until his death on October 8th 1971. The other prisoners faded into obscurity, with the last soldier convicted in the tribunal dying in March 13th 2009 at the age of 83.

 

[tuxer]

An interesting concept.

Subscribed.

 

[Sabot Cat]

An interesting concept.

Subscribed.

Thank you so much, I hope you enjoy what's in store.

 

[Miss Teri]

A democratic and unified China? I'm going to be watching this.

 

[Sabot Cat]

Chinese Constituent Assembly election, 1948


The elections to the Chinese Constituent Assembly were held on December 3-5 1948, pursuant to the Common Program of the United Front adopted by the 1947 Political Consultative Conference. They were repeatedly delayed as provincial apportionment was determined by the results of the First National Census for the Republic of China, which had yet to be completed until the autumn of that year. 632 seats were contested, with 570 Prefectures receiving one Constituent Assembly member elected by First Past the Post and 12 Direct-controlled Municipalities electing multiple members by Party Block Vote (PBV).


All Chinese citizens at or over twenty years of age could vote. The parties officially contesting the election were the Chinese Nationalist Party or the Kuomintang (KMT), the Young China Party (YCP), the Communist Party of China (CCP), the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party (CPWDP)and the China Democratic League (CDL). The KMT and the YCP shared a ballot line, as did the CCP and the CPWDP.


Campaigns of the Major Parties


Kuomintang and the Young China Party


The Kuomintang primarily presented themselves as adaptable, fair-minded technocrats who nonetheless respected traditional Confucian values. They emphasized their unique continuity with the founding of the country as the party of Sun Yat-sen, whose son Sun Fo served as the Director-General of the party at the time of the elections. This dovetailed nicely with their other campaign message that as the incumbent party for decades, they could be trusted with power with their proven record of successes, such as the Three Reforms. The dangers of the CCP winning the election, or the CDL, whom they portrayed as likely puppets or collaborators, were just too great for any thinking person to risk.


The Young China Party (YCP), was a stridently right-wing former member of the China Democratic League that shared its commitment to multi-party democracy and participated in the RCCP. They had strong regional connections in Sichuan and had early worked with the KMT during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Zuo Shunsheng, Chairman of the YCP, again cooperated with the KMT to oppose the CDL because of the latter's allegedly soft stance on the Communists. The YCP tried its best to link the Chinese Communist Party with the USSR while allowing the KMT to keep its options open. They argued that the CCP would forsake the people and the nation for their assistance, repeating the atrocities that occurred during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria by throwing open their borders to the Red Army.


Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party


The Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao Zedong engaged in an aggressive propaganda drive in an attempt to discredit the KMT, although they did little to attack the CDL as a whole despite occasionally trading barbs. The Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party (CPWDP) joined the CCP party list after breaking away from the China Democratic League, as their Chairman Zhang Bojun argued for a policy of radical land reform and capital confiscation that would nonetheless be pursued by a fairly and freely elected government. They opted to share a party list with the CCP to avoid competing with them as an individual party, and had repeatedly urged the China Democratic League to do the same.


The CCP meanwhile portrayed the KMT as feudal and reactionary butchers and oppresses of the Chinese people whose rule had brought economic ruin and instability. However, under Communist rule, the peasants would own their land and the proletariat the means of production, which would bring freedom and prosperity to the entire nation. Many of the images and slogans from the Chinese Civil War were reused for the purposes of the election. These talking points would've likely been more appealing during the turmoil of the previous years, but by 1948 the economy had improved drastically and (moderate) land reform was already being implemented.


The CCP was also caught between international and national politics. While the Democratic League was writing articles like “Why is the Red Army in Port Arthur” and “Why did the Soviet Union carry off machines from Manchuria?”, a rift occurred between Josip Tito and Joseph Stalin in June 1948. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia hailed Mao as the “Second Tito”, and stated that their amicable relations with Moscow were a cunning ruse.


Between September and November 1948, the CCP praised the Soviet Union as a peace-loving democratic and socialist state working hard against bellicose American imperialism. Mao meanwhile made attempts to meet with Stalin, only to be rebuffed repeatedly. The USSR feared that their territorial gains in the region from Yalta onward would be jeopardized if they showed exclusive support for what the Communist Party of the Soviet Union assessed to be unsuccessful guerrillas. The Soviet leadership further did not want to draw themselves into a war with the United States in China, and thus declined to provide military aid for the Communists even after the U.S. began to train ROC divisions. However, they obliquely threatened the KMT with these possibilities repeatedly as a bargaining chip in the secret negotiations for the Nanjing Protocols.


China Democratic League


Unlike the KMT or the CCP, the China Democratic League had no unified campaign strategy because they were a coalition of multiple parties and interest groups, and its Chairman Zhang Lan from Sichuan was selected primarily because he was nonpartisan. This constellation of intellectuals and reformers were united only in a Third Way between the other major parties, a commitment to true democracy which sanctified popular sovereignty and the rights of the people to directly electing and recalling their representatives, as well as greater regional autonomy. The three parties committing themselves to these principles were the China Democratic Socialist Party, the Rural Reconstruction Party and the China Democratic National Construction Association.


The China Democratic Socialist Party (CDSP) was primarily headed by the social democratic neo-Confucian philosopher and scholar Zhang Junmai. He argued on behalf of his party that democracy was threatened by partisan, class or military dictatorship controlling education, the judiciary or civil service, and that the human rights of freedom of speech and association could only be assured through the self-cultivation of the Chinese people, who would usher in a New Culture to revive the Chinese national spirit and realize it in the state. Equal rights for women, a robust social welfare system, and a peaceful international outlook would be the foundations for a modern China.


The Rural Reconstruction Party capitalized on their leader Y.C. James Yen's position as Vice Chairman of the Commission on Rural Reconstruction, who took credit for securing additional funding from the United States and authoring many of its programs. Liang Shuming, a philosopher and leader of the party who worked closely with Y.C. James Yen in the Commission, championed the community unity achieved through its rural research institutions and called for the creation of such in every province.


Finally, the China Democratic National Construction Association called for the establishment of vocational schools throughout the country. It was led by industrialist Huang Yanpei, who wrote a book about his travels with Zhang Bojun to see Mao Zedong in 1945 before embarking on a similar expedition to negotiate the June 23rd Armistice. Huang Yanpei argued on behalf of the entire China Democratic League that the KMT and the CCP were too antagonistic towards each other, and that the CDL were the careful mediators needed to maintain the peace in the constituent assembly.


Results


The Kuomintang received a plurality of the popular vote and a majority of the seats that allowed it to lead a coalition with the China Democratic League. Together, they wielded a two-thirds majority of the Chinese Constituent Assembly, the necessary threshold to pass constitutional articles according to the 1947 PCC. Despite receiving over eleven million more votes, the China Democratic League received less seats than the Chinese Communist Party. The electoral system is partly to blame for this, as the KMT was first place in most of the constituencies, while the CDL usually came in second and the CCP a distant third. However, in the electoral districts of the Northern Armistice Area, the CCP came out on top by overwhelming margins with the CDL as the only other party that received similar support. Electoral observers from all parties reported no major irregularities in the casting and counting of the ballots as they occurred.


Approval of the Constitution and Amendments


On December 25th 1948, the Kuomintang, the Young China Party, the China Democratic League and the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party were seated in the National Great Hall in Nanjing, unanimously convening the Chinese Constituent Assembly. KMT Director-General Sun Fo was elected President of the Constituent Assembly. The Constitution of the Republic of China drafted by the first Constituent Assembly on Christmas in 1947 was ratified, with the Additional Articles insisted upon by the other parties.


Article 1 of these Additional Articles provided freedom of assembly, explicitly including the right of workers to strike. Article 2 prohibited the banning of any political parties and further banned the implementation of one-party rule even during periods of martial law. Article 3 protected the rights of all nationalities to preserve and use their languages whether spoken or written. Article 4 clarified that Outer Mongolia could not send representatives as stated in other constitutional provisions without ratification of the Constitution. Articles 5 made it so a two-thirds majority with a three-fourths quorum was required for passing constitutional amendments in the National Assembly. Articles 6 through 12 pertained to administrative divisions, electoral law and the census:

The 570 Prefectures and 12 Direct-controlled Municipalities approved in the second session of the 1947 Political Consultative Assembly were enshrined as permanent administrative divisions for the Republic of China. The electoral system was also similar to that of the Chinese Constituent Assembly, with Members of the Legislative Yuan directly elected on the basis of First Past the Post (FPTP) from Prefectures and Single Nontransferable Vote (SNTV) from the Municipalities. Prefectures were drawn with nearly equal populations by the first census, but the constitution has no explicit mechanism for creating new Prefectures or Direct-controlled Municipalities, nor changing their boundaries.


This is because there are two votes for the Legislative Yuan: one for an individual Member elected from the Prefecture or the Municipality, and the other for Additional Members to be elected by the nation. There is one Additional Member for every additional 1,000,000 people since the first national census. Parties which have received no Members are not entitled to Additional Members, but the seat allocation is otherwise proportional to votes cast.


For the National Assembly, candidates are elected from the entire Province, which receive one Delegate for every 500,000 residents. Voters can choose a specific candidate or select a party list. After the election concludes and the candidate results are known, party list votes are then distributed by the party leadership to their individual candidates on the ballot in order to secure the most seats.


The first Legislative Yuan and National Assembly elections were to be held on 1950, and as stipulated elsewhere in the constitution, with elections occurring thereafter every three years for the Legislative Yuan and every six years for the National Assembly. This ensured the National Assembly would always be elected at the same time as the Legislative Yuan in a sexennial general election. Finally, the National Census of the Republic of China was to take place every decade after at least one general election. Seven have been conducted since the approval of the Constitution in the years 1954, 1964, 1972, 1982, 1990, 2000, and 2010.


Chinese Communist Party boycotts the Constituent Assembly


The CCP under Chairman Mao Zedong refused to take their seats in the Chinese Constituent Assembly, and argued after the elections that the results had been falsified. The Communist electoral observers were ousted from the party and condemned for allegedly working with the KMT conspiracy against the peasants and the workers of China. The CCP expected the Revolutionary Committee for Constitutional Protection and the China Democratic League to join them, but instead they ardently supported the election results and condemned Mao for participating in these elections as well as the preceding 1947 PCC in bad faith. The Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party further broke from the CCP to participate in the Constituent Assembly.


The People's Liberation Army commissars to the National Salvation Volunteer Army in Nanjing were recalled to the Northern Armistice Area, while the RCCP dissolved itself on January 1st 1949, when the Chinese People's Central Bank (CPCB) officially became an organ of the ROC government and the Constituent Assembly passed its first budget. The PLA would launch its 1949 Winter Offensive on February 9th abrogating the terms of the June 23rd Armistice and the 1947 Political Consultative Conference.

 

[tuxer]

Well, Mao is going to get his ass handed to him.

 

[Sabot Cat]

Nanjing Protocol I


The First Nanjing Protocol to the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance was a bilateral executive agreement between the Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics affirming closer economic relations effective January 1st 1949. It primarily organized the “Liandong Purchase”, as well as a new Soviet commitment to the territorial integrity of China. This was negotiated and assented to by Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Roshchin and Minister of Foreign Affairs T.V. Soong in a low-key meeting at Moscow.


Background


Discontentment with the United States


The United States had provided hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military and financial aid to the Republic of China from the Second Sino-Japanese War to the Chinese Civil War. The U.S. also provided new equipment and training for the armed forces of China, however President Sun Fo was dissatisfied with the level of support shown by Washington. After the initial failure of the Marshall Mission, the U.S. began withdrawing their troops on January 29th 1947. The 1947 Chinese Revolution seemed to be the death knell for the Kuomintang government, and a time-table for a graceful evacuation of American assets was enacted with drastic reductions of aid. Relations remained frosty during the tenure of the Revolutionary Committee for Constitutional Protection in Nanjing, especially with Chiang Kai-shek's imprisonment and possible death in the National Military Tribunal for China.


After the situation stabilized to some extent, the U.S. authorized the China Aid Act of 1948 and helped President Sun Fo train military divisions in line with the Stronger Defense Reform. However, the United States did not increase personnel on the ground or offer to lend their assistance in preserving the ROC's territorial integrity. The Joint Chiefs of Staff did not view China as a top military priority, and insisted on parlaying a confrontation with the Soviet Union. President Sun stated in October 1948: “China is a bulwark for freedom in the world, having valiantly fought with the Americans against Japanese imperialism despite grave costs. However, for every Yuan the United States government is giving to China, they are giving two to Japan, despite the fact that we were the ones suffered the most as a result of that war .Why have we been forsaken for what was once a mutual enemy?”


Threats and Offers from the Soviet Union


General Secretary Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union took great stock in the Republic of China's potential for an exclusive arrangement with the United States, and the ROC Armed Forces' vastly superior troops and equipment over both the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the National Salvation Volunteer Army (NSVA). However, Stalin used the threat of increased Soviet support for not only Communist insurgents but also the Second East Turkestan Republic to attain leverage in negotiations with the Kuomintang. Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Roshchin conveyed demands for joint economic projects in Manchuria and continued access to strategic ports in the Liaodong Peninsula on the threat of a“buffer zone” bolstered by the PLA for territory north of the Yangtze.


President Sun could not afford a resumption of the Chinese Civil War for a protracted period. The seating of the Chinese Constituent Assembly meant that there would no longer be two budgets from the RCCP in Nanjing and the KMT in Chongqing. The cost of prior and current military expenditures would be considerable and liable to negatively impact the solvency of the Chinese People's Central Bank, and attempting to increase spending on the armed forces would only compound this problem. This was not even considering the possibilities of rebellion from regional independence movements in Xinjiang, Taiwan and Tibet, warlords opposed to the Stronger Defense Reform, or the possibility of a united PLA-NSVA offensive that took advantage of any of these opportunities.


The Kuomintang thus brought their own demands to the negotiating table for the Soviet Union to cease its support of insurgent groups within their borders and provide assistance both fiscally as well as militarily. In the words of T.V. Soong, one of the chief negotiators for the future agreement: “We wanted to convey how a united China would be beneficial for the Soviet Union.” Stalin, who had repeatedly delayed meeting with Mao Zedong, met with President Sun Fo secretly in the waning months of 1948.


Provisions


Protocol I was signed on December 28th 1948, after the Chinese Constituent Assembly had been elected and approved the Constitution of the Republic of China. It was a low-key meeting of Foreign Minister T.V. Soong and Ambassador Nikolai Roshchin in Moscow, intended to address the immediate concerns of the budget deficit and a possibly imminent Communist insurgency following their loss in the elections.


Liaodong Purchase


The Republic of China waived its joint administration rights to the ports of Lüshun and Dailan, as well as the China Far East Railway and the South Manchuria Railway, which would be under Soviet control as the Lüda Military District and the Soviet Changchun Raliway respectively. In implicit exchange, as the protocol did not frame this arrangement as a purchase, the Soviet Union would provide $300,000,000 and commercial credits for as long as the treaty was still in force. However, these areas would still be considered sovereign Chinese territory, and Soviet administration would be revoked immediately upon documented disruption of the ROC's territorial integrity. This entailed that any Soviet aid to the Chinese Communist Party and the satellite state of the Second East Turkestan Republic would cease immediately. President Sun Fo considered this a necessary sacrifice to provide the Soviet Union leverage while lessening the potential for rebellion. Nonetheless, this deal had vehement critics, with the Young China Party and the China Democratic League labeling it the "Liandong Purchase" and framing it as akin to a 19th Century humiliation complete with treaty ports and foreign ownership of Chinese railways. Under heavy pressure at home, President Sun Fo met with Soviet leaders and argued that this provision of the protocol imperiled their overall alliance. Thus, in 1953, Premier Nikita Khrushchev reverted control of all assets in the Liandong Purchase to China.


Border Agreements


The residents of the Mongolian People's Republic outside of the original Mongolian Area (or Mongolian province) in China and living within the provincial borders of Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, Siuyuan, Chahar and Xing'an would be permitted to have Chinese citizenship with the right to participate in national elections. However, the international border between China and Mongolia would remain the same.


The final portion of the Protocol had the Republic of China renounce all claims to Tannu Uriankhai, which had been effectively out of its hands since 1921 and a part of Soviet territory as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast since 1944. The Soviet Union meanwhile recognized all Chinese claims in Xinjiang and the Sixty-Four Villages East of the River.


Secret Alliance


Minister Soong and Ambassador Roshchin also secretly agreed to several points for a later second Protocol. In the meantime, the Republic of China would to submit to the United Nations a resolution for greater involvement of itself and the Soviet Union in the occupation of Japan, as well as an expansion of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to stymie the effects of the Marshall Plan. China would also consider further negotiations for closer military cooperation.


Aftermath


The first budget of the Republic of China had a reduced deficit through the funds provided by the Soviet Union, which helped to keep the expected inflation in check. However the Protocol had no immediately impact on the Chinese Communist Party's bellicose behavior against the central government, and undeterred by a lack of foreign support, they authorized the 1949 Winter Offensive against the ROC on February 9th. The United States meanwhile requested a renegotiation of the Protocol to refuse further Soviet assistance, making its continued financial and material support to China conditional on this. American military advisers were reduced, and Washington refused to make any promises for deploying ground personnel or using its air force, which became increasingly clear as month after month passed without their help in the resumed Chinese Civil War.


Nanjing Protocol II


The Second Nanjing Protocol to the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance was a bilateral executive agreement between the Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Building upon the closer relations achieved in the first protocol, it established a military alliance through binding and actionable interpretations of standing international agreements the two made or helped to make during the Second World War. The protocol was concluded between Minister of Foreign Affairs T.V. Soong and Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Roshchin at the National Great Hall on September 12th 1949.


Background


The Chinese Civil War was resumed on February 9th 1949, as the People's Liberation Army launched a surprise offensive against standing Republic of China forces from their holdings in the Northern Armistice Area. The PLA bested the Republic of China Armed Forces and the National Salvation Volunteer Army in battles for control of the cities of Yan'an, their former headquarters, as well as Siping in their Winter Offensive. Back-and-forth fighting occurred in Manchuria, with many cities being decimated in sieges, as they were captured and recaptured in the PLA's campaign of irregular and asymmetric warfare. By late August 1949, it became clear that the nation may be plunged into recession due to effects of the resumed Chinese Civil War. Morale was at an all-time low in the armed forces, who expected a swift defeat of the PLA, as well as the public at large. For fiscal solvency and political stability to be maintained, the war had to end in days or weeks, not months or years.


However, the U.S. was rapidly demobilizing around the world, especially in Asia. American personnel had long left China, and by June 1949, they were no longer participating in the defense of southern Korea outside of an advisory role. The only place where they had a sizable presence was in the occupation of Japan, a prior source of discontentment for China. Internal memos in the Chinese government asserted that the United States' limited involvement and aid even before the signing of the first Protocol had not been decisive in any phase of the Chinese Civil War, nor did it prevent the 1947 Chinese Revolution, and thus greater military cooperation with the Soviet Union instead could be more fruitful.


President Sun Fo himself had a previous working relationship with Stalin, engaging in direct talks with him from 1937 to 1939 in order to attain military supplies during the Second Sino-Japanese War after being turned down by all of the other Allied powers, with relatively few strings attached. Sun thus, despite past transgressions, trusted Stalin and the Soviet Union as a whole to help China more than the United States, the United Kingdom or France. However, it took months of fighting the insurgents alone despite repeated and unheard pleas to the others confirm this to him.


Provisions


Sino-Soviet alliance against Japan


The Nanjing Protocol II began by proclaiming continued support for Article I-II of the Sino-Soviet Treaty: “The High Contracting Parties undertake in association with the other United Nations to wage war against Japan until final victory is won. The High Contracting Parties undertake mutually to render to one another all necessary military and other assistance and support in this war. The High Contracting Parties undertake not to enter into separate negotiations with Japan and not to conclude, without mutual consent, any armistice or peace treaty either with the present Japanese Government or with any other government or authority set up in Japan which do not renounce all aggressive intentions”.


A list of grievances was then presented that made the friendly intentions of the “authority in Japan” questionable. These were first presented by Soviet and Chinese representatives in the Allied Council for Japan and the Far Eastern Commission, only to be rebuffed by the United States.


1. The Potsdam Declaration stated in Point Seven that “points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies shall be occupied”, but Soviet and Chinese representatives in the Allied Council for Japan and the Far Eastern Commission were denied when they requested greater personnel in the main islands. The Protocol notes “General Douglas MacArthur is the ultimate authority in Japan as the so-called Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, but he was appointed unilaterally without sufficient consultation of the Republic of China nor the Soviet Union.”

2. Point Ten of Potsdam declared that “stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners.” However, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East did not try members of Unit 731, nor did the occupational government do anything to acknowledge them. This was because, unstated in the Protocol, SCAP MacArthur had secretly provided them immunity to prosecution for access to their research on biological warfare.

3. Emperor Hirohito and the rest of the Imperial House of Japan were also not tried on war crimes charges, despite the fact that the Emperor at least was both the head of state and the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Army and Navy, and thus explicitly amenable to prosecution according to the third Nuremberg Principle enumerated by the United Nations' International Law Commission. Again, the SCAP had worked for their amnesty.

4. Point Ten also decreed that “The Japanese government shall remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established.” Despite this, the SCAP ran a Civil Censorship Detachment (CDD) which censored media in occupied Japan.


The Protocol did not mention the United States by name in any of these points of criticism, instead laying the blame personally on General Douglas MacArthur as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. The USSR and the ROC “strongly urged” that General MacArthur resign his post, after which all five of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would unanimously approve a new SCAP. The unstated implication was that for failing to do this, the United States was culpable in protecting Japanese militants to further imperial interests against Asia.


Until a new SCAP could be appointed by the UNSC, or until the current one agreed to prosecute all war criminals, end “unnecessary censorship”, and permitted the other Allied Powers more than an advisory role, the Republic of China could not and would not be able to conclude a peace treaty with Japan. Absent these proposals, the “final victory” discussed in Article I of the Sino-Soviet Treaty had not yet been attained, nor was the surrender of Japan recognized as unconditional due to the failure to prosecute Emperor Hirohito.


Thus the hostilities recognized in the Chinese Declaration of War Against Japan on December 9th 1941 as well as the Soviet Declaration of War on Japan issued on August 9th 1945 continued. Consequently, the provisions of the Sino-Soviet Treaty's military alliance between the two powers remained in full force, and would remain so until 1975, as provided in Article VIII. Furthermore, the treaty had stipulated for both powers “not to conclude any alliance and not to take part in any coalition directed against the other High Contracting Party”, now implicitly meaning the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or any like body formed by the United States.


Material aid and the lack of mutual defense


Pursuant to the Sino-Soviet Treaty and the understanding of it reached in Nanjing Protocol II, the Soviet Union agreed to give China credits for the purchase of top-of-the-line military equipment, including PPSh-41 machine guns, T-34 tanks, and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighter aircraft. They would also use their pilots to help the ROC in military operations and for the training of their own air force. The Soviet Armed Forces were also granted permission to freely travel in the Northern Armistice Area on the condition that they respect civilians and actively assist in efforts to defeat the People's Liberation Army, but only if requested by the Republic of China.


Nonetheless, neither the treaty nor the protocol called for mutual defense or security as the North Atlantic Treaty had for the Western European nations and the United States. Unless an attack was made by Japan, which had no standing armed forces, nothing bound the Soviet Union nor the Republic of China to come to others' aid should an attack. This freed China of entanglements in Europe and the Soviet Union from entanglements in Asia.


Aftermath


Consequences in the Chinese Civil War, surrender of the People's Liberation Army


The Republic of China and the Soviet Union issued a joint declaration for the immediate surrender of the People's Liberation Army on the same day that Nanjing Protocol II was concluded. Stalin advised the Chinese Communist Party to peacefully participate in a democratic coalition with the Kuomintang as he had for almost the entire duration of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. This caused a leadership crisis in the CCP, as Chairman Mao Zedong wished to continue irregular warfare against the ROC, and argued that even both powers could not completely defeat the PLA. However, Vice Chairman of the Military Commission of the Central Committee Zhou Enlai disagreed vehemently, believing that such an approach would only lead to their annihilation.


Mao eventually relented, seeing the value of a strategic retreat as well as the rapidly waning political capital he had to press on with the war. The Military Commission officially surrendered to the Central Government of the Republic of China on behalf of the PLA on September 20th 1949. The Soviet Armed Forces then marched and airlifted hundreds of thousands of PLA soldiers and CCP officials to Lüda Military District. Others fled to the Mongolian People’s Republic, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Soviet Union proper. All of their military equipment remained intact except when it was captured directly by the Republic of China Armed Forces. This has sometimes been called the Second Long March, although it inspired little in terms of propaganda opportunities as the first had. In 1953, as the Lüda Military District reverted to Chinese control, President Sun Fo pardoned the Communists residing there and continued to permit the party at large to contest elections, all in exchange for continued domestic tranquility.



Domestic and international reactions


President Sun Fo conducted a massive parade through Nanjing to celebrate the surrender of the PLA as well as China's “friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union in our shared struggle against Japanese imperialism, and the global forces of reaction.” The Kuomintang reiterated this and portrayed the conduct of the Soviet Union during the Second Sino-Japanese War in an extremely positive light in its newsletter, highlighting the fact that it was the first of the Allied Powers to provide assistance, with some $250,000,000 in credits for war supplies and over 3000 military advisers and pilots.


However, the Young China Party (YCP) strongly opposed the agreement, and proposed a non-binding resolution in the Constituent Assembly to condemn human rights abuses and suppression of democracy in the Soviet Union, as well as past territorial incursions against China since the signing of the initial treaty in 1945. Party chairman of the YCP Zuo Shunsheng stated on the floor of the Constituent Assembly: “The Kuomintang has betrayed our longtime ally, the United States, and moreover, they have betrayed the Chinese people. We cannot collude with Communists, who are antithetical to the preservation of democratic governments wherever they're found.” As presiding officer of the assembly, President Sun did not bring this proposal to a vote.


Meanwhile, the last U.S. military advisers in China hastily departed after the PLA surrendered. The Truman administration wanted to portray this as a victory of its allies against Communism, and hoped to downplay the role of the Soviet Union as well as Protocol II itself. Thus President Harry S. Truman referred to the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War as “a triumph for all freedom-loving nations over the forces of totalitarianism. The defense of peace in the world remains indivisible.” In a report produced by the State Department, the United States suggested that its foreign aid, especially the China Aid Act of 1948, and its assistance in training the armed forces of the ROC were critical to the defeat of the Communists.


The State Department later issued a reply addressing the grievances raised within the Protocol, defending American conduct in its occupation of Japan as well as criticizing the Soviet Union and China for calling it into question. President Sun Fo responded that “the historic friendship between the American and Chinese peoples will never be forgotten by this government. But sometimes it is necessary to give unpleasant counsel to those we value the most because we value and respect them so.” He went onto say: “Japanese imperialism must be replaced with republicanism. To prevent another global war from ever happening again, the Mikado must go.” Despite China's “unpleasant counsel”, General MacArthur remained SCAP and none of the points raised in the second Protocol were acted upon by the United States nor the United Nations.


Effects on Japan, Soviet-Japanese and Sino-Japanese relations


Shortly after the Korean Civil War, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to create the United Nations Self-Defense Forces in Japan (UNSDFJ) on March 30th 1952. The rationale was that the Nanjing Protocols, in light of the events in Korea, suggested an existential threat to Japan by China and the Soviet Union until a peace treaty could be concluded between them. Douglas MacArthur served as the first Supreme Commander of the UNSDFJ. Forty-eight nations that participated in the Second World War against the Empire of Japan signed the Treaty of San Francisco to conclude hostilities and offer reparations in 1951. The Soviet Union or China despite participating in the talks to create it did not sign off on it, with standing complaints carried over from this Protocol.


The same year the Security and Cooperation Treaty Between the United States and Japan was concluded, and both went into effect in 1952, officially ending the United States Occupation of Japan. The title of Supreme Commander of the UNSDFJ was transferred to the Prime Minister of Japan in 1952, to emphasize civilian control of the military. The UNSDFJ remain the standing armed forces for Japan, and are unique in that they exist only with the consent of the United Nations General Assembly. Debates to reform this on the basis of national sovereignty remain a contentious topic in Japanese politics.


The Khrushchev Thaw saw the restoration of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Japan in the 1956 Japanese-Soviet Joint Communiqué. However, the concept of rapprochement with Japan remained politically unpopular in China, and thus no government sought to normalize relations for decades. However, during the 1975-6 Recession, it was thought that reparations from, and closer commercial relations with, Japan would help the ROC economically. At the same time, the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance and the Nanking Protocols were set to expire. The State of Japan and the Republic of China thus concluded the Sino-Japanese Peace and Friendship Treaty on September 19th 1975, formally ending the Second Sino-Japanese War and restoring diplomatic relations.

 

[tuxer]

Very nice.

I wonder what ideology will dominant in the anti-Stalinist left now that Maoism has been butterflied away?

And of course the impact of a liberal republican China will have on the Asian South East, specially Vietnam and Cambodia.

 

[Maximilien.]

Interesting thread.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Nice.

 

[An Oklahoman]

I wonder how this will affect the Korean War.

 

[Sabot Cat]

I wonder how this will affect the Korean War.

You will find out in tomorrow's update actually, so stay tuned!

 

[HongCanucker]

I love you so much for this right now. This is amazing and I really want to see more - much more.

 

[Sabot Cat]

I love you so much for this right now. This is amazing and I really want to see more - much more.

Thank you so much for the kind words! I hope you continue to enjoy the TL going forward.

 

[tuxer]

Hum, is this a Wikibox TL or is the format merely inspired by Wikipedia?

 

[Sabot Cat]

Hum, is this a Wikibox TL or is the format merely inspired by Wikipedia?

The format is merely inspired by Wikipedia.

 

[Sabot Cat]

Korean Civil War


The Korean Civil War or the “Fatherland Liberation War” was an armed conflict between the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) that took place from 26 April 1950 to 2 May 1950. The ROK was led by President Syngman Rhee, the only Korean government recognized by the United Nations having been established with the close cooperation of the United States in their former occupation zone. The DPRK, under Premier Kim Il-Sung, was its northern counterpart established by the Soviet Union. President Rhee ordered an invasion of the DPRK expecting aid from the United States, the Republic of China, and/or all of the United Nations. This did not occur, and the DPRK thus successfully repelled all advances with the assistance of the Soviet Union and unified the peninsula under their government.


Background


Division of Korea


Main Article: Division of Korea


International and domestic politics


The Republic of China had successfully secured the surrender of the People’s Liberation Army on September 20th 1949, after a protracted period of civil war with brief respites. The Kuomintang had earlier come back into power in Nanjing under President Sun Fo, and the new found stability and victory in the ROC was encouraging to the ROK. President Rhee repeatedly cabled President Sun requesting his assistance in forcibly reunifying the Korean peninsula, only to be talked down every time. Strengthening Rhee’s case was the fact that the United Nations General Assembly had recognized the Republic of Korea as the only legitimate government in the peninsula, and no similar proclamation was obtained for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Sun stated unequivocally that he would only provide direct assistance if the Soviet Union remained uninvolved in such a war.


Nonetheless, the Republic of China was harboring some resentment for how the Soviet Union “assisted” in the surrender of the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party by essentially keeping them waiting in the wings to blackmail the ROC at a later point. President Sun Fo thus sought to counter this by covertly supplying the Republic of Korea with United States and Japanese equipment it still had and was phasing out of use, in favor of Chinese copies of Soviet tanks and aircraft provided through Protocol II. The ROK Army received M5A1 light tanks, Type 97 Chi-Ha and M4 Sherman medium tanks, M18 Hellcat tank destroyers, various artillery pieces, and numerous retired aircraft from the Republic of China Air Force. The ROC hoped to use the ROK as an eventual means of pressuring the Soviet Union back by threatening to invade the DPRK from both sides.


However, President Rhee was uninterested in being a Chinese satellite state, and hoped to use the newly acquired weapons to bring about his goal of national reunification. The United States encouraged him indirectly. In January 1950, the House of Representatives approved nearly $70 million in aid to the ROK. The State Department judged any Soviet involvement in a Korean conflict to be “incredibly unlikely” in a memo circulated in March 1950. General William Lynn Roberts of the Provisional Military Advisory Group (PMAG) gave a strong endorsement of the ROK Army a week before the eventual invasion, saying that the DPRK army would only be “target practice”.


On the domestic side, the National Assembly elections for the Republic of Korea were coming up on May 30th, after President Rhee’s repeated attempts to delay them. Absent a war to rally the nation to a common cause and/or justify harsher repression of dissidents, it was likely that his political opponents could gain the upper hand in the National Assembly, possibly frustrating his designs for a unified Korea. With the best equipment he could muster, and the presumed direct support of the United Nations, the United States and the Republic of China, Rhee would be the hero that defeated the DPRK.


Course of the War


Initial invasion


The first shots were fired in Ongjin at midnight on April 26th 1950, as the Republic of Korea Army claimed to be responding to attacks from the Korean People’s Army in a minor skirmish. The ROK advanced immediately across the 38th with heavy artillery and tanks. However, the KPA put their similar yet superior (and more numerous) equipment to better use, especially their anti-tank weapons. In general, the KPA was less corrupt, as well as better trained and equipped, than their ROK Army counterparts. The DPRK thus repelled the invasion and launched a counteroffensive into the south. The ROK slowed their advance, but at great cost, because in less than a week their army had been reduced to a third of its original strength.


International response


The Republic of China immediately assured the Soviet Union that it did not sanction, endorse or participate in the ROK invasion of the DPRK as soon as it occurred. They also claimed ignorance as to how they received their latest military supplies. The United States essentially said the same to all relevant parties. Stalin demanded that Sun demonstrate the good intentions of China by not supporting the ROK in the war, and showing solidarity in its response to the situation. Sun readily agreed, as China was still recovering from its civil war and had little interest in throwing lives and money away on what they saw as a lost cause.


In the United Nations, Soviet Ambassador Yakov Malik worked to prevent any immediate international response to the situation by engaging in a “filibuster” which lasted thirteen hours and seven minutes. He opened by stating that the ROK was the aggressor in the conflict, and that the Soviet Union, along with the rest of the Allied Powers, had pledged themselves to a Korea that was both “independent” and “democratic”. Ambassador Malik then argued that the ROK was not democratic by delineating the violent repression of peaceful Communist party members, and their exclusion from the Korean electoral process, as well as the brutal campaigns of terror waged by President Rhee in Jeju Island, among other areas. He contrasted this with the peaceful implementation of land reform in the DPRK by a “coalition government of democratic parties with differing ideologies”. He asserted that on the basis of the principles of the Moscow Conference and the right to collective self-defense in the United Nations Charter, the Soviet military not only did not require the UN to authorize an intervention, but was obliged to act due to its standing commitments to the region. Malik then read a list of names of known victims of the massacres in the ROK, some of which are believed to have been fabricated for the occasion due to scant information, until he finally collapsed of exhaustion.


The United States lead the United Nations General Assembly to pass a resolution calling for the immediate cessation of hostilities in the Republic of Korea, and for “North Korea” to withdraw to the 38th Parallel. Nonetheless, the U.S. did not propose any Security Council resolution to this effect as the Soviet Union would likely veto it, nor did they pledge themselves to aid the ROK for fear of a general war breaking out in Europe.


Soviet intervention and the defeat of the Republic of Korea


On April 30th 1950, the Soviet Union officially entered the war against the Republic of Korea in defense of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and launched an all-out assault using volunteers from the People's Liberation Army from its bases in China. The military situation rapidly deteriorated for the ROK, and the capital Seoul was captured as the government hastily fled. Thirty-nine Assemblymen stayed behind and pledged themselves to the DPRK. President Rhee subsequently and secretly ordered the massacre of 100,000 to 200,000 suspected Communists and “subversive elements”.


In the dawn of May 2nd 1950, the Republic of Korea Army that remained on the field had surrendered to Korean People's Army and the Soviet Army. The United States Navy and the United States Air Force were deployed and spirited the officials of the government of the Republic of Korea away to nearby Japanese ports. President Truman said on this occasion, “we will use every weapon we have to defend our Asian allies against Soviet aggression.”


The Republic of China Navy assisted in the evacuation of civilians, including the intelligentsia, landlords, industrialists, politicians, and other likely targets for the DPRK. The ROC offered asylum for hundreds of thousands of Korean refugees from the lower classes as well. Despite this, their failure to provide anything more than humanitarian aid was harshly criticized by the Republic of Korea government-in-exile. President Rhee in particular accused the ROC of “betrayal” for their role in the Korean Civil War, a narrative that would be accepted and repeated by the United States thereafter.


Aftermath


Korea


The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea executed some 100,000 to 500,000 civilians in purges following the conclusion of the Korean Civil War. Kim Il-Sung aggressively expanded his cult of personality and eliminated the genuine political competition in the upper echelons of the national leadership. The 1952 Korean general election to the Supreme People’s Assembly saw a reported 99.99% turnout and 99.90% votes in favor of the Democratic Front of the Fatherland, with the Workers’ Party of Korea taking a supermajority of the seats in the ostensibly democratic coalition government. Similar results would be repeated in subsequent elections, none of which permitted UN observers. The DPRK has no UN membership, and is recognized by few countries outside of the Soviet Union and its allies. Its human rights abuses and totalitarian repression of dissidence remain standing points of international criticism.


The Republic of Korea government-in-exile would repeatedly attempt to join the United Nations to no avail. The members of the National Assembly and other officials left to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1953 as hopes for taking back the nation faded. Syngman Rhee would hold onto the title of President until his death in 1965. Korean refugees, mostly living in Japan and China, have faced discrimination in their host nations, often forming a part of a shunned lower class. Some eventually returned to the DPRK, while others found prominence in science, popular culture, politics, et. al.


Vietnam


Main article: Vietnam War

 

[Sabot Cat]

Vietnam War


The Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was an armed conflict between the State of Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with the former being assisted by the United Nations Emergency Forces with primary support from the United States and France. A direct continuation of the Indochina War (1946-1950), it officially lasted from 12 May 1952 to 26 September 1952. The Vietnam War was the second major proxy conflict in the Cold War.


Background


Indochina War


Main article: Indochina War


Korean Civil War


The Korean Civil War (26 April 1950-2 May 1950) saw the Republic of Korea invade the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, before the latter conquered the entire peninsula with the overt intervention of the Soviet Union, despite the UN and US diplomatic support for the ROK. It came as a nasty shock to the Truman administration and the American public, which expected neither Soviet involvement nor a decisive victory for the DPRK. Also surprising for the United States was the fact that the Republic of China did not come to the assistance of the ROK, which former Korean President Syngman Rhee labelled a “betrayal of the Korean people”.


The U.S. hoped to save face by also blaming China for the defeat, claiming that Chinese President Sun Fo had given a false impression to President Rhee that he would support him in an attempt to unify Korea. There was a palpable fear that the USSR would attack other governments associated with or favored by NATO members in Asia, which generated a sudden influx of political capital to protect them. United States President Harry S. Truman also felt that the United Nations’ prestige had been negatively affected by its paralysis in the Korean Civil War, and that a way to recover this was paramount to global peace in increasingly precarious times.


Democratic Republic of Vietnam: supported by Korea, invades Laos in 1952


An opportunity would present itself with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, fighting the Indochina War with the French-supported State of Vietnam. On May 13th 1950, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea recognized the DRV, and sent a volunteer force as well as supplies to aid them. There were close parallels between the DRV and the the DPRK. The DRV, like the DPRK, was a Marxist-Leninist state, with diplomatic recognition solely from the Soviet Union and its satellite states, vying for control of the entire country against its lawful government through guerrilla armies to the north with the support of its Communist allies. The West believed that the USSR was using the DRV to destroy the State of Vietnam, and that the Soviets could escalate their involvement at the most opportune time.


However, the logistics for supplying the DRV proved to be difficult, as China refused to assist the Soviet Union or Vietnam in transferring supplies or personnel. The Viet Minh, the military of the DRV, repeatedly attempted to defeat the French directly only to fail every time. On March 21st 1952, the Viet Minh invaded Laos and began a siege of the French military outpost of Sop-Nao. President Truman immediately condemned the attack, and began to organize an international response.


United Nations Emergency Forces


President Truman’s Address to the United Nations


On March 22nd, President Truman made an address to the United Nations General Assembly which recalled concerns raised four years prior by the U.S. Senate in the Vandenberg Resolution. President Truman expressed his belief that the prospect of Soviet domination into Asian countries that fell “outside of the direct purview of American protection”, such as Vietnam, was “all but certain” without “prompt action”.


Truman argued that the Nanjing Protocols in particular revealed that the Soviet Union did not consider its war with Japan over, and thus was liable to strike out at any of the Empire of Japan’s former territories. This was proven in Korea and he argued that it could soon be the case in Vietnam. President Truman concluded with a warning that the United Nations risked becoming a second League of Nations if it could be “held hostage by a single member with malicious intents”, and that it was up to “all nations that love peace” to “invoke fear in all aggressors through their collective strength and resolve”.


United Nations General Assembly “Emergency Resolution”


After a truncated debate due to the urgent nature of the military situation, the United Nations General assembly passed the “Emergency Resolution” on March 23rd 1952. Those voting against included Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Ukrainian SSR, the USSR, and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and those abstaining were Argentina, China, India, and Yugoslavia. The resolution first established a mechanism for calling an emergency special session if the UNGA was out of session by a majority vote of the Security Council or General Assembly received by the Secretary-General. Further, when a lack of unanimity arises within the permanent members of the Security Council in regards to a pressing matter threatening international peace and security, the General Assembly could make recommendations for its swift resolution. This could include the use of armed force if found to be necessary, invoking Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This use of force by the United Nations must be approved by the country or countries in which they would operate.


Creation of the United Nations Emergency Forces and deployment to Vietnam


The United Nations Emergency Forces were created by the UNGA immediately following the Emergency Resolution. The UNEF would be a provisional multinational coalition force with volunteers from any nation willing to fight under the flag of the United Nations. Its mission would last until the lawful government of the host country notified the United Nations that the crisis had resolved, or if the UNGA voted in majority to recall them at the request of the Security Council or the General-Secretary. It would also terminate if it had no volunteers. The first missions for the UNEF immediately following the Korean Civil War was to the French Union associated states of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.


Mobilization of the United States


The United States had drastically slashed its military spending since the Second World War, and thus putting the country on war-footing required several legislative and administrative steps. The military budget was quadrupled to over $50 billion, while the National Security Resource Board (NSRB) established price and wage controls, as well as regulations of new materials. Over 400,000 U.S. troops were eventually deployed to Vietnam. The United States government launched its own cultural offensive to convince the public that they needed to deploy soldiers to such a remote country that seemingly had little to do with their national interests.


President Truman most precisely articulated their rationale before a joint meeting of the United States Congress: “If Vietnam and Laos are allowed to fall like Korea, Communist leaders will be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores. If Communists are permitted to force their way into Indochina without opposition, no small nation will have the courage to resist threat and aggression by their less free neighbors. If that is allowed to happen, our free world will be what it was just ten years ago.”


That day Senate Majority leader Scott W. Lucas introduced the Joint Resolution Expressing Approval of the Use of Force in Indochina, which passed by overwhelming, bipartisan margins in both houses. Senator Robert A. Taft of the Republican Party had insisted upon it, fearing that the United Nations Emergency Forces would be used in other areas without Congressional authorization. President Truman himself believed it would be an erosion of their constitutional powers and set a dangerous precedent for the future otherwise.


International participation in the UNEF and the Vietnamese National Army


The French Union already had nearly 200,000 troops fighting the DRV through the French Far East Expeditionary Forces under the command of Army General Marcel Carpentier. They welcomed the arrival of the United Nations Emergency Forces, and were incorporated into its command structure. Other nations providing support for the United Nations Emergency Force included the Australia, Belgium Canada, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.


These all supplemented the Vietnamese National Army, which had over 150,000 troops with a local auxiliary of 55,000. The VNA was commanded by Chief of Staff Nguyễn Văn Hinh, who was appointed by Chief of State Bảo Đại. To emphasize that the UNEF was not a colonial force sent to prop up a French puppet state, Nguyễn was appointed Supreme Commander of the United Nations Emergency Forces (UNCOM).


Course of the War


Initial phase (23 March 1952 to 26 September 1952)


The United Nations Emergency Forces first launched an aerial attack to end the siege at Sop-Nao on March 23, 1952. The United States Air Force further interrupted their logistics through a bombing campaign that destroyed most bridges, rail lines, transportation hubs and petroleum storage areas while the United States Navy meanwhile prevented possible imports or volunteers from coming in by the sea. Then, with a peak strength of over 883,000 ground troops, the UNEF advanced from established French fortifications to engage the nearly 450,000 troops of the Việt Minh in Tonkin.


The ground forces of the UNEF were well-equipped with the latest medium tanks, and the Việt Minh lacked the anti-armor weaponry to deal with them, only having mines and molotov cocktails. British personnel with experience in jungle warfare from the earlier Operation Masterdom in Vietnam and the ongoing Malaysian Emergency were frequently consulted, along with seasoned French and Vietnamese commanding officers. Close-air support (CAS) for ground troops soon proved to be critical, as was the doctrine of Search and Destroy. Napalm B would also be used to great effect, both tactical and psychological.


The Việt Minh used ambushes, assassinations and other unconventional methods while avoiding direct confrontations with the conventionally superior UNEF. However, outnumbered by a ratio of 2:1 and without any outside support, the soldiers and other officials of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam began to suffer sharp drops in morale as casualties mounted over the months in losing battle after losing battle. Nonetheless, after four months of fighting, the DRV remained and Ho Chi Minh was at large. The UNEF would act to end the war decisively.


Operation Gardener and surrender of the Việt Minh (2 September 1952 to 26 September 1952)


On September 2nd 1952, Supreme Commander Nguyễn Văn Hinh launched Operation Gardener. Herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5,-T were sprayed to destroy trees providing cover for the Việt Minh, as well as nearby vegetation feeding them. Civilians were driven into the cities already captured by the UNEF, while DRV soldiers began to exhaust their scant food supplies. By the waning days of that month, many of them were literally starving and out of ammunition and other resources. Ho Chi Minh was caught by the UNEF en route to the Chinese border on September 25th. The next day, he formally surrendered, on behalf of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and its remaining army, to the United Nations.


Aftermath


China and the Soviet Union


The Soviet Union alleged that the United Nations Emergency Forces used chemical weapons in the form of napalm, 2,4-D and 2,4,5,-T. If true, this would be a contravention of the Geneva Protocol, which the United States and France were and are a party to. The USSR also labelled the “Emergency Resolution” and the UNEF itself to be violations of the United Nations Charter’s provisions on the Security Council. During the conflict, they repeatedly requested the Republic of China to allow them to send covert support to the Việt Minh. Chinese President Sun Fo refused, and actively patrolled the Sino-Vietnamese border to prevent this from happening.


France


Main article: Impact of the Vietnam War on France


United Nations


Main articles: United Nations Self-Defense Forces in Japan and United Nations Peacekeeping Forces


The authorization of the UNEF was quickly followed with the creation of the United Nations Self-Defense Forces in Japan (UNSDFJ), with Douglas MacArthur appointed Supreme Commander. It was primarily created due to concerns that Japan couldn’t defend itself against the Soviet Union and China, who had affirmed that they were still technically at war with them in the Nanjing Protocols.


On November 14, 1952, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to convert the United Nations Emergency Forces into the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, with a gradual reduction of committed troops. The UNPF would contribute to fighting in low-intensity conflicts in Southeast Asia against Communist insurgents.


United States


The capture of Ho Chi Minh and the decisive end of the Vietnam War caused a 10 point increase in President Harry Truman’s approval ratings, from 56% to 66%. The economy had entered into recession in 1949, and the government spending for the war spurred an increase in GDP growth. Consumer prices spiked at its onset in anticipation of shortages, but stabilized by the war’s end. Unemployment rates also declined with the mobilization of the armed forces. The Vietnam War, as well as the Korean Strait Crisis, are thus believed to have contributed to President Truman’s victory in the 1952 presidential election due to this military Keynesian impact on the economy and the rally ‘round the flag effect. Some believe that the Vietnam War was thus a political ploy to boost the popularity of the incumbents in the White House and Congress, especially for the timing of Operation Gardener.


Vietnam


Main article: History of Vietnam since 1945