Thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring today's video! Signup for your FREE trial to Wondrium here: ow.ly/ro3w50L1hWg / jabzy / jabzyjoe Chiang Kai Shek, Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, KMT, China WW2, Japan WW2, Chinese History
That’s why after WWII, when CKS’s army was sent to Taiwan by US navy, many Taiwanese were shocked to see the badly equipped and low discipline Chinese soldiers as “winners” and acted as “liberators”.
@@bctvanwThey were both Chinese they saw themselves as that as that then if not now. The Chinese communist won thanks to help from the Soviets, while the Kuomintang didn’t have as much from the Allies, there are other factors as well. Though we might not see the CCP as “liberators” now, now that we are able to look back at the past. Back then people fighting under the CCP thought of their cause as one which would make a “New China”, one which would’ve “fixed” it, especially after the century of humiliation. But thanks to incite to their future we know what bad things await them, but they didn’t so they would’ve been clueless to the bad future that awaits them. Also to be fair Chang Kai Shek wasn’t so much of a better leader, since the only reason Taiwan was able to become democratic was because of western influence and under Chang Kai Shek the ROC was a one party government similar to the CCP in the crushing of political opposition. Though I do believe I’ve made a few mistakes since I only know a few brief details about the Chinese civil war, I at least think my reasoning is at least something reasonable to support my more reasonable claim. Don’t take everything I say as complete truth, but don’t think I’m making things up based on who I may or may not have a bias towards like you are.
@@nomnomstirn1532 yeah both were one party governments but so what? one party government arent the flaws of both KMT or CCP. the flaws of the KMT is its incompetence when it came to governing and securing the nation as a whole, the ccp did a better job. But the flaw the ccp has that the KMT doesn't is Chinese values. Us chinese have a long history when it comes to historical values and at least the KMT valued them while the CCP destroyed those values and replace them with marxist and Stalinist ideals and reconstructing the nation that killed more people than the Japanese during 1937-1945. At least the KMT had better intentions but they're just incompetent when it comes to dealing with many things but the CCP had intentions that would only benefit the party, not the nation as a whole.
@@bctvanw Taiwan has always been part of china for hundreds of years. don't use that "taiwan is independent" card on me. the KMT army were well-disciplined and trained but lost the majority support to the CCP which is why they lost. I don't believe any of them saw themselves as "liberators". Both CCP and KMT saw themselves as the one who will make china great again and reunite the country. We have these territorial claims for over centuries.
@@atomic_wait can’t think of any specific drama because the names are usually in Chinese but one fictional movie comes to mind; Shaolin (2011) with Andy Lau and Jackie Chan
It's still weird to think about that China not even a 100 years ago was litreally a hellhole for the average chinese and a backwater, and now it's the world second millitary and economic power. And they done all of this growth only in the last 40 years.
As a Chinese, I still remember my father telling me how he just burst into tears when he ate braised pork for the first time at age 14, since the best thing he had eaten was a bowl of plain noodle with a few drops of pork fat as a birthday present. Truly astonshing.
Incredibly unequal. You have a few extremely well developed cities that are expensive to live in but pay well, then you have entire regions that lack electricity and running water. They also have an extremely good national transit system. They've also been building "ghost cities" to pad things, rather than trying to improve things outside of the main cities since it is easier to do that.
China's history has been a clusterfuck since 1840, and things only worsened as time progressed. This period is so exciting (from a historical point of view) yet so unpopular. As someone who speaks Chinese as his mother tongue, I appreciate your work.
China's been a clusterfuck entering Qianlong's reign, well before 1840. Actually, the seeds of China's backwardness was thrown during the Founding of the Ming Dynasty itself.
@@johnfellower8018 theres a saying in China: "宋后无中华。明后无华夏" China died with the Song Dynasty, and Its civilization ended with the Ming. though i would argue Ming dynasty at least made more technological progress. Ming military made the first sea mines, and their cannons had more range than the dutch during their conquest of taiwan.
if you go further back in time long before 1840 into BCE, Chinese history has always been a clusterfk. There's a common saying, China will break up after long period of unity and unite again after long period of strife.
It’s insane to think that the 200 years between 1800 and 2000 so many millions of people died from events like the Taiping Rebellion, Xinhai Revolution, two Sino-Japanese Wars, Chinese Civil War, Great Leap Forward and so much more. It’s a tragic history but China always seems to bounce back. To put this in perspective, every one of those events was massively more catastrophic than the American Civil War. I always think that from those millions (and maybe could be approaching a billion) of people that died, there are so many descendants that were never born that could have cured cancer or invented something truly transformative. We could be in a much different and frankly better world. Thanks, Jabzy, for this series and really putting this all in perspective.
Many numbers are fake and exaggerated... For example, Mao led to the death of tens of millions of Chinese people, which was fabricated by the propaganda of the Kuomintang in Taiwan
Just look at the US. A million people died in the pandemic. Doesn't faze anybody. They just keep on going fighting themselves. Like China a hundred years ago. Japan and the Soviets had annexed large parts of their country. They still continued fighting themselves. That's why they suck so bad in WW2. Just like the US is today. The Americans are just lying down and giving up, letting China overtake them. And when we tell them that, half of them wants to put obstacles in China's way. That's some evil shit. Good guys don't do that. Good guys grow their own economy instead of trying to sabotage their rivals.
Very informative! And confusing! That bit at the end where the guy forced Chiang and Mao to make a truce, to try to focus on the bigger threat - that's crazy to think about. I love history!
Amazing video! I do have a tip though: maybe it would be better to have subtitles for these kind of videos since there are a lot of words and names that might be difficult to distinguish or understand for some people!
That was underselling unit 731 and its branches's actions quite a bit... They were developing and live-testing biological weapons, on chinese and other prisoners. Some of their anti-cattle strains were even used covertly against USSR, and there is some evidence to them using biological weapons in Sino-japanese war
@@peterwindhorst5775 Well that has more to do with the USA swept them under the rug in exchange for everything. Still pisses me off as an american because they Japanese destroyed all their evidence and got off completely free for then most evil things ever done.
Well it least he mentioned them most don't even know about them. 731 are by far the worst example of the depravity and monstrosity that man has committed.
I highly recommend the “peoples history of ideas” podcast. Gives a very in-depth overview of Chinese history from the Opium wars to the peoples republic.
Well done Jazby, there needs to be more in dept China history video like this one. If we need more people to better understand the current situation in China, and why China is behaving the way it’s behaving.
Really makes sense how the communist party of China has seemingly wide spread compliance. The bar was so low and the history so dark that “just let us be a stable unified country” was really enough. I’m not a Maoist but Chiang Kai-shek basically ensured he’d lose public support after the Japanese invasion by alienating most of his war time Allies. Even in the years prior to Marco Polo the fighting was brutal with revolts, coups, skirmishes killing people in the tens of thousands… seemingly every couple months. The CCPs ability to open up their recent history post Qing really does (from a logical unbiased perspective) give them a lot of cultural credibility. They weren’t (insert American perception of lazy communist or whatever) revolting against a stable prosperous democratic nation. They were peasants and laborers revolting against a dictorial olicharchy that time after time was selling out its average citizen for the benefit of a few. The fact that China is a unified country today (even if not ethically…. Tibet etc) it really makes sense why the Chinese people let themselves be governed by a party portrayed as comically evil in the western world. To be clear I’m not pro Chinese government I’m just saying the decades before the conclusion of the civil war really does show how for all its many faults…. China is definitely better off now as a country.
That's a very rational and reasonable argument. China did go through over a 100 years of strife that started with the Qing so it does make sense for stability. However, China is known for the Great Leap forward and the Cultural Revolution which probably killed more people in 5 years than the strife China has. People that live in China today still remember that. A long China United always divides. Especially under brutal authoritarian rule like the Qin. The legalism of China eventually breaks it.
@@geesixnine I don’t disagree, we’ll see what the future has for modern china. As time moves on the relevance of conditions and events pre 1947 will waver. The communist party can’t say “look at how fucked we were in the 1930s” forever
@Oscar Strokosz while there is some truth to that one must acknowledge that as a single party state with government control over industry, schools, and extremely heavy influence in their corporate sector, one has an incentive to join the party. Even if “loyalty” is questionable. I’ve been to China myself, and while you’re not forced to join the party the economic reality is that it’s nearly impossible to be successful without it. But in any case I see a remarkable difference between China now and China under Mao, even with the vanguard party being the same. The country and people adapt as do all governments. What I was referring too when I wrote the above comment was more an understanding of how the communist won the civil war (with public support) and maintained majority compliance even through disastrous internal policies. But in any case I’d agree with you, there are a lot of pro government Chinese citizens, especially in the free economic zone and the major cities of Han ethnic majority. From my experiences, the people at large in China (at least where I was in Hangzhou) understand their country has massive faults and seek change, but either through CCP propaganda or a clear understanding of their national history, they really don’t trust any other party or international pressure to make change. Not that I’d blame them
Wow a Western RU-vidr actually acknowledges Panchen Lama. Western RU-vidrs always go Dali Lama controls Tibet etc.. and Xinjiang isn't a independent East Turkistan but was a tiny little place that didn't last long at all, that was inside Xinjiang.
Chiang shouldn't have fought in Shanghai for so long. 2/3 of his German trained units became casualties. he should have made an orderly retreat to the Wufu and Xicheng lines at the end of the 1st month at shanghai at least or the 2nd month at most. and reorganize for defense there.
The Zhunyi Conference was more than that. WAY more. In Mao's defense speech, he accused Otto Braun who in China goes by the name of "Comrade Li De" and the entire 28 Bolsheviks as utter morons and way too "stick-in-the-mud" to even understand the political landscape in China and also thinking whatever made the Soviet uprising in 1917 could be replicated again thus leading to such huge loss on manpower and not only that, wavering morale on top of zero territories to call as their own ground. Mao, in retrospect, was right. Otto Braun's philosophy was to rally the factory workers of China and start a massive riot then turn that into a revolution with blood while consistently going against the KMT and slam Chiang down. Despite even having lesser men than they wanted, Otto was STILL pushing for a great assault against the KMT which, obviously, was a stupid move that Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Mao could see but as Otto was from the Soviet's direct control, they overrule Mao's authority at first. What Otto didn't realize that or failed to understand at least was that China in all it's tumultuous period, wasn't a industrialized state like Russia where industrialization was already happening by the 1890s thus when the revolution kicked off in Russia, the Soviets can rally many factory workers in major cities to rise up and take power from the Tsar who had his army busy out west fighting the Germans. In China, industrialization was painfully slow due to the massive wars China sees itself constantly thus almost 80% of the entire nation was of agricultural origins and even in big cities, factories was sparse except superb urbanized areas like Shanghai, Guangzhou. Wuhan, Nanjing and Beijing were totally industrialized but as the more inland you go, it starts to dwindle down and with that little factories, it's hard to rally said workers to even revolt. Worse still, the Shanghai massacre in 1927 of Communist bloc members by the Green Gang ordered by Chiang was soo fearful to the city folk that no one even dared to raise a finger against Chiang as they knew that unlike the Russians, Chiang had spies AND army guys across the city to stop a revolution unlike Nicholas II who didn't have control of his own forces. Much worse was Mao and many of the Chinese Communist leaders had already tasted battle prior to even fleeing thru the "Long March" as they've already fought side by side with Chiang and the KMT during the Northern Expedition which was often called the "First United Front" and many of the Communist leaders like Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Zuo Quan, even Zhou Enlai himself and few other generals were all alumnis from the Whampoa Military Academy too like almost all of Chiang's officers thus they had combat experience and proper tactical training to boot whereas for the 28 Bolsheviks, zero. Thus as their strategies kept backfiring, Mao had to step in, denounce the 28 Bolsheviks as stupid and take control into Chinese hands and do the entire Communist revolution into the "Chinese" way which was to incite the peasants rather than the workers where the peasants are way more plentiful than factory workers. This in turn worked well and Mao was right. With Otto Braun being outvoted even by Zhou Enlai, the Communist collaborated with Chiang but after the 100 Regiments Offensive, the CCP kept themselves in check by nor participating in much major warfare but instead consolidated manpower by recruiting more and more peasants, stockpiling weapons that were consistently sent to them by the Soviets (Yes, Mao did tell Stalin he'll do the revolution his way but would stick it as Communism which, surprisingly, Stalin agrees) and wait for the time to strike. Rest don't have to be said as I guess you'll explain the Soviets transferring Manchuria and the entire captured Japanese weapons stockpile out to the CCP post-war which bolstered the CCP's strengths again and went after the KMT once and for all in part 6.
History of China is like a trilogy Xinhai revolution and warlord era - prequel Sino Japanese war and Chinese civil war - original continuity Great leap forward and cultural revolution- sequel
Anyone have any good book recommendations for this topic and warlord era China in general? Because as good as these videos are, i could watch a dozen and barely retain any information its just so complicated.
The USA embargoed Imperial Japan in 1935, effectively destroying their ability to engage in a long term war and halted their war machine. Not saying China didn't fight hard but without the USA the Japanese would've conquered China by 1940.
@@Huben57 No the USA began in 35, you're thinking full economic sanctions as well as total economic embargoment from the USA. Keep in mind it's an act of war to sanction and or embargo one nation but aid the other in war. Hence why it's argued WWII started in 35 not 39, as that is when the entire globe was involved in war. But knowing how simple you are, you probably ignored the economics of it. Such as the Red army having winter supplies to fight the battle of Stalingrad from lend lease, all while embargoes of Nazi Germany started in 33. Funny you think the USA only got involved in WWII by 41, when both China and Russia would've both fallen in 1940 without the USA's economic involvement. War is more than just bombs, guns, and soldiers. In fact of were honest war is mainly economic.
@@tylerrobbins8311 Just as in the eighteenth century, the United States could not truly become independent from Great Britain without the help of France. You will remain part of the Commonwealth of Great Britain
I commend the attempts to pronounce the slew of names in these videos. Though I have noticed more with this video with some inaccuracies (some just being nitpicks) and I don't mean names, that's just something you gotta accept when non-native speakers have to say anything in their non-native/fluent language (and that goes for anything, not just Chinese. It's like if Visualized History was unable to pronounce the vast amounts of German names, titles, and writing conventions).
What's people's deal with communism anyway? Is it because they believe it's evil, or because they're told it's evil? Just decades ago my country was a 'democratic' dictatorship, hell even North Korea calls itself a 'democracy'. Democracy is more than a label, it's more than having 1,000 parties within a country and/or voting the lesser evil every 4 years, that's why I believe every country should adapt the best political ideology that fits it's history and for the benefit of its people. A democracy that doesn't favour the people, is no democracy.
A self perpetuating cycle communist threaten established powers so they fight to destroy them so communist decide they can't coexist with old powers so they need full control then the old powers justify their violence and both sides fight
Imo Chiang should have waited until Western powers were willing to fight Japan and kept his elite German trained divisions from being destroyed in Shanghai 1937.
There is an episode on one of the channels that Simon does, that shows in a small window in the background a video tape of a Chinese woman being experimented on with frostbite. They cut the skin around her elbows and froze her arms and rip the skin from her arms. I can't believe it was shown on youtube. I'd rather not anyone go look at it.
Tibet attack SiChuan because they want a plain field where they can grow food and industry, basically a place to provide for them. The Tibet cannot to support their own even for today. When Dali Lama actually try to contact Chinese Government and try to negotiate a peaceful return, he still demend to have large chunck of SiChuan cut to Tibet. Of course this ridiculous demand was turn down by the Chinese Government.
Ciang kai shake was to blame for Japanese invasion without any resistance. He could have at least delayed Japanese if he wasn't obsessed with communist.
Chinese people like probably 25 different times during the 19th and 20th century: "wow, that was a brutal civilizational upheaval, but at least now it's over and we can finally begin rebuilding." the manchus/the British/the Germans/the Japanese/the communists/the kuomintang/the warlords/the climate/the tibetans/the earth itself: "hahaha, it has only just begun"
The independence claimed by Tibetan Gaxag government was never recognized by its central government, nor was it recognized by any of the world powers at that time. If you call that an “independent country”, then the states of Lugansk and Donetsk also have every right to self-claim independence.
One of Chinas problems was its officer corp was decimated during the battle of Shanghai in 1937, indeed some of there best units were wiped out, while losing like 4 soldiers for every 1 Japanese killed.
German trained Units were wasted in Shanghai. fighting in such a disadvantageous location where japanese can keep bombing them. with naval guns and planes. they would've been better fighting in the Wufu and Xicheng line. 4:1 was the overall kill/death ratio of the entire chinese army fighting at shanghai. all those other nationalist units, warlords, and central army elite soldiers casualties combined together.
all of human history is just this. genocide after genocide after genocide after genocide after genocide after genocide after genocide after genocide...
0 history of democratic institutions, large amounts of paramilitary forces fighting for their own political ideas, a huge historical humiliation jerking up revanchism. Honestly it's a lot of the same issues the Weimar republic had.
@@elemperadordemexico well, in a way it was. German Empire (deutsches Reich) was the Name of gernany between 1871 and 1945. In the frame of 1918 till 1933 the German empire was an democratic. Nevertheless German Empire usualy refers to the imperial period
Cause Chinese focused on family and way of living ( being harmless, respect family members, how you be a human, etc and not being harmful, barbaric, and so on )
@ThePHiLsTeR The way of the Chinese is mostly family focused and staying harmless, and taking care of family members A nice, innocent, peaceful, and harmless country will look good. The harmful ones will be shamed, embarrassed, and humiliated because they are bad and not smart enough to be nice, innocent, peaceful, and harmless May God make China the first country without military and it will be so successful that the whole world will follow
the more and more i learn about chinese history...im inclined to think the CCCP isnt that bad in retrospect. sure there were massacres and large scale famines, but compared to any one of the warring states periods where a quarter of a million deaths was the norm, or the warlords era with common massacres, bandits and the like.... china today is very peaceful in comparison
This part of chinese history is so chaotic that history teachers ofter just brush over by telling us the end results. Great effort my friend. Its just sad to know all those struggles to bring democracy to china ultimately ended in a communist takeover.
@@musAKulture Confucian society doesn’t conflict with democracy. It was the dream of the revolutionaries during the 19th century to bring china into democracy. And since you brought up Taiwan, it just proves it isn’t an impossible goal, just needs the right environment.
@@alexanderballa6152 it wasn’t really a dictatorship. People were allowed to protest publicly, papers criticized the government often. Very unlike today’s china.
@@stoneruler It was quite literally a one party dictatorship, not to mention he rolled over to corporations and sold away chinese resources for cheap. Communist china succeeded in merging economic systems to create economic prosperity and solid social welfare, unfortunately the cccp party is super totalitarian, very sad, still probably better than roc in the long run
God imagine if the KMT won the civil war. Imagine what China would look like without the great leap forward. My God so much of the world's issues really depended on who won the Chinese civil war.
To be honest, communism really helped china because they eventually realised politics shouldn't go along economics, thats why they're a world power today, and if you see it from other point the communists wanted a unified china and they took the power from what could be defined as a dictatorial regime from chiang
@@_ShadowX A fascist China probably could have industrialized more quickly than the Communists without the braindead economic policies Mao enacted, while being no more friendly to the United States than the CCP has become. All in all, I don't think that the end result would have been all that different, besides a couple million people would not have starved to death.
@@hazzmati he’s right tbh. Chiang Kai Sheik’s extremely brief rule over China was even worse than Mao, and that’s saying something. If he controlled all of China and had western support, he would’ve killed as many civilians as Mao, Hitler and Stalin combined.
