wwsd
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2011
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Proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. This is what we hope to achieve.
Note: the idea of making an LP only surfaced after about a year of playing, so I don't have any screenshots of the year 1936. For this first post, it will just be a dry summing up of events up to the Xi'an Incident. I hope to make things a little more entertaining afterwards.
Game: Hearts of Iron II: Armageddon
Settings: Normal/Aggressive difficulty, game starts in 1936 and ends in 1964, tech team takeover enabled in order to make annexations of warlords potentially worthwhile for both the Nationalists and the Communists
Mods used: SMEP for Armageddon (adds loads of events), incl. CCIP (a mod that improves Chinese factions)
Country: Communist China
Prologue
In the 1920s, the Communist Party of China was allied with the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), a fragile alliance supported by the Soviet Union. After the death of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek ascended to the leadership of the KMT. He continued the job of crushing the many different warlords, after which he turned his attention towards the communists. In April 1927, Chiang ordered a purge of the communists in Shanghai, initiating a massive civil war between Chinese factions.
In the course of the war, a Chinese Soviet Republic was created out of several Southern Chinese areas, led by Mao Zedong. The nationalists initially found it difficult to penetrate into these areas, but as the war progressed, Mao was sidelined by military and political leaders returned from the Soviet Union, who repeatedly failed in the face of the nationalist encirclement campaigns due to stubbornly rejecting guerrilla warfare and trying to fight the KMT on their own terms.
When defeat became inevitable, the communists decided to massively withdraw from and abandon the Soviet Republic to regroup elsewhere. It was under these conditions that Mao managed to regain the leadership of the party and determine the direction of the retreat. Both the Communist Party and the Red Army were decimated, but thousands still made it to Shaanxi, in the north. The Long March would eventually become the stuff of legends, and Mao's leadership became undisputed. Yan'an became the new Red Capital, where the communism of the CPC took on a distinct Chinese character and the main principles of Maoism were developed, resulting in orientation towards the peasant population and land reform.
The route of the Long March
Political map of Northern China. White = nationalist territory, Orange = communist territory, yellow = Japanese holdings, light yellow = Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. The green and brown areas are territories of different warlords.
Chapter 1: Incursion into Qinghai and Xi'an Incident
As of January 1936, the Civil War as still going on unabated. The communists had enemies in both the Nationalist army and in the forces of the Ma Clique to the west, the Islamic warlords who controlled Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia. At the beginning of HoI2, the communists have 15 well-organised military divisions. Their home provinces in Shaanxi are heavily fortified, making it extremely difficult for the KMT to invade them. The territories controlled by the Shanxi Clique, including Beijing (Beiping) lie to the east, under the leadership of the warlord Yan Xishan. Yan is an anti-communist supporter of the KMT who allows Chiang's forces access to his territories, but they do not participate in the civil war at the moment. The situation for Communist China might be ahistorically easy due to the experience and modernity of their 15 divisions (including 3 Mountaineer divisions) and because it is unnecessary to defend the Shanxi border.
In these conditions, it is possible to take the full brunt of the Nationalist assault, but also to declare war on Shanxi. Instead, Mao decides on a different route. He leaves only a few divisions at the frontier with the Nationalists, trusting that the strength of his fortifications, the mountainous terrain and the separation by the Wei River are sufficient to keep the KMT at bay. Instead, the majority of the Communist insurgents aim for three targets:
-Nationalist-controlled Tianshui in Gansu.
-Nationalist Lanzhou in Gansu.
-Ma Clique-controlled Guyuan in Ningxia.
The combat zone.
The Nationalist and Ma forces prove poorly-organised and ill-equipped to deal with the Communist assault. The successful completion of all three objectives by March emboldens the communists to make incursions into the rest of Ma territory. We cross the Yellow River and take Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia, followed by Jinchang in Gansu and the cities of Xining and Golmud in Qinhai. With the loss of most of their population centres, the Ma warlords surrender or flee, and the communists effectively take control of large tracts of western China. Much like during the takeover of Yan'an, the warlords broke ranks and fled, and the communists gained support of the peasantry by instituting land reform.
The takeover also significantly affected the industrial capacity of the CPC. The Ma's centre of production was located in Golmud, and the CPC now doubled its capacity. The communist territories were now also directly linked with the Mongolian People's Republic and Xinjiang, controlled at the time by a Soviet ally, Sheng Shicai. In the meantime, however, storm clouds were gathering above China in the form of increased Japanese aggression. Chiang and Mao both ignored this, focussing on the ongoing civil war instead.
In late '36, Chiang was abducted by officers who wanted to end the civil war. Though Mao and other Chinese communists initially saw this as the opportunity to execute Chiang, they were held back by Stalin, who also saw the benefit of a united front to contain the Japanese. The KMT and CPC agreed to a truce in Xi'an, after which Chiang was released. Lanzhou and Tianshui were returned to Nationalist administration, but the Communists kept control of the former Ma territories. Now, it remained to be seen what the Japanese would do next.
Situation after the Xi'an Incident
Communist gains at the expense of the Ma Clique
Tech teams taken over from the Ma Clique. They are pretty useless, as we do not expect to research Air Doctrines any time soon, but at least the possibility exists now.
The possession of Golmud allows for slightly more production potential. At the moment, this is being used to create a mobile HQ to allow for more effective operations against the Japanese.
The rumoured brain behind the Chinese communists.
Ah, so the reason you are here in Xi'an in the first place is just because you wanted to see the sights? It has nothing to do with your brilliant national army handing one-fifth of China to us within a year?
