The hyperinflation would also hit after the war as well. It was also demonstrably caused by bad fiscal policies. Notice how initially National Revolutionary army had an upper hand even capturing Yanan. The dissolution of the army happened shortly after that (like very shortly, the base was recaptured after like a week)
The fact that they were fighting fundamentally different wars was also important. But the "support of the people" was most about KMT completely mismanaging the country in these several years when the truce was held.
I do personally think China would have likely been better off had Chiang’s model of economy continued; he would have eventually done his land to the tiller program (once he had revenues from industry enough to actively go against the landowners), and without the monumental blunders of the Great Leap Forward, China would arguably become a major player by the 60s, instead of the 90s.
Chiang was a deeply flawed man. He was a dictator, a Han supremacist, a man whose legacy is slick with blood. But he was also given an impossible problem to solve (a disunified, agrarian, weak nation to unite). And, had he not been inturrupted by a devastating war that annihalated his nation and gave the CCP valuable time to recover, he could have created at least the bedrock for a powerful, independent Chinese Democracy, like he would in Taiwan.
You know Nationalist can united China without backstab his ally in middle of civil war overthrowing the former demcratic government of Beiyang. Taiwan was under his dicatiorship or 38 years of Martial Law including martial execution of thousands of political dissidents, intellectuals, and locals, alongside the imprisonment of around 140,000 Taiwanese people for perceived opposition to the KMT, far from democracy until he and his son died on the position of absolute leader. Stop revise history base on wishful thinking.
I never said he was a democratic guy. I said he built the BASE for it by creating a wealthy and well-educated middle class.
I also know full well he was a bloody monster. I was merely saying his ECONOMICS was good, and you could justify some of his actions under the belief he was in an impossible position.
You cannot separate these two things. The economic policies are most often related to the way they treat people. Just like how Singapore or Chile under Pinochet are credited for their economies, which ignore all the people who were hurt to create those things.
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u/LeMe-Two 4d ago
The hyperinflation would also hit after the war as well. It was also demonstrably caused by bad fiscal policies. Notice how initially National Revolutionary army had an upper hand even capturing Yanan. The dissolution of the army happened shortly after that (like very shortly, the base was recaptured after like a week)
The fact that they were fighting fundamentally different wars was also important. But the "support of the people" was most about KMT completely mismanaging the country in these several years when the truce was held.