Suchergebnisse

Abstract
American scholars of Chinese history have generally explained the outcome of China's civil war (1945-1949) by reference to social, economic, and political factors rather than by looking at the conduct of the war itself. Recently, military historians have begun to shift the focus to Communist strategy and operations. However, the question of how the Chinese Communist forces made the transition from guerrilla to conventional warfare has still not received sufficient attention. Using Mao Zedong's theories of guerrilla warfare and Peter Senge's model of the "learning organization" to analyze Lin Biao's conduct of the war against the Nationalists in China's Northeast (Manchuria), we can better understand how the Northeast People's Liberation Army transformed itself from a force characterized by "guerrilla-ism" to the powerful army capable of defeating Jiang Jieshi's best troops. The Communists performed poorly when they first encountered American-trained Nationalist units in the Northeast. Lin Biao and his staff responded to defeat by devising principles of tactics which they applied in a series of campaigns beginning with the "Three Expeditions/Four Defenses" (winter 1946-47). The Communist forces continued to derive lessons from their experience and to incorporate those lessons into programs of education and training. As a result, they made great strides forward in terms of the coordination of infantry, artillery, and armor in order to be able to pull off a conventional combined arms operation on the scale of the Liao-Shen Campaign. The Communist forces would bring these strengths with them when they entered the Korean War in 1950.

Abstract
Western military historians often describe the Chinese "way of war" as emphasizing a gradualist military strategy, tending to avoid battle except when victory was assured, and preferring to use subterfuge, maneuver, or psychological means to defeat the enemy without actually fighting. The roots of this understanding of the Chinese way of war lie in selective readings of Sunzi's Art of War and Mao Zedong's writings on guerrilla warfare. The record of Chinese Communist operations in China's Northeast (Manchuria) from 1945 through 1948 instead suggests a Chinese approach to war that is characterized not only by close attention to strategy and maneuver, but also by a preference for offensive operations leading to the ultimate destruction of the enemy in battles of annihilation. In the Northeast theater of China's civil war we also see that the Communist forces had to go through a process of transformation before they were able to carry out large-scale maneuvers, deploy overwhelming firepower, and conduct large-scale operations or campaigns of annihilation. In order to gain victory, the Chinese Communist forces in the Northeast under Lin Biao's command had to make the transition from guerrilla to conventional warfare, including the ability to attack cities. This transformation was achieved through a combination of factors: critical assessment of battlefield performance, incorporation of new weapons and equipment, and techniques of staff work. This suggests that any workable understanding of Chinese ways of war must go beyond cultural determinism to take account of the Chinese military's flexibility and capacity for learning.