r/technology • u/longiner • Jan 18 '25

Social Media As US TikTok users move to RedNote, some are encountering Chinese-style censorship for the first time

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/16/tech/tiktok-refugees-rednote-china-censorship-intl-hnk/index.html
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u/RampantTyr Jan 18 '25

As much as I dislike the CCP, we generally call the winners of a civil war the actual government.

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u/DesertDwellingWeirdo Jan 18 '25

It also helps to know that the civil war was prompted by the original government attempting to use mass executions as a way of dealing with the rising communist movement. Google: Shanghai massacre

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u/HHhunter Jan 18 '25

The opposite happened as well. See: Siege of Changchun

it was a bloody war

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u/BODYBUTCHER Jan 18 '25

A Chinese civil war without 50 million dead is just a riot

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u/HHhunter Jan 18 '25

that number happened even without a civil war under Mao lmao

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u/BODYBUTCHER Jan 18 '25

My favorite civil war was the one where the guy claimed he was Jesus Christs brother . 30 million dead

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u/Fskn Jan 18 '25

Don't sell it short, dude failed an civil service exam three times, got mad, got sick, read a Christianity pamphlet while sick and decided in his feverish delusion he was jesus2 electric boogaloo. Boom 15 year Taiping rebellion.

Or when they used to punish everything with death and some dudes from a military unit decided to rebel instead of being put to the sword for being late. 10000 peasants revolt cos some dudes are late for practice.

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u/aeschenkarnos Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

The thing about history is that overwhelmingly it’s been conservatives in charge. Except for decades here and there in scattered parts of the world in which massive social and technological progress is made, usually interrupted by conservatives wanting to be in charge again so they can steal the proceeds and enforce absolute dumbassery.

From a historical perspective there’s nothing particularly unusual about this whole Trump thing. Kings dumber and more selfish and aggressive than the average bear, surrounded by sycophantic grifters and ruling over horribly oppressed and stupid peasantry, enabled by priests of some detestably vicious god, is the default model of human government.

Every single good thing that we have, and are, is wrested from these cretins against their will and without a moment of gratitude from them. They don’t understand it, they don’t appreciate it, and they want it all gone.

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u/GodLovesUglySlugs Jan 19 '25

This was an absurdly profound and poignant comment.

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u/_learned_foot_ Jan 18 '25

Is this whiggish history for liberals?

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u/mkdz Jan 18 '25

One of the most insane events

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u/HHhunter Jan 18 '25

that one was also wild

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u/beener Jan 18 '25

Not out here defending mao, but most was from starvation as a result of his absolutely terrible policies

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u/SovietPropagandist Jan 18 '25

A CHINESE CIVIL WAR

WITHOUT FIFTYYYYY

MILLION! DEAD!

IS JUST A RIOT!

IT'S WHAT YOU EXPECT, IN A CHINESE, CIVIL, WARRRRRRRRRR

[death metal growling]

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u/Witch_King_ Jan 18 '25

It's what you expect, in a Chinese civil war

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u/Thenewfoundlanders Jan 18 '25

The way you wrote this makes it sound like a song lyric

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u/Witch_King_ Jan 18 '25

Sabaton drop when??

3

u/morozko Jan 18 '25

And history bears the scars of the Chinese civil war

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u/AppleDane Jan 18 '25

Contrary to popular belief, a civil war is never nice or have a clear morally superior side. Except perhaps the US civil war.

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u/Witch_King_ Jan 18 '25

There are a few other cases in lesser known civil wars where there is a morally superior side. But seldom is there a morally pure side.

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u/beener Jan 18 '25

Or any civil war?

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u/Witch_King_ Jan 18 '25

Yes, but historically the Chinese have had mind-bogglingly bloody civil wars for THOUSANDS of years. A large part of the high death count in these wars is due to the high population even in ancient times.

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u/Pepparkakan Jan 19 '25

Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

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u/RobertDeNircrow Jan 18 '25

Just like the Arabs the only thing they hate more than the west is themselves.

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u/Eldias Jan 18 '25

Whole bunch of subtle and not-subtle racism in this thread. All civil wars are bloody, the US civil war killed more Americans than than any of the foreign wars we've been involved in.

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u/RobertDeNircrow Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

And another thing. The relative populations are important factors. The 1.5 million Americans dead in 1865 after 4 years of war on their own soil. Out of 31mil

China: ~16 million causualties over 12 years after being raped by Japan(asians) for 2 decades losing ~8 million out of ~ 400m

Iran Iraq war, syrian civil war, Iranian revolution, Arab Israeli conflict (BTW Arabs are just regionally ethnic Jews that follow Muhammed.) All had multiple hundreds of thousands killd or wounded. None of the arab royal families are exactly clamoring to make a united Arab states. They hate their neighbors just as much as they hate the jews.

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u/RobertDeNircrow Jan 18 '25

How is it racist to point out that since the fall of the ottoman empire the chief killer of Arabs has been other Arabs.

Since the end of the opium wars asia has been the number one destroyer of asian governments.

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u/AcrobaticApricot Jan 18 '25

I guess the racist part is not applying the same principle to your own group. Do you think that "the only thing white people hate more than Arabs is other white people" because of the World Wars? Do you think that "Americans are the chief killer of other Americans" because of the Civil War?

If yes, you are not racist. If no, you are racist.

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u/RobertDeNircrow Jan 18 '25

I was comparing their hate for the west which is significant part of the propaganda cycle, is actually second when it comes to their own internal culture politics, we all know the people who can read through the lines don't need it spelled out. If you need it spelled out you don't have a working understanding of international relationships

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u/sailorbrendan Jan 18 '25

And the west had two world wars in a human lifespan that was a whole lot of white people killing each other.

And then there's the soviets.

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u/RobertDeNircrow Jan 18 '25

That spanned 4 continents, hundreds of countries dozens of ethnicities

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u/sailorbrendan Jan 19 '25

Let's be real. Those were white people wars that dragged other people into it

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u/ckNocturne Jan 18 '25

Yea, war usually implies retaliation.

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u/SpaceIsKindOfCool Jan 18 '25

An understatement. 7 million dead in the pre-1936 phase, then Japan invades and another ~20 million Chinese people die. Then after WWII ends the civil war resumes and another 2.5 million die.

Amazingly the entire ~20 year period of conflict is still only the second or third most deadly in China's history.

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u/HHhunter Jan 18 '25

You left out the oortion where after the civil war ends 30 million die from starvation under mao because everyone threw their tools away, including cooking pots

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u/SpaceIsKindOfCool Jan 18 '25

I was specifically referring to periods of military conflict. 

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u/HHhunter Jan 18 '25

still puts into perspective the periods of military conflict has the same number of casulties compared to merely 3 years of mao policy lmao

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u/iceteka Jan 18 '25

While that did happen, that's not what "prompted the civil war. Communists in the north never recognized the republic as the official government. The fighting simply ramped up as the communists gained more land and support. There was never a moment where Mao just had enough with the government and took up arms, they never put them down.

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u/NaCly_Asian Jan 18 '25

There was never a moment where Mao just had enough with the government and took up arms, they never put them down.

I only know this on a basic level, but officially, the PLA formed on August 1, 1927, as symbolized on the PLA flag. There was a massacre in Shanghai which led the communist supporters to rebel against the NRA (National Revolutionary Army). I think Zhou Enlai was part of this, but I am not sure where Mao was at this time.

also, regarding some of the censorship mentioned in other comments, the atmosphere of the app seems to be more positive, with music, food, and workout videos. I actually like it without the political stuff, since on tiktok, reddit, twitter, the politics serve to just piss me off.. or depress me.. probably should do some cleaning of who i follow to nudge the algorithm

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u/Tombot3000 Jan 18 '25

There was a massacre in Shanghai which led the communist supporters to rebel against the NRA

You've flipped the timeline here. Zhou Enlai and Chen Duxiu launched a rebellion and took over Shanhai before the April 12th "Shanghai massacre". They attacked in March 1927, and the April 12th purge was directly in response to Communist attacks on the national government. The Communists plainly started the armed conflict even as the Warlord Period was still ongoing (Chiang wouldn't take Beijing and end the Beiyang government as a serious rival to power until the next year.)

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u/verrius Jan 18 '25

They did put them down for most of WW2, and were very happy to let the Nationalists actually fight the Japanese while they hid in the hills and got ready to stab them in the back.

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u/MercyYouMercyMe Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

This isn't true. Read a book.

There was never a moment where Mao just had enough with the government and took up arms, they never put them down.

First of all the civil war started in 1927, Mao wasn't party leader until 1935.

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u/iceteka Jan 18 '25

First of all I didn't say he was the 1st general secretary of the party. Everyone knows Mao, I used him to say the communists but I think you knew that.

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u/MercyYouMercyMe Jan 18 '25

Everything you have said is wrong.

There was never a moment where [the communist] just had enough with the government and took up arms, they never put them down.

I already told you why this was nonsense, read a book. Maybe investigate what happened before 1927.

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u/OrangeESP32x99 Jan 18 '25

Taiwan’s government was a military dictatorship until the late 80s early 90s.

They’ve changed of course, but people that don’t understand why the CCP formed never seem to bring it up. The former government was terrible. The communist government lifted millions out of extreme poverty.

Not defending authoritarianism in any form. I just find the history very interesting.

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u/m1sterlurk Jan 18 '25

It was a rocky road getting there, but you are right.

One of the scariest notions in history to me is the notion that the mass famine that happened in China as a result of the Great Leap Forward was something that was "allowed to happen" because nobody was willing to tell Chairman Mao that one of his policies had practical concerns around implementation. If somebody had been willing to step up and simply point out the logistical problem to Mao, somewhere between 50 and 80 million people may have not starved to death and China's reputation for making things that are just plain janky wouldn't be so badly ingrained in our culture.

Chairman Mao felt that all were one, and that all Chinese should have equal responsibilities. He had an ideological purity streak that zombie Karl Marx would have perceived as completely insane until he met Pol Pot...who took things ever further. One of the ways Mao thought he would rapidly advance China's industrial development was to require all Chinese citizens to have a home smelter that would allow them to smelt steel from the ore they had laying around on their land to provide to the national government.

If you lived in mountainous areas, this was totally fine. If you lived on farmland...you ain't got coal and rocks full of iron ore just laying around. Nobody pointed this out to Mao, and strict enforcement of these quotas resulted in farmers melting everything from farming tools, framing nails, jewelry, doorknobs and eating utensils to "meet quota".

Not only did this result in catastrophic famine that killed an 8 digit number of people, the massive amounts of iron used throughout China's infrastructure made from the smelted scrap metal is of incredibly low quality. It has taken decades for China's infrastructure to start to recover from the failures that resulted from such low quality steel made from all sorts of fun random metals.

The great irony is that China opening up to capitalist markets around the world is what propelled their middle class into existence. Doing this also makes modern China more in line with Karl Marx's beliefs about how Communism should work than Mao's isolationist purity.

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u/skyxsteel Jan 18 '25

I had a chinese history class professor who lived through the cultural revolution as a kid. How he described it was how Xi's local governments are doing it now. Fibbing numbers to make themselves look good and demanding impossible quotas. Get bonuses while people starve. When Mao actually believed the bullshit he was being fed (who knows, maybe he knew but feigned ignorance), he exported "sueplus food" to poor countries.

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u/RyuNoKami Jan 18 '25

Part of the starvation was due to people straight up lying. You can't tell the central government that you have food for 100 million people when you got population size of 80 million but only enough food for 80 million. That's fine until another province is having a famine and the government takes food for 20 million to help the other province. Well now you are short 20 million, people are starving so they start to leave to greener pastures. Guess where they end up, the province that received the 20 million before. Well we can all guess what happens.

Don't get me wrong, it is still his administration and his fault but Mao did not intentionally want to starve his own people.

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u/skyxsteel Jan 18 '25

I took a chinese cold war history class and my prof lived through the cultural revolution as a kid. He fondly remembers all the backyard furnaces in his village. When the madness was going on, the local party governments would deliberately replant grains to make it look like there were bountiful fields.

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u/CyberCat_2077 Jan 18 '25

There was also the forced extinction of sparrows because they ate grain. Turns out they also ate insects, which ate far more grain than birds ever could.

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u/dcade_42 Jan 18 '25

For anyone reading this far. Vietnam also went too hard too fast trying to reach full communism. They also backtracked, and they now have policies more open to capitalism. Those policies are designed to slowly step toward full communism, which Marx never proposed as something immediate (as noted above.)

Full disclosure, I'm a communist who doesn't support either of the Communist Parties in these countries. I recognize the faults that did exist in the past and those that continue to exist. I don't discount the positive results though. I certainly don't think think capitalism has produced much better results, especially not unregulated (or nearly unregulated) capitalism.

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u/skyxsteel Jan 18 '25

I think like all systems, on paper it sounds great. But you eventually need to have people up in the hierarchy making decisions. This eventually gives way to greed, which causes all sorts of issues.

I will say, in a terrible way, thats what makes capitalism better is that it is designed to exploit this. Thats why capitalist countries were able to advance much faster in relation to soft industries and technology.

But it is important that we incorporate all elements to society. I'd trade a little bit of my comforts for knowing that theres a social safety net in case i lose my job, for example. Industries are regulated for a reason, because unchecked, that greed will destroy everything.

In short, i dont know what im saying and i'm just jumping around.

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u/gayspaceanarchist Jan 18 '25

Mao was a great man

Terrible leader though

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u/sabrenation81 Jan 18 '25

It's a complicated topic and people don't like complex topics, they want it to be simple. People want a well-defined good guy and bad guy in every conflict. When it's just a whole lot of shades of grey and both sides are kinda fucked up, people don't know how to react to that so they start to build alternate narratives and ignore facts. See: the current conflict in Gaza.

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u/love-supreme Jan 19 '25

Of all the possible examples, that’s maybe the worst one, it’s a completely one-sided occupation and genocide

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '25

[deleted]

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u/OrangeESP32x99 Jan 18 '25

I agree. Their system works to keep China stable and they have a long history of civil wars.

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u/_learned_foot_ Jan 18 '25

I am not sure that roughly 80 years or so is considered a long time between civil wars in China. So, not sure their stability is more than a statistical error.

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u/C_Madison Jan 18 '25

The communist government lifted millions out of extreme poverty.

.... aaaaaaand killed many millions (after the civil war), because Mao was an idiot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign

But yeah, they did lift many people out of extreme poverty. That's something everyone should acknowledge, no matter what else one thinks of their system.

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u/skyxsteel Jan 18 '25

Where are we drawing the line here- after the cultural revolution?

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u/Jdazzle217 Jan 18 '25

No they fucking didn’t. Mao systematically raped the countryside causing 10s of millions of people to die of famine in the name of rapid industrialization that never happened. Deng’s economic liberalizations are what lifted people out of poverty.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '25

All forms of government are authoritarian, you mean censorial, and tough on dissidents, makes them more authoritarian in some ways, but they don't have brutal poverty that makes people homeless or incarcerated, which is a different form of authoritarian.

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u/MaesterHannibal Jan 18 '25

The communist government also killed millions. Tens of millions, actually

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u/jml5791 Jan 18 '25

How did the communist government lift millions out of poverty exactly? Millions were still in poverty until the late 80s.

If you mean once they became capitalist in the 90s and are now communist in name only (albeit keeping the communist centralised political control), then yes.

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u/mrjosemeehan Jan 18 '25

They kept the massacres going after they moved to Taiwan too. Didn't democratize until 1996.

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u/Crow_eggs Jan 18 '25

Well yes, but that's also something America and some other Western countries have generally endorsed as a way of dealing with rising communist movements. Google: Indonesian genocide

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u/Less_Service4257 Jan 18 '25

On paper the communists and nationalists formed an alliance against Japan's invasion. In practice the communists sat back and stocked up on Soviet weapons while the nationalists bore the brunt of fighting Japan. That fighting would restart post-WWII, and the communists would win, was always inevitable.

If mass executions caused uprisings then the communists would've themselves been overthrown long ago.

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u/Tombot3000 Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

The first United Front between the Nationalists and the Communists was actually before the conflict with the Japanese really took off. It was a united front against the Beiyang government founded by Yuan Shikai in Northern China. The Second United Front and forward were against the Japanese.

You're right about the Communists largely sitting out the defense of China against Japan though, as Mao's letter to the 8th Route Army demonstrated (as confirmed by the USSR ambassador to the Communists in Yan'an) with him describing their efforts IIRC as 70% recruitment, 20% subverting the KMT, and 10% fighting the Japanese.

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u/seaofblackholes Jan 18 '25

First of all... The nationalist government had restrictions on how many army divions the ccp could have, like a few vs nationalist's hundreds.

Secondly, the nationalist received the majority of the Soviet aid of all kind. The soviet did the opposite of supporting ccp during their civil war.

Your facts are either out of context, or just false.

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u/Less_Service4257 Jan 18 '25

Like I said, the nationalists did the bulk of the fighting. Of course they got most wartime aid. Difference is they used it instead of stockpiling it and waiting for the civil war to resume. Also the communists had continued USSR support, obviously the Soviets weren't supplying the nationalists post-WWII in their fight against communism.

The idea that the nationalists caused the war to resume is absurd. It resumed because the communists correctly realised they had the logistical advantage and could win.

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u/skyxsteel Jan 18 '25

Too bad the Japanese really fucked up the region. You could say that the CCP got a lot of help from the Japanese....

But there were a lot of geopolitics here and it wasnt just the Japanese creating favorable conditions and the CCP exploiting the war. Chiang Kai Shek's ROC was very nationalist and corrupt. The US also saw their existence as futile. So the US didnt want to aid the ROC too much.

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u/No_Raspberry6968 Jan 19 '25

Nationalist hoard tons of money from U.S. instead of buying weapon. Chiang's wife, Soong Mei Ling embezzled year worth of funding. They use FDR's money to support FDR's opponent, investing in America instead of buying military equipment such as planes. The widespread corruption and the warlord oligarchic nature of KMT result in the loss. If they are so competent in defeating Japanese, how come they lose? As if America had not supported KMT. The amount of mental gymnastics to justify incompetence of KMT is just insane.

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u/seaofblackholes Jan 19 '25

Mao was cool with an alliance government with KMT affer WW2, Chiang wanted winner takes all, so the nationalist party indeed resumed the civil war, when Mao had fraction of Chiang's army, Mao didn't have the advantage to win. 

The nationalist got the majority of Soviet support not because they did the bulk of fighting, but because KMT was the government in control. You had it reversed. Mao never got the continued support from USSR, and Mao was never Soviet's puppet. They had many conflicts over the years.

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u/Tombot3000 Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

The Nationalists were justified in setting restrictions after the Communists broke the first United Front and attacked Shanghai and other cities while the Nationalists were still fighting to unite China and end the Warlord Period, and the Communists never actually followed those restrictions anyway.

The USSR played along because the Nationalists were clearly the presiding government over China at the time with the CCP either being a political faction or a tenuously allied guerrilla movement depending on when we're talking about. Of course the actual government with a standing army received the majority of materiel support, but the Communists received extensive arms for their size along with highly effective training in recruitment, spycraft, and subversion that would later prove vital. Additionally, when the war to defend against Japan ended the USSR purposefully held cities in northeast China, Changchun being the most prominent one, far longer than necessary in order to allow the Communists to completely encircle it before nominally handing it over to the KMT as they were treaty-bound to do. It is untrue to say the USSR did "the opposite" of supporting the CCP. Heck, they even kidnapped Chiang's son and coordinated with their allies in the China to hold Chiang himself captive in Xi'an until Chiang agreed not to finish off the CCP when he had the opportunity to do so and instead agree to the Second United Front.

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u/seaofblackholes Jan 19 '25

You are cherry picking here, so I will cherry pick too. Who started the first round of massacre of the other party? Hint: CCP had little to none military power then, only political positions in the government.

USSR wanted a divided China, with the nationalist in lead. With led to the nationalist sold off half of Mongolia, so Stalin pressuted Mao in every way to stop advancing south against KMT when it was about 50/50.

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u/Tombot3000 Jan 19 '25

Limiting it to things controversially labeled "massacre" when it was predated by uprisings, an order to arrest Chiang, etc. is indeed cherry picking, but at least you were upfront about doing so.

USSR wanted a divided China, with the nationalist in lead. With led to the nationalist sold off half of Mongolia, so Stalin pressuted Mao in every way to stop advancing south against KMT when it was about 50/50.

What are you even talking about? There was no time Mao with 50/50 control over China stopped expanding in the south under pressure from Stalin. That literally never happened. Mao had far less power than Chiang until the turning point shortly after the Siege of Changchun, after which Mao basically steamrolled over the rest of Mainland China with Stalin's tacit approval.

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u/seaofblackholes Jan 19 '25

Stalin didn't approve shit for Mao to take over Mainland, he pressured Mao against it, and told him to not advance south of Chang Jiang river. Mao did it anyway. 

There were several different communist parties in China since the 1920s by the way. Did you know? Anyways, Mao took over his branch of the CCP leadership which was under heavy Soviet influence back in 1930s. 

The fact that you give the vibe that Mao is buddy buddy with Stalin and Communist International, and thinks that Mao ask for their approval is obvious that... you might have learned your chinese modern history from some youtubers who learned it from other youtubers, and none of these people had clear understanding of any of it.

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u/Tombot3000 Jan 19 '25

Your guess of how I might have learned modern Chinese history is laughably off base, just about the polar opposite of the truth. I'm confident I would win a duel of resumes with you, but I'm also not interested in making this thread about you and me as individuals.

Your comment did actually clarify what you meant and is an improvement, but you are being unpleasant enough that I'm dropping this thread.

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u/Fifth_Down Jan 18 '25

In the last the weeks of WWII the USSR conquered a portion of territory the size of Germany & France COMBINED and then handed total control of it to the Communist faction. The Civil War was without a doubt tipped towards a specific faction.

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u/my_son_is_a_box Jan 18 '25

Are you saying the US backed a horrible government to stop the rise of communism?

I am shocked!

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u/i-know-kung-fu-2 Jan 18 '25

Are you implying that the US is evil, on Reddit?

I am shocked!

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u/my_son_is_a_box Jan 18 '25

I mean, some of us know better than to trust the government.

Don't worry, it's actually good that things are harder for the average person than they were 20 years ago, or 20 years before that, or 20 years before that, or 20 years before that.

Just keep trusting when the government tells you that everything is okay. No need to think.

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u/i-know-kung-fu-2 Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

No no, you misunderstand. I was only admiring your bravery. To dare speak your truth, in an anti-US echo chamber such as this one.. It brought a tear to my eye.

May China bless you and yours.

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u/my_son_is_a_box Jan 18 '25

Ah yes, I shall get a medal from Xi Jinping, right?

I totally understand the real way the world works is that everyone really agrees with me, and anyone who disagrees actually has ulterior motives.

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u/leftofmarx Jan 18 '25

Why imply it? The US is evil, plainly, and is proud of that fact.

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u/i-know-kung-fu-2 Jan 18 '25

"the US is evil"

-leftofmarx

I am shocked!

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u/AddanDeith Jan 18 '25

Look at our history objectively. We are no better than many of the countries we disparage routinely and have the audacity to claim we are exceptional.

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u/leftofmarx Jan 18 '25

Yes, shocking that I became a Marxist because I realized the evil of the American empire.

Actually not shocking at all. Anyone who isn't evil would oppose the United States.

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u/i-know-kung-fu-2 Jan 18 '25

Just out of curiosity, what country do you support?

1

u/coldlikedeath Jan 18 '25

… things I didn’t know… or expect. Well shit.

1

u/qwertyuiopkkkkk Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

the civil war was prompted by the original government attempting to use mass executions as a way of dealing with the rising communist movement

This description shows how the West is unfamiliar with Chinese history.

At this time, the original government was the Beiyang Government, while the KMT (with the communists embedded within it) was in the midst of the Northern Expedition. Rather than framing the executions as measures to deal with the rising communist movement, they were more likely the result of struggles for control within the KMT, particularly between Soviet advisers/other KMT factions, and Chiang Kai-shek. (Chiang was not the KMT central authority at the time, the KMT central leadership was based in Wuhan.)

For further context, the KMT was essentially a coalition of southern warlords supported by the Soviet Union. During the Northern Expedition against the Beiyang Government, the campaign's unexpected success greatly expanded Chiang's sphere of influence, causing unease among other KMT factions and the USSR. This led to the KMT central leadership moving to Wuhan and attempts to strip Chiang of his party positions. Chiang used anti-communism as a tool to push back, as the legitimacy of the Northern Expedition was in the hands of the Wuhan government. (Communists who accompanied the KMT during the Northern Expedition carried out bloody land reforms in newly occupied territories. Many KMT officers came from landlord families in these areas, so Chiang's anti-communist stance helped him garner their support.)

After the Shanghai Massacre on April 12, Chiang established the Nanjing Government to oppose the Wuhan Government, known as the Ning-han Split. Many communists joined the Wuhan Government, but when its chairman, Wang Jingwei, discovered Soviet instructions to supplant the KMT, he decided to expel the communists on July 15. (Note that this occurred during a period of internal struggle in the Soviet Union between Stalin (supported KMT-CCP cooperation) and Trotsky (advocated for the CCP to break away from the KMT). )

Meanwhile, the Wuhan Government did not give up its efforts to suppress Chiang Kai-shek. When Chiang redirected part of his forces to defend against this, he suffered a defeat by the Beiyang Government in Xuzhou) and stepped down from his position.

Chiang Kai-shek soon regained power, but that is a much more complex story.

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u/Beliriel Jan 19 '25

And it was not a very nice government either. Afaik it was very dictatorial and borderline openly Nazi. Unlike the CCP, which is also basically Nazi but they try to be hush hush about it.

1

u/ForSaleMH370BlackBox Jan 19 '25

Not really. The winner is the government, as the previous poster pointed out.

0

u/Tombot3000 Jan 18 '25

Calling the civil war prompted by the April 12th purge is just wrong. The purge itself was in response to Zhou Enlai and other CCP leaders launching attacks and taking over all of Shanghai except the international concessions the month before, violating the truce of the first United Front. The Communists fired the first shots here and did so because Chiang had realized they, in response to his success capturing Wuhan and other cities, were preparing to coordinate with opposition in the Nationalist government to arrest Chiang as they felt this was the tipping point in the tenuous balance of power they had up until that point. The Communists plotted against him then attacked his allies when he caught on only to cry victim when they realized they were outmatched and Chiang retook control of Shanghai and, justifiably by the standards of the time, began executing active traitors to a government that was already in active civil war against the Beiyang government in the north.

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u/AsparagusDirect9 Jan 18 '25

The Confederacy shall rise once again…. Grrr

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '25

[deleted]

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u/PhoenixTineldyer Jan 18 '25

It's all relative.

~ State motto of Alabama

5

u/CavalierIndolence Jan 18 '25

They like to keep everything in the family over there, from what I've heard.

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u/runForestRun17 Jan 18 '25

The way i choked on my coffee reading this. Lmfao

3

u/20_mile Jan 18 '25

Everybody's salty that Shelbyville figured it out before them...

-3

u/Keleion Jan 18 '25

I’d rather have China (or Taiwan) take over.

9

u/_Deloused_ Jan 18 '25

Kinda has though

5

u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 Jan 18 '25

As it is currently, socially

2

u/Random_Rainwing Jan 18 '25

"The Fallen shall rise again." Sounding mf.

1

u/SomeGuyNamedPaul Jan 18 '25

https://theonion.com/south-postpones-rising-again-for-yet-another-year-1819565548/

2

u/AsparagusDirect9 Jan 18 '25

Next year. They’ll see

1

u/SomeGuyNamedPaul Jan 18 '25

Unless that didn't distil the methanol off the moonshine properly, in which case they won't be seeing much.

0

u/d01100100 Jan 18 '25

This is more of if the CSA leadership fled to Cuba, and then established a new government there in exile. They didn't, they truly lost, and they signed surrender documents.

10

u/v45tom Jan 18 '25

They did win, on the mainland, not on the island.

3

u/ciroluiro Jan 18 '25

Yeah, because the loser slavers fled the mainland after losing the civil war and invaded the island, and genocided the native population to settle in it.

1

u/deltabay17 Jan 18 '25

China is not Taiwan’s mainland.

10

u/modsworthlessubhuman Jan 18 '25

And the vile fucks that fled there are not heroes. Classic case of liberalism will love anybody as long as they hate communists. Truly disgusting

9

u/Autotomatomato Jan 18 '25

The civil war never ended broheim. The ROC have never formally ended the hostilities and the ROC constitution explicitly states it.

Protip: The palestinian civil war never ended either. These muddied waters are the opposite of "generally"

2

u/I_miss_your_mommy Jan 18 '25

That’s why they eventually got the security council seat at the UN.

1

u/redpandaeater Jan 18 '25

Having a permanent seat on the UNSC just because your country was one of the winners of WW2 is fucking stupid.

3

u/AccomplishedLeek1329 Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

The UN was designed to entrench the hegemony and power of the winners of the second world war over everyone else, and it has carried out that purpose excellently.

All international law is just a formalization of what actually lies underneath--hegemonic power. From tbe league of nations, to the UN, to the Congress of Vienna, it's all the same thing in the end.

If you want to change that, start ww3 and win it.

2

u/I_miss_your_mommy Jan 18 '25

Agreed, but no doubt China warrants a seat today in their own merits. Personally, I think the EU as a whole should replace France. Alternatively add Germany and India. If it weren’t for their nukes, there is no reason Russia would warrant a spot.

0

u/C_Madison Jan 18 '25

It's really interesting how that worked. Formally speaking it couldn't happen, because the ROC had the seat and had veto power. So, they could've just said "nope". But the situation was so obvious to everyone that all countries just went with it, even the ROC, though very much under protest. The paper yielded to reality.

(I know, people will argue that the General assembly evicted them from the security council. But if the general assembly had the formal right to change the security council even against the veto of one or multiple of its members the security council would look very differently these days)

4

u/ScrotumMcBoogerBallz Jan 18 '25

Yeah but in this case the "confederacy" still has a functional government and land.

18

u/RampantTyr Jan 18 '25

And as such they are the actual government of the island of Taiwan, but not mainland China.

-10

u/NotAComplete Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25

4th of June 1989

Edit: Downvote me harder Chinese shills. I know you can't have people reading my comment and asking what happened on the 4th of June 1989.

4

u/StopThePresses Jan 18 '25

You're being downvoted because this is the equivalent of just saying the word "slavery" while having a conversation about the US.

-2

u/NotAComplete Jan 18 '25

Yeah, slavery is totally treated the same in the US as what happened on the 4th of June 1989 is treated in China. Remind me what happened in China on that date?

2

u/StopThePresses Jan 18 '25

Tiananmen Square, obv. But that's not what I meant. I was saying it's a non-sequitur. You're just bringing up something that happened without making a point.

-1

u/NotAComplete Jan 18 '25

And what happened in Tiananmen Square? The point is to talk about it.

1

u/AccomplishedLeek1329 Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

Lol, you Americans are so incredibly brainwashed. You'd need to go to a Chinese village hours away from the nearest hospital to find someone who doesn't know about the Tiananmen massacre. 

The reality is simply that most Chinese either support the massacre, or don't see it as a deal breaker, as the protestors weren't only just protesting for democracy, they were also protesting against Deng XiaoPing's market reforms. 

There's straight up been Chinese celebrities praising the massacre, praising Deng for cracking down hard on the protestors and restoring stability to push through the market reforms.

The term gets censored on social media mostly because of circle jerking shit-stirrers like you, who try to use it to be provocative. 

Here's a hint for the real world outside the Reddit echo chamber. Most people are at the end of the day motivated by self-interest. Chinese people know their current high standards of living and wealth traces inexorably from the massacre. You're not going to get people to truly hate and oppose something they personally benefitted from

0

u/NotAComplete Jan 19 '25

The term gets censored on social media mostly because of circle jerking shit-stirrers like you, who try to use it to be provocative. 

Yes, THAT'S why it gets censored. Internet trolls. Please tell me you're not dumb enough to fall for that. LMFAO

The reality is simply that most Chinese either support the massacre, or don't see it as a deal breaker

There's straight up been Chinese celebrities praising the massacre, praising Deng for cracking down hard on the protestors and restoring stability to push through the market reforms.

And I'm the brainwashed one. Ok How many social points did you get to write this?

Having actually been to China, I'd never go back. Hong Kong was OK, but that was before the residents lost their rights.

1

u/ShenAnCalhar92 Jan 18 '25

Not to mention nearly 3x the per-capita GDP.

It would be like the US’s confederacy was pushed out and down to Key West, but maintained a huge economy, a higher human development index, and a 29% debt-to-GDP ratio compared to 84%.

3

u/paper_liger Jan 18 '25

So if the Confederacy just picked up and moved to California.

1

u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 Jan 18 '25

Taiwan is in a state of d diplomatic ambiguity.  CCP are more powerful, but really don't want to unify via force.  Taiwan also wants to trade with CCP for obvious economic reasons (language and location).

So both sides say they are all one China but don't officially recognize they mean different things. 

If Taiwan called itself Taiwan then the CCP would be forced to recognize they're a different country and would likely have to start the invasion to save face internally. 

That and TSMC is a golden goose.

Xi is a power hungry dictator who has a massive state security system that enforced his desired world view, as we're seeing here.  Enforce a world view long enough, children will never learn the reality, and children grow up to vote. 

And this post is why I will never visit CCP.  Taiwan is the shit though, Chinese and Japanese culture combined and good cheap food.

-1

u/C_Madison Jan 18 '25

CCP are more powerful, but really don't want to unify via force.

That was true for the longest time, but with Xi fully consolidating his power and having stated multiple times that by the 100 year birthday of the founding of the PRC (2049) China will be one again there are various signs that this doesn't hold any more. The CCP would obviously still prefer a peaceful integration, but they are seriously preparing to take Taiwan by force.

2

u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 Jan 18 '25

There are many different debates about this. 

Xi is modernizing the Chinese military to be on par with the US.  With over a billion people you can also have the numbers for a meat grinder. 

But at the same time, the one child policy is creating a more dramatic demographic emergency than most of the rest of the world ever dealt with.  Multiple generations of a birthrate of 1 child per women.  Now that the older generations are getting older, the economy is stalling out.

Combine the demographic issue with the standard of life people are getting used to and some estimates that he realistically only has 5 years to do it.  That's why Trump's election is so fortunate for him, now there's an easily bribable leader at the top.  Maybe they can pressure Putin to give Trump his long covered Trump tower Moscow? 

So the best Taiwan can do is make itself a challenging target to invade and hope to outlive Xi and that the next dictator of China is more amicable.  Though they're having their own population crisis so that's also an issue.

2

u/elperuvian Jan 18 '25

yes but China is a geopolitical rival so having military bases in Taiwan makes sense.

4

u/Jugales Jan 18 '25

It is key to the US island chain strategy. Basically in the direct center of the islands used to control trade in the seas east of China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_chain_strategy

1

u/elperuvian Jan 18 '25

Yes, a map of Chinas coast makes very clear how America propping up Taiwan is a very hostile and deliberate move towards China, you can only get away with those if you are the hulk of the world

1

u/USPSHoudini Jan 18 '25

Cadia still stands as long as one Cadian still lives!

1

u/Yetimang Jan 18 '25

Yeah but they didn't win in Taiwan.

1

u/blind_disparity Jan 18 '25

No we don't lmao, we call whichever side we're allied with the legitimate government and the other side terrorists

1

u/skyxsteel Jan 18 '25

...except the ROC government evacuated to Taiwan. If the CSA evacuated to Alaska and was thriving there, it would still be the CSA government.

1

u/RampantTyr Jan 18 '25

And I recognize that Taiwan has its own legitimate government, on that island. The CCP holds the rest of China so they are the legitimate government of that territory.

1

u/IamTheEndOfReddit Jan 18 '25

No, we don't have some standard of reducing information to the point of being useless. A government controlling a lot of land was reduced to controlling one island

1

u/MaesterHannibal Jan 18 '25

If the Confederates had won and the Union had fled to Hawaii, the Confederacy would also have been the actual US government. Still, I personally would refer to the Union as the legitimate government

1

u/RampantTyr Jan 18 '25

That is an absurd analogy for several reasons. But if the Confederacy had won the civil war we would refer to them as the legitimate government. Especially a hundred and fifty years later.

1

u/Kolikilla Jan 18 '25

We will find out when the ccp decides they are ready to roll the dice on their try to finish it.

2

u/RampantTyr Jan 18 '25

If they do it will be a bloodbath. That might not stop them, but it will cost a heavy toll.

1

u/n10w4 Jan 18 '25

yeah plus once all Govs of the world recognize it as such, that's the way it is.

1

u/Draiko Jan 18 '25

"YOU DIDN'T WIN YET, ASSHOLES!"

  • ROC

1

u/dusjanbe Jan 18 '25

Neither the CCP or KMT claimed Taiwan when they was founded nor when they started to fight to Chinese Civil War, not even when the second Sino-Japanese War started, not even when WWII started in 1939.

It was only after the US was attacked by Japan in 1941 and declared war. The US insisted on unconditional capitulation with all Japanese lands to be taken so both KMT and CCP did a 180 and started with "territorial claims" and those territory belonged to China since ancient times. Now if the US signed conditional peace with Japan to end WWII there would be no Chinese claim on Taiwan because there was no previous claim. And the CCP never won the Chinese Civil War entirely, the KMT still exist in Taiwan and no CCP leader has ever visited Taiwan.

1

u/MaceWinnoob Jan 18 '25

okay but when there is no winner then what

1

u/blacksideblue Jan 18 '25

Its complicated but not that complicated. The Nationalist party was also a bit corrupt themselves. Mao Zedong was basically the Chinese version of redneck Trump at the time and Chiang Kai Shek was Japanese educated and even served in Japan before the war so he was viewed like the Chinese version of Putin's bitch Trump.

No sides looked particularly clean to people that were too busy trying to rebuild to get educated on which faction had better potential.

1

u/Kurwasaki12 Jan 18 '25

And let’s not pretend Taiwan’s early years were as innocent babes in exile; the white terror would like a word.

1

u/deltabay17 Jan 18 '25

Yes, that’s why Taiwan is happy to be Taiwan and is happy to let China be the government of China. The whole world would be quite happy with that, except for China.

1

u/Kandiru Jan 18 '25

We would do if the CCP recognised Taiwan wasn't taken in the civil war. Generally a civil war ends, and both sides recognise each other. Or one side is eliminated.

1

u/AfricanNorwegian Jan 18 '25

Right, except technically the war hasn’t ended, as there are still two Chinas. It’ll only end when either:

  1. The ROC (Taiwan) is annexed by the PRC (mainland China)
  2. The PRC is annexed by the ROC
  3. Taiwan declares itself a separate country and the PRC recognising this.

Alternatively we will just be stuck in the current limbo indefinitely.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '25

You may wanna talk to about 80 million confederate flag flyers about that.

-2

u/ottawadeveloper Jan 18 '25

It would be like if the Confederacy won the civil war in the US except for the island of Manhattan. Then a vague truce was negotiated because nobody could win and settled into one country calling itself the United Peoples States of America and the other the United States of America (but known mostly as Manhattan). 

I'm not sure I'd say the PRC won the war outright, any more than South Korea won the war against North Korea.

7

u/snowden86 Jan 18 '25

You cant draw that comparison between the union/confederacy and the communist/nationalist party in china. When the Japanese invaded China in the years leading up to WWII, the leader of the Nationalist party tried to persist in his efforts to destroy the communist party even in the face of Japanese invasion. The communist party was instrumental in the fight against imperial Japan. If you know anything about the atrocities the Japanese army committed in China at that time, you may understand why Mao was considered a hero. Of course after the war, he pursued disastrous policies that killed many, but the transformation of China from a country divided by foreign power to an international superpower in a few decades is nothing short of miraculous. Your reductive logic of a very complex issue is pretty misleading.

2

u/Souseisekigun Jan 18 '25

I'm not sure I'd say the PRC won the war outright, any more than South Korea won the war against North Korea.

Do you have any idea how silly this sounds? They control 99% of the country. People call them China and the other Taiwan. They have the UN seat. 180 countries recognize the PRC, only 12 recognize Taiwan. It's not a North Korea / South Korea kind of deal where they both control half the country and both have international recognition. The PRC won dude, let it go.

0

u/ShenAnCalhar92 Jan 18 '25

The PRC controls 99% of the land, sure, but they absolutely hate the fact that Taiwan has remained a functioning economy with so much less land and fewer people.

Taiwan has 3x the GDP per capita of mainland China, a significantly higher human development index, and 3x less debt-to-GDP.

China won militarily in 1949, but Taiwan has been winning economically for the last 60-70 years.

1

u/Qbert997 Jan 18 '25

Yeah, China is more poor. But it's a little bit silly to say Taiwan is "winning" just because of GDP per capita. China has, what, 1.5 billion people? Compared to the only other country with a similar population, India, China is doing pretty well per capita. 

You're comparing apples to oranges. If China's 17 trillion GDP isn't winning then neither is having a higher GDP per capita. 

-2

u/GlitteringHighway354 Jan 18 '25

I mean given that Taiwan isn't really China and had its own indigenous traditions and cultures that were repeatedly trampled upon by Japanese and Chinese imperialists I would say that the PRC won the civil war for China. Admittedly I could be missing something, my history here isn't quite as strong as other areas so feel free to correct me.

1

u/ohiooutdoorgeek Jan 18 '25

I’ll tell you those indigenous Taiwanese better start learning Chinese real quick

0

u/wOlfLisK Jan 18 '25

Technically the CCP never won though, they pushed to ROC back to Taiwan but couldn't finish the job. Then WWII happened and the war never really got finished.

-1

u/BrokenDownMiata Jan 18 '25

That is entirely out of order.

The PRC was established in 1949, and it took until 1950 for it to take control of areas like Hainan, which in 1944 had been designated as an SAR by the ROC.

Whilst the CCP was established before WW2, WW2 did not actually affect the Civil War in terms of territory claimed because both the Kuomintang and the CCP agreed to cease hostilities to fight the Japanese together (there’s an image of Chiang and Mao sharing a drink when the Japanese were finally defeated) but after WW2, surrendered Japanese were mostly surrendering in Manchuria, where the CCP was present, hence arming the CCP.

-5

u/Less-Squash7569 Jan 18 '25

Not in america