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The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1333-1334



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Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. By Odd Arne Westad. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8047-4484-X. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 413. $24.95.

Odd Westad has written an excellent overview of the conflict between the Communist and Nationalist (Guomindang or GMD) forces. Decisive Encounters is the only work thus far to draw on recently available Russian and Chinese (both Nationalist and Communist) primary sources to tell the story of the civil war.

Professor Westad's goal is: "to look at the . . . history of the 1946-50 civil war and attempt to understand why the CCP came out victorious" (p. 7). In doing so, he concentrates on the political and military history of the war, making occasional excursions into economic, social, and cultural history when necessary. In the process, he skillfully weaves together international, national, and local issues and gives attention to developments on both the Nationalist and Communist sides. Westad's analysis follows that of other scholars in certain respects: (a) he points to the ways in which the war with Japan exacerbated tensions and poverty in the rural areas and weakened the GMD; (b) he shows that the GMD was still much stronger than the CCP in 1945; and (c) he demonstrates that the GMD squandered its advantage through poor decision making while the Communists built upon their own initial strengths and moved successfully from the defensive to the offensive.

More than this, however, he challenges us to rethink issues that have been considered central factors in explaining the Communist victory. First, he questions the assumption that the Communist forces came to power with significant peasant support and that this support was won through land reform. Most peasants, he points out, did not participate in the civil war: their main concern was survival. Land reform, Westad states, "probably did the Party as much harm as good in its military and political struggle to defeat the Guomindang" (p. 10). Second, Westad downplays the significance of the GMD's economic mismanagement as a direct cause of its collapse (p. 11).

While his primary goal is to relate a history of the civil war that will explain the reasons for Communist victory, Westad's account is informed by a second, underlying agenda: to show how the lessons that the CCP drew from its victories in the civil war ironically led Communist leaders to make disastrous decisions in the next fifty years. In his view: "The militarization of society, the deification of the supreme leader, and the extreme faith in the power of the human will and of short, total campaigns—all came out of the lessons the Chinese Communists believed to have learned from the late 1940s" (p. 328). Thus throughout his account, Westad pays particular attention to the emergence of Mao as a charismatic leader who could over-ride his comrades and to the struggle between Mao's tendencies toward radical policies and the more cautious approach of other party leaders.

The book is well written and free of jargon. The author has supplied an excellent "Brief Bibliography" in which he introduces major sources in Chinese and English. Generalists with an interest in Chinese, American, or Cold [End Page 1333] War history will find this book valuable, as will modern China specialists.



Harold M. Tanner
University of North Texas
Denton, Texas

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