A Communists' Diary

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December, 1934For numerous days now we have been marching, we left Jiangxi with over eighty thousand troops carrying things that belonged in an office rather than on a battlefield, perhaps that is one reason we lost over half of them when we reached Xiang. The Guomindang showed no mercy as they annihilated us (Trueman 2000-2009).

Rumors have now started to circulate throughout the remaining troops that Mao will take over the duties as commander, if this is true I can only pray that his decisions are better than those made by Braun. Some also say that we are no longer pushing for our base in Hunan; instead we will be going to Yanan in the north. This is going to be a long march, I hope whoever is leading us knows what they are doing (Trueman 2000-2009).

October 24, 1948The fighting here is fierce, the air raids and artillery shells have rained down upon us without pause.

We have already lost an abundance of men, we have to hold the line however; we cannot let the Nationalists escape from Heishan into Lin Biao’s forces coming in from the west, everyone is counting on us, the mighty tenth (Finkelstein et al., 2003).

Though many men have been lost our moral is still high, word has circulated that we have already taken control of the major supply routes from Jinzhou to Shenyang and all the way into the Jilin Province. That means no reinforcements for them; it’s just a matter of time before we finish them off (Finkelstein et al., 2003).

December 4, 1948We finally have the Nationalists trapped, we chased them from XuZhou all the way to Shuangduiji, and it took us nearly two weeks. We had a great deal of help along the way from the locals however, they fed us, gave us information, and gave us much needed supplies and when we got here we had even found trenches dug for us. We also took in quite a few defectors from the Nationalist side; I guess they knew we would win (Finkelstein et al., 2003).

Though we have them surrounded we haven’t done a great deal of fighting as of yet, word is we’re waiting for our tanks to show up. The tanks did an outstanding job surrounding and destroying Nationalist forces last month in Su County; gaining control over the mechanized equipment has really changed the way we are fighting (Finkelstein et al., 2003).

January 13, 1949We have been engaged in heavy fighting with the enemy now for nearly a month trying to take control of Tianjin. They have slowed us down tremendously by flooding a vast amount of the entire area over the last days causing us to acquire boats to attack them from. Word has come through the ranks that there is talk of surrender by the Nationalists in Beiping and that keeps our moral up (Xiang n.d.).

We have managed to redirect much of the flood water back into the canals nearby so we are told we will begin our main assault tomorrow. Now we can only hope that our troops from the west and our armored divisions from the east are also ready for the attack because if we win this battle the war may be at its end (Xiang n.d.).

July 31, 2009After the civil war China began its movement from an agricultural based economy to that of a manufacturer and serviced based economy. The first problem China faced in the struggle for economic growth was how to allow a communist government to coexist with market economics. The answer came as easy as the question; they would take advantage of the Pacific Rims geographic location to create Special Economic Zones (SEZ’s), open cities, and open coastal areas. Initially four SEZ’s were established; Shenzhen which borders Hong Kong, Zhuhai across the bay from Macau, Shantou across from southern Taiwan, and Xiamen just north situated on the Taiwan Strait. Now with essentially the entire east coast open for business, China’s economy began to sky rocket, jobs were created, wages rose, poverty declined, and citizens began living better lives. However, there are still obstacles to overcome, while coastal cities thrive the interior still suffers (De Blij, Muller 2008), something must be done to evenly distribute the wealth among citizens or another uprising may follow.

ReferencesDe Blij, John, A, Muller, Peter, O. (2008) Geography; Realms, Regions, and Concepts,Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley and Sons Inc.

Finkelstein, D.M., McDevitt, M.A., Ryan, M.A. (2003) Chinese war fighting: the PLAexperience since 1949, Armonk, N.Y. M.E. Sharp Inc.

Trueman, C. (2000-2009) history learning site: The long march, retrieved July 29, 2009from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/long_march_1934_to_1935.htmXiang A. (n.d.) Ping-Jin Campaign: Excerpts from civil war 1945-1950 retrieved July 30, 2009from http://www.imperialchina.org/PingJinCampaign-v0.pdf