The remnants of the government of the Republic of China (ROC), alongside many refugees, retreated to the island of Taiwan (Formosa) on December 7, 1949. The members of the Kuomintang (KMT), its officers, and approximately 2 million ROC troops took part in the retreat, in addition to many civilians and refugees, fleeing the advance of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP, who now effectively controlled most of mainland China, spent the subsequent years purging remnant Nationalist forces in western and southern China, solidifying the rule of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC).
ROC troops mostly fled to Taiwan from provinces in southern China, in particular Sichuan Province, where the last stand of the ROC's main army took place. The flight to Taiwan took place over four weeks after Mao Zedong had declared the founding of the PRC in Beijing on October 1, 1949. In addition, some of the ROC troops in Yunnan also fled to Burma, where the insurgency lasted until 1961.
ROC Army troops remained in control of Kinmen and other islands on the mainland side of the Taiwan Strait, and prevented the PRC from advancing towards the island of Taiwan through the Battle of Kinmen. The ROC continues to remain in control of Kinmen and other nearby islands on the mainland side's Fuchien Province (no territory has changed hands between the ROC and PRC since 1955).
After the retreat, the leadership of the ROC, particularly Generalissimo and President Chiang Kai-shek, planned to make the retreat only temporary, hoping to regroup, fortify, and reconquer the mainland. This plan, which never came to fruition, was known as "Project National Glory" and constituted the national priority of the ROC on Taiwan. The ROC did not abandon the policy of using force for reunification until direct exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait began in the 1990s.
Background
In 1895, the Qing dynasty was defeated by the Empire of Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War, forcing the Qing dynasty to cede Taiwan and Penghu to the Japanese Empire, which began its 50-year long colonial rule. As World War II ended, the Republic of China, who ousted the Qing dynasty in 1911, regained control of Taiwan in 1945 after the surrender of Japan and placed it under military occupation.
The civil war between the Nationalist Party of China (Kuomintang, or KMT for short) under Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Mao Zedong traced back to KMT's Shanghai Massacre in 1927, which triggered Communist insurgencies such as the Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising, as well as the formation of the Chinese Red Army. The first major conflict occurred in the middle of the Northern Expedition when both parties were supposed to work together to topple the Beiyang government and subdue various warlords in northern China (1926–28), effectively ending the First United Front. The KMT then conducted a series of encirclement campaigns against the Communist-controlled regions, eventually succeeding in the fifth one and forced the surviving Red Army on a strenuous retreat north towards the barren Shaanbei region. Chiang's insistence on purging the Communists continued despite increasing Japanese threat after the Jinan incident in 1928 (which first showcased the sheer arrogant brutality of the Japanese), the Mukden Incident in 1931 (which started the Japanese invasion of Manchuria) and the Shanghai Incident in 1932 (in which the Japanese openly displayed the ambition to conquer East Asia), leading to the Xi'an Incident in 1936 when disgruntled officers led by Zhang Xueliang kidnapped Chiang and forced him to agree to a Second United Front with the Communists against the Japanese. This animosity however continued through the Second Sino-Japanese War (1932–45), during which vast portions of China fell under the occupation of the invading Japanese Empire. This peaked in the New Fourth Army Incident in early 1941, in which an 80,000-strong KMT force ambushed a 9,000-man Communist division and killed most of the latter's officers and soldiers, citing that "the Communists attacked first", effectively ending any trust and further cooperation between the KMT and the CCP.
The civil war between KMT and CCP forces, which took a de jure hiatus during the Japanese invasion, entered its final stage in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Both sides sought to defeat the other and control all of China, and this need to eliminate the other party was seen as necessary by both Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, but for completely different reasons. For Mao, the elimination of the "old society" dominated by clans of wealthy oligarchs would forever end the feudal system in China, encouraging and preparing the country for socialism and communism, which he deemed to be the future for humanity; for Chiang, other warlords and political opponents were simply a great threat to his personal dominance within the central government, as evident in Chiang's long-held political philosophy of "[one] must quell the domestic before resisting the foreign" (攘外必先安內). While Chiang relied heavily on foreign assistance from the United States under President Harry Truman and the China Lobby, Mao had support from the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, as well as popular support from the impoverished rural population of China. The ideological unity of the CCP, and the experience acquired in guerilla warfare fighting the Japanese, prepared them for the people's war against the Kuomintang. Though Chiang's forces were well equipped by the US, they lacked effective leadership, political unity and sufficient ideological willpower among their ranks.
The conflicts between the KMT and CCP resumed in 1946. As the tide of war turned with the Communist victory in Manchuria, Chiang concluded in late 1948 that he needed to move to Taiwan; by the end of 1948 he had started shipments of China's important cultural artefacts and financial reserves to Taiwan. By 1948–1949, most of the northern mainland fell to the communists after the three decisive campaigns of Liaoshen, Pingjin and Huaihai. In January 1949, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as leader of the KMT and was replaced by his vice-president, Li Zongren. Li and Mao entered into negotiations for peace, but Nationalist hardliners rejected Mao's demands. When Li sought an additional delay in mid-April 1949, the Chinese Red Army — now called the People's Liberation Army — crossed the Yangtze River and captured the Nationalist capital Nanjing and the major city of Shanghai, later Guangzhou, followed by Chongqing and then Chengdu. Mao proclaimed the establishment of a new republic in Beijing on October 1, while Chiang fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), where approximately 300,000 soldiers had already been airlifted.
Relocation of forces and people
Future Chinese Cultural University founder Chang Chi-yun was the first to propose moving to Taiwan in 1948. Throughout four months beginning in August 1948, the ROC leaders relocated the Republic of China Air Force to Taiwan, taking over 80 flights and three ships. Chen Chin-chang writes in his book Chiang Kai-shek's Retreat to Taiwan (蔣中正遷台記) that an average of 50 or 60 planes flew daily between Taiwan and China transporting fuel and ammunition between August 1949 and December 1949.
Chiang also sent the 26 naval vessels of the Nationalist army to Taiwan. The final Communist assault against Nationalist forces began on April 20, 1949, and continued until the end of summer. By August, the People's Liberation Army dominated almost all of mainland China; the Nationalists held only Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, some parts of Guangdong, Fukien, Zhejiang and a few regions in China's far west.
Institute of History and Philology director Fu Ssu-nien spearheaded a rush to persuade scholars to flee to Taiwan, as well as bringing books and documents. Institutions and colleges like Academia Sinica, National Palace Museum, National Tsing Hua University, National Chiao Tung University, Soochow University, Fu Jen Catholic University and St. Ignatius High School were re-established in Taiwan.
In total, according to current estimates, a migration of between 900,000 and 1,100,000 people must have taken place to Taiwan from the Chinese mainland between 1945 and 1955. The prior population of the island, at the end of Japanese rule, is estimated as 6,500,000 (see also Population of Taiwan). Of these, the Japanese subpopulation of about 500,000 were mostly repatriated by 1946. The number of immigrants is not known for certain, however, since no precise census was made before or during Japanese rule. The census of 1956 counts 640,000 civilian migrants from the mainland. The size of the army was secret at the time. Taiwanese documents found much later count 580,000 soldiers. American contemporary intelligence, however, put the number at only 450,000. Additionally, some army personnel were discharged before 1956 and are therefore (or for other reasons) included in both numbers, while others were drafted locally and were not immigrants. Such considerations led scholars to the above estimate. It is noted that upper estimates of up to two or three million immigrants are commonly found in older publications. Immigration on a similar scale took place in Hong Kong at the time.
Liquid assets and artifacts
As the defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan, they stripped China of liquid assets including gold, silver, and the country's dollar reserves.
Chiang Kai-shek's mission to take gold from China was held secretly because, according to Wu Sing-yung, the entire mission was operated by Chiang himself. Only Chiang and Wu's father, who was the head of Military Finance for the KMT government, knew about the expenditure and moving of gold to Taiwan and almost all orders by Chiang were issued verbally. Wu stated that even the finance minister had no power over the final expenditure and transfer. The written record was kept as the top military secret by Chiang in the Taipei Presidential Palace and the declassified archives only became available to the public more than 40 years after his death in April 1975. It is a widely held belief that the gold brought to Taiwan was used to lay the foundations for the Taiwanese economy and government. Some also believe that after six months of the gold operation by Chiang, the New Taiwanese dollar was launched, which replaced the old Taiwanese dollar at a ratio of one to 40,000. It is believed that 800,000 taels of gold were used to stabilize the economy which had been suffering from hyperinflation since 1945. However, these beliefs turned out to be mistaken. According to a memoir written by Zhou Hong-tao, a long-term aide-de-camp of Chiang, the gold was consumed very fast after being brought to Taiwan and in less than two years 80% was already consumed for the funds and provisions for the troops.
The KMT also retreated with artifacts kept mostly in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. The National Palace Museum claims that in 1948 when China was going through its Civil War, executive director Chu Chia-hua and others (Wang Shijie, Fu Ssu-nien, Xu Hong-Bao (Chinese: 徐洪宝), Li Ji, and Han Lih-wu) discussed shipping masterpieces to Taiwan for the artifacts' safety. Other institutions, such as the Henan Museum, also evacuated their collections of cultural relics to Taiwan during the war.
The plan was not fully implemented and completed due to insufficient cabin space and differing opinions on the relocation of artifacts to Taiwan.
KMT forces attempted to destroy industrial sites, but workers were able to stop them at many such locations.
From Taiwan, Chiang's air force attempted to bomb the mainland cities of Shanghai and Nanking, but to no effect. Chiang's ground forces aimed to return to the mainland, but had no long-term success. Communist forces were left in control of all of China except Hainan Island and Taiwan.
As a whole, the Civil War had an immense impact on the Chinese people. The historian Jonathan Fenby proposes that "hyperinflation [during the Chinese Civil War] undermined everyday lives and ruined tens of millions, hampered by a poor taxation base, increased military spending and widespread corruption."
Plans to retake mainland China
Originally, the Republic of China planned to reconquer the mainland from the People's Republic of China. After the retreat to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek established a dictatorship over the island with other Nationalist leaders and began making plans to invade the mainland. Chiang conceived a top secret plan called Project National Glory or Project Guoguang (Chinese: 國光計劃; pinyin: Gúoguāng Jìhuà; lit. 'National glory plan/project'), to accomplish this. Chiang's planned offensive involved 26 operations including land invasions and special operations behind enemy lines. He had asked his son Chiang Ching-kuo to draft a plan for air raids on the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, from where many ROC soldiers and much of the population of Taiwan had origins. If it had taken place, it would have been the largest seaborne invasion in history.
Context of Project National Glory
The 1960s saw the "Great Leap Forward" in mainland China lead to catastrophic famines and millions of deaths, as well as progress by the PRC towards possible development of nuclear weapons. Thus, Chiang Kai-shek saw a crisis-opportunity to launch an attack to reclaim mainland China.