For those of us who have to explain to students and colleagues how the Chinese Communist Party seized power, Harold Tanner's new book will be necessary reading. His focus is the Liao-Shen Campaign, when 700,000 People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops, in control of the vast majority of Northeast China, won a decisive battle with a weaker National Revolutionary Army (NRA) force starting on September 12, 1948. Broadly speaking, Tanner addresses three main issues: (1) how the PLA survived the NRA onslaught following World War II and embraced better strategy under Lin Biao; (2) the importance, however contested, of building the rear areas in Manchuria; and (3) the transformation of a guerrilla army into a force capable of fighting positional warfare.

One of the biggest strengths of Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China is its unwillingness to be an uncritical celebrant of the PLA's highly problematic mythos. Tanner repeatedly shows how poorly trained and politically unreliable PLA soldiers in Manchuria could be. More important, he dismisses the notion that NRA troops were simply corrupt and cowardly. Whenever Lin Biao was able to command independently, he operated under a very simple rule: only fight battles you can win with overwhelming force. In most cases when the PLA achieved victory, NRA troops defending their positions were encircled and outnumbered two or three times over with no chance to retreat or rest. In some cases, a few hundred NRA troops resolutely defended fortified positions against thousands of PLA attackers. When the PLA attacked NRA defenses that were prepared and matched their numbers, such as at Dehui (pp. 76–79) and the Third Battle of Siping (pp. 89–96), they lost; even when they won, they did so at high cost.

Tanner explains what really separated PLA and NRA forces prior to March 1948: leadership and strategy. How the PLA survived the early postwar period was mainly a story about Lin Biao's ability to enforce his tactics across a pretty disorganized, rag-tag force that included former bandits, militiamen, and urban agitators; this process proceeded by fits and starts, followed by self-criticisms and collective responsibility. By contrast, Chiang Kai-shek could not rely on his generals, who were sometimes former warlords or members of rival factions, even if their soldiers were well equipped, thoroughly trained, and ready to fight. Shifting commanders with different strategies (defending cities versus striking out at PLA bases), including Du Yuming, Chen Cheng, and Wei Lihuang, left NRA troops isolated and confused (pp. 105–20). As in the War of Resistance, Communist forces did not try to attack large units or well-defended cities, nor did they particularly rate holding their own areas as crucial. The PLA fought a war of attrition while Chiang Kai-shek, who had lost his best units fighting Japan, argued with old warlords and clashed with sometimes clueless American advisers. Finally, Tanner argues that the transformation of the PLA into a conventional fighting force was not solely a product of Soviet aid, reiterating the importance of building the rear areas: Chinese military industries had grown during the same period of escalating Soviet aid and provided crucial support (p. 146).

Tanner dedicates a lot of attention to the military history of the assaults on Jinzhou and Changchun, both falling in October 1948, which seem to be the breaking point for the Civil War. Dysfunctional command structures in the NRA hobbled efforts to reinforce Jinzhou, which led directly to its collapse and the demoralization of forces in Changchun—a city that had held off siege for five months, incurring heavy military casualties and suffering mass starvation among the residents. While Tanner lauds Lin Biao's military prowess and the PLA's restraint (in contrast with the Nationalists), he also notes that, famously, Lin Biao's commanders largely ignored Lin's order to make Changchun a “dead city” (p. 227). Further, Tanner exposes how the siege of Changchun, and the humanitarian crisis precipitated by the PLA attack, contradicts the myth of the PLA as a fighting force whose history is unclouded by the moral fog of war (p. 220).

We know that the PLA was not the “main pillar” of resistance against Japan, and while lessons were learned in that conflict, the military prowess of the PLA was a product of the postwar era: building base areas, learning from their failures, and being able to rigorously apply those lessons across ranks. Some of Tanner's arguments seem speculative, especially considering the PLA's successes in achieving political and military discipline. To be fair to Tanner, the reality of the inner workings of the PLA during this crucial period will probably never be known with great clarity, because the crucial archives are not open. Consequently, Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China is the best available military history analysis of the Civil War for the foreseeable future.