A world war can pause a civil war without ending it
1937-45 is the exhibit.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale72
Intensity76
Duration65
Tech shift40
Political impact88
Cultural memory52
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Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
How many died?
A wide band, often about 6-10 million for civil-war related deaths across phases, overlapping the Japanese war and postwar campaigns. Treat any single number as a false census.
Did Japan pause the civil war?
It forced a united front and moved the main enemy, but both parties positioned for the next round. 1945 was a restart, not a blank slate.
Why did the Communists win?
Rural organisation, KMT inflation and corruption, Manchurian campaigns, and a more coherent political-military command. US aid was real and insufficient to offset legitimacy collapse.
What happened on 1 October 1949?
Mao proclaimed the PRC in Beijing. The ROC government relocated to Taipei. Both claimed to be the government of China.
How does this connect to the Korean War?
The new PRC intervened in Korea in October 1950. The US interposed the Seventh Fleet in the Strait, blocking an immediate Taiwan campaign.
The PRC became a great-power fact; the ROC became a developmental state on an island. Both claim 1911 and 1945 in different ways.
The Korean War froze the Strait long enough for two societies to diverge.
Lessons
Inflation is a front
1947-49 in the cities.
Do not read China only through Washington
"Who lost China" is a US question.
Leftover governments matter
Taiwan is not a footnote.
Victory armies get new wars
Korea 1950.
Unresolved
Death-toll bundling
What to include remains argued.
Strait political end-state
A live diplomatic question; not a military how-to here.
Archive access
Still uneven on both sides of the Strait.
Land-reform violence accounting
Local studies continue.
Shifts
Largest revolutionary founding of 1949
A Cold War earthquake.
US China policy trauma
McCarthy-era aftershock.
Two development models
Mainland socialism and Taiwan's later capitalist boom -- both children of the split.
Asian alliance map
Korea, Japan, and SEATO-era thinking all adjusted to 1949.
Outlook
Scholarship is bilingual now
English readers can finally use PRC and Taiwanese academic work in translation.
Memory will stay split
1 October and 10 October will not merge because a book is fairer.
Korea remains the first sequel
Any atlas that separates 1949 from 1950 is teaching badly.
Risk
unfinished politically
The 1946-49 armies are history. The political dispute across the Strait is not. This page records the former and does not operationalise the latter.
UN seat change (1971) and US recognition of the PRC (1979) were diplomatic sequels of 1949.
This page stops at history. It does not map a present campaign.