The Supression Campaigns

[Jerry Asher]

Whose choice is it to call the GMD/CCP military campaigns "Supression" or "anti banditry" or encirclement and to number them one to five? Can they not also be viewed as a single campaign.

[Stephen_Rynerson]

Jerry, the short answer to the first part of your question is that the term "bandit" became commonly used to refer to anti-government forces during the later part of the Qing dynasty and the practice continued over to the Republican era, eventually being applied to the Communists. There's a good summary of the origin and use of the terminology in Phil Bilingsley's Bandits in Republican China at pages 10-11: https://books.google.com/books?id=Qu5Ko ... ei&f=false

The answer to the second part of your question is that, yes, the whole thing could be classified as a single campaign if one were so inclined. It appears though that the GMD itself contemporaneously distinguished between the different offensives, presumably because they were sufficiently separated in time and because of the changes in command structure, composition of units, and tactics that took place between the different offensives. William Wei's Counterrevolution in China: The Nationalists in Jiangxi During the Soviet Period is the most thorough English language source I've found on the encirclement campaigns and he describes in detail the command shakeups and reorganizations that happened in connection with each failed campaign.

[Jerry Asher]

Steve: Many thanks: first for clarifying that it was a GMD label and then for suggesting the Wei resource to me. Copies of Wei work are available through our interlibrary loan program of the University of California. I'll be requesting a copy today. Thank you have a great day.

[Jerry Asher]

Steve--just finished reading Wei's book today. Thanks for the tip.

[Stephen_Rynerson]

You're welcome! Glad it was useful.