In Class Work 2/12

1. The woodcut on page 22 shows Guomindang officers taking animals and food from a house. The miserable appearances of the family in the house suggests that life under Chiang Kaishek's regime would be terrible. This would make becoming a communist much more appealing to the Chinese people; people who were aware of the communists' ideology might have believed that such things would never happen in a communist country, where everybody would work together and share their food and animals with each other.
2. The Chinese Communist Party poster on page 23 shows the communists ideology of peasants working together collectively, an image which may have gained the support of China's peasant population. It also shows that the goal of this cooperation was to assist the Red Army in resisting against the Japanese invasion. The communists may have been taking advantage of the unpopular decision of Chiang Kaishek to refuse to open a united front against Japan and instead focus on eliminating the communists.
3. Source A in the book is a statement made by Chiang Kaishek about the state of the Guomindang. Chiang Kaishek seems to be trying to understand and explain why his organization was failing against the communists. This is valuable in that it is a primary source and it reveals some of the Guomindang's ideology, stating that people should know have spirit and discipline, caring for more than just themselves. Chiang Kaishek seems to believe that the lack of these qualities in the Guomindang was helping the communists win. However, it does not give any specific examples of what "right and wrong" are, and very little context is given to the source. Meanwhile, the excerpt from Mao: The Unknown Story was written by a historian many years after the communists won the Chinese Civil War, with the purpose of teaching what the author saw as the true reason for the communist victory. This is valuable because Jung Chang writes very different interpretations of why the communists won, saying that it was mostly due to foreign aid and the use of fear. Some claims, however, are not supported with any significant evidence.