JCC: Chinese Civil War
Communists
Nolan Ochsenhirt
Chair
Catherine Qian
Chair
GSMUN XX
Dear Delegates,
GSMUN XX
Our World, Our Future
Robin Schwartzkopf
Secretary-General
Harish Tekriwal
Director-General
Isha Gangal
Undersecretary-General for
External Communications
Jessica Kong
Charge d’Affaires
Parth Kotak
Undersecretary-General for
Logistics
Avery Gagne
Undersecretary-General for
Crisis Simulations
Annie Zhang
Director of Specialized
Agencies
Dharaa Rathi
Director of General
Assemblies
Kiersen Mather
Director of Press and
Publications
Ketty Bai
Director of Charitable
Giving
We are excited to welcome you to the Joint Crisis Committee: Communist
China at this year’s Governor’s School Model U.N. Conference! As delegates in
this committee, you will be representing various high-ranking officials of the
Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War. Your ultimate goal will
be a victory over the Nationalists and the establishment of a new republic. You
will need to think on your feet and come up with quick solutions while still
maintaining the prospect of a new Communist China in mind. Chairman Mao
Zedong will be represented during this committee by the dais; the committee
will be co-chaired by Nolan Ochsenhirt and Catherine Qian. Now, a short
introduction to your chairs!
Nolan Ochsenhirt, a senior at Maggie Walker, is excited to be able to serve as
the chair for this committee. He has been a member of MLWGS’s Model UN
club for all four years at Maggie Walker, and has attended many conferences,
including VAMUN, WMHSMUN, and JHUMUNC. Nolan also vice-chaired a
committee at GSMUN XVIII and chaired a committee at GSMUN IXX. Along
with doing Model UN, Nolan is also a member of the school’s a cappella club,
Deadbeats, plays bass in a three-person band, and volunteers around Richmond.
He also enjoys watching TV, playing video games and cooking.
Catherine Qian is a junior at Maggie Walker who has participated in Model U.N.
since the good old days (middle school) and is thrilled to be chairing a jointcrisis committee this year. At previous GSMUNs, she was the vice-chair of 2015
Election of Aung San Suu Kyi and a co-chair of INTERPOL. Outside of Model
UN, Catherine is also active in quizbowl, enjoys classical music, mentors kids in
violin, and serves as the vice-president of the Teen Advisory Board at her library
branch. Passionate about foreign policy and international relations, Catherine
looks forward to some enthralling debate and Maoist propaganda.
As delegates of this committee, you are expected to come prepared to debate at
a high level about important issues of the time period. Make sure you have
enough research to back up your arguments; just looking over the background
guide won’t be enough to tackle the crises that may get thrown at you.
Delegates are also expected to write a comprehensive position paper, formatted
in Chicago Manual Style (CMS). At GSMUN, all position papers are expected
to follow the Maggie Walker honor code; plagiarism will not be tolerated in any
means. If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them towards the
committee chair email ([email protected]). We are looking
forward to meeting you in committee! Good luck!
Your chairs,
Andrew McCullough
Director of Technology
Mr. Max Smith
MUN Club Sponsor
Nolan Ochsenhirt
[email protected]
Catherine Qian
[email protected]
Committee Overview
Since its inception in 1921, the
Communist Party of China (CPC) has grown
significantly in number and influence.
However, much of its history has been spent
in an alliance with a modern enemy- the
KMT, or the nationalist party, a group which
now poses the greatest threat to the party in
its short history. The task at hand is a grave
one, one which will indisputably determine
the fate of the greatest nation on Earth. The
decisions made in the upcoming committee
will decide the outcome of the war that now
faces the great nation of China. The
committee will not come without its fair share
of challenges; a multitude of issues present
themselves as an obstacle to Communist
unification, which must be solved
simultaneously to the main issue at hand. The
country is a dynamic one, and new issues may
arise in the middle of important committee
discussions. The committee will operate on
the assumption that the Nanchang Uprising
has just taken place, marking the date as
August 1st, 1927; this means that almost all of
the history mentioned in the background
guide will be fresh in the minds of every living
Chinese person. The war has just begun, and
it is up to this committee to decide the CPC’s
course of action. Important political leaders,
like Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong, will be
counting on your decisions. They will not
only determine the fate of communism and
the fate of China, but they will determine the
fate of the world.
Background
The CPC originally existed within the
First United Front with the Nationalist Party.
On July 1st, 1921, the CPC was officially
founded in Shanghai where they convened
later that month for the First National
Congress. There, they adopted official
objectives for the party which were: to
overthrow the bourgeoisie through a
revolution of the proletariat, to reshape the
country for the labor classes, and to ultimately
eliminate class distinction. After the initial
formation of the party, it grew to new heights
between the years of 1923 and 1926. During
this period, more specifically in 1923, the
Communist Party began to work with the
other major political party- the Kuomintang
(KMT).
Kuomintang, also known as
Guomindang or simply the Chinese
Nationalist Party, was officially founded by
Sun Yat-Sen in 1912 out of a revolutionary
group called T’ung Meng Hui, known in
English as the Revolutionary Alliance. This
group was headed by Sun himself, and the
original revolutionary group was created seven
years earlier in 1905 by revolutionaries in
Tokyo; however, by 1912 Sun felt the need
for an organized party. Sun’s position was
summed up in his Three Principles of the
People, including nationalism, democracy and
economy. Sun immediately took up socialism
as his major economic policy, which helped
him elicit support from the Soviet Union.
The same year he began to receive support
from the Soviet Union, plans came together
to merge the Nationalist Party and the
Communist Party, which went smoothly, and
they became known as the First United Front,
formed as an alliance between the KMT and
the CPC. The initial goal of the First United
Front was to create a new China without the
presence of warlords in which the nation was
more united; however, due to existing
differences in the two major parties that
formed the party, the main goal was created
with the addition of secret goals of both the
CPC and the KMT. The CPC, less powerful
in Chinese politics at this point than the
KMT, set about to try to extend national
communist influence through using the
KMT’s noticeably larger influence. The
KMT, realizing it had the upper hand, wanted
to try to control all communist influx by itself,
from the inside. Very shortly after its
formation, in 1925, the head of the KMT, Sun
Yat-Sen died, leading to a slow decrease in the
party’s power. This left an empty seat for
control of the entire First United Front, and a
power struggle between Wang Jingwei and
Chiang Kai-Shek began; eventually, Chiang
Kai-Shek would become commander-in-chief
of the Front’s new army, funded by the
Bolsheviks, known as the National
Revolutionary Army. On July 1st, 1926, the
army began mobilizing for Chiang Kai-Shek’s
new conquest, and on July 27th, the Northern
Expedition began.
The Northern Expedition lasted from
1926 into the present day and was designed to
unify China under the KMT by ending the
rule of local warlords. In a matter of three
months, the KMT and managed to both take
and move the capital to Wuhan. Four months
later, troops from the National Revolutionary
Army entered Nanjing, capturing it two days
later, leading to a new centralized government
being set up in Nanjing in April of 1927.
However, once the expedition reached
Beijing, Chiang Kai-Shek betrayed the
communists, massacring many and arresting
important communists leaders including his
only major opponent for power, Wang
Jingwei, which solidified his power in the
Front. It’s important to clarify that not only
was Kai-Shek being constantly undermined by
CPC members as part of their goal to spread
communism throughout China, he was also
alarmed when a ship captain, Li Zhilong, a
communist, specifically relocated his warship
in order to support local uprisings. This
betrayal became known as the Canton Coup,
and its repercussions are still being felt today.
That brings us to the more immediate issues
of this committee, many of which are results
of acts already committed.
In April of 1927 KMT forces began
an all-out assault on hundreds of Communists
in a purge known as the Shanghai Massacre- a
day hopefully never to be forgotten. The
event was caused, most likely, by the start of a
new leftist government in previously
conquested capital Wuhan as well as a CPC
uprising in Shanghai. This was the earliest
event that the CPC still currently has to cope
with, and it triggered a period which is still
going on known as the White Terror, marked
by anti-Communist beliefs among many of
the nation’s populus. This event marked the
end of the First United Front; therefore, the
end of Communist and Nationalist
cooperation. This marked the first time since
the CPC’s creation that it is truly on its own.
Not to be understated in its importance, as
well, this event marked the end of Bolshevik
support for the Nationalists, which leaves the
current leader of the Nationalists, still Chiang
Kai-Shek, without foreign aid to fund his
military pursuits. When thinking back on the
tragedy, one thing remains clear- the CPC
must find a way to reassess their military
strategy. After the event, the situation
between the CPC and the KMT can no longer
be considered peaceful.
Most people today consider the start
of this conflict to be the Nanchang Uprising,
which took place approximately four months
after the Shanghai Massacre. It was a CPC
violent uprising against the KMT forces, and
was designed to recoil against KMT purges
against CPC members. The uprising was led
by CPC members Zhou Enlai, Tan Pingshan,
Ye Ting, Zhu De and Liu Bocheng, as well as
He Long, who didn’t join the party until after
the revolt. The CPC along with some KMT
left-wing members fired the first shots on
August 1st, solidifying themselves as the
leaders of the revolutionary movement; at 2
am on the same day, the newly created
revolutionary army began its formal attack on
Nanchang. However, as Wang Jingwei’s
counterattack came in, the revolutionary
forces withdrew two days later, on August
3rd, to look for further forces and foreign aid.
This event marked the beginning of a modern
struggle, a war which currently is the biggest
task for this committee. Not only should the
committee consider both the massacre and
the uprising- whether it’s the loss of
thousands of men and the failure of the
uprising as a sign that action should be taken
carefully, or whether the bloodshed created an
urgency that must be tended to- it should also
consider specific steps it’s going to take in the
future to thwart a major threat to Chinese
unity. The CPC is in an impossibly difficult
spot. There are matters at hand in the present
day which must be solved if success is even to
be considered a possibility: the revolutionary
army lacks training, money, and men. The
committee will need to secure foreign aid to
fund the war effort, but it will also need a
formal army, which means both training and
recruitment- and it will need a strategy, a plan
to conquer the Nationalist threat. The top
priority at this moment for this committee
and for the Communist Party in China is to
plan, to figure out a strategy for the war. The
bloodshed and chaos that resulted from the
massacre left the CPC in a moment of
desperation, and the revolt, which essentially
doubled as a war declaration, was a result of
that desperation. However, the CPC realizes
this is a possibility, and the prime time for
taking back control of the nation is now; it’s
up to this committee to take advantage of that
possibility and this opportunity.
Of course, there is more than just the
Nationalists to worry about. The Japanese are
heavily opposed to Chinese unification, as it
could pose a direct threat to their national
security. It would be even worse, perhaps, if
China was unified under a political doctrine
they didn’t agree with, such as Communism,
and would be even more reason for Japanese
involvement in China. It would be safe to
say that Japan is not content with remaining
an outsider in this crucial time in Eastern
Asian history. Another reason that the
Japanese pose a serious threat to the
revolutionary army and China as a whole is
simply the fact that China is entering a period
of political division, war and revolution, and
there is no better time to attempt to gain
some territory. The threat of Japanese
invasion is like a stormcloud that constantly
hovers over the Chinese mainland, and now is
a better time than ever for a Japanese
invasion. Japan has been attempting the
immediate past to stop unification, if possible,
or at least slow it to a crawl. Japan could not
only intend to threaten the Chinese political
agenda through secretly supporting major
political leaders- which is a very real and very
likely possibility- but could also resort to
violence, through invasion or through
skirmishes on Chinese-controlled land close
to areas easily accessible to the Japanese.
Needless to say, the Japanese are a threat that
should be closely considered and taken into
account during this committee; forgetting
about our neighbors would be a grave
mistake.
Analysis
One of the first things that will need
to be addressed is the issue of foreign aid; the
USSR is currently not involved in either the
Communist or the Nationalist war efforts, and
due to proximity and economic interest, will
likely look into funding the war effort in the
near future. It would likely be in the best
interest of the CPC to elicit aid from the
USSR, as its support of communist ideology is
perhaps alone in the world. Realistically, the
largest issue that will face the CPC and its
army in the upcoming years in the war will be
organization and ensuring the army is ready to
take on both the Nationalist forces and the
Japanese. It is imperative, however, that the
army not be weakened by the Japanese in its
fight against the KMT, as this would almost
assuredly cause the destruction of the war
effort altogether. It will be important for this
committee and the CPC in general to keep an
eye on the Japanese as they advance the war
forward; the Japanese are set to invade at any
moment. If the CPC could find a way to get
the Japanese to weaken the KMT, it would
heavily weaken the KMT and swing the war in
their favor, so that is one way in which the
CPC could actually use the Japanese to their
benefit. The ultimate goal, of course, is
establishing Communist control over the
entire country, but it is important to note that
the most major KMT fortifications will be in
major cities like Nanjing or Beijing- the key to
wearing down the opposition in a war
comprising such a massive amount of
geographical space is taking small victories,
and to achieve victory the CPC will have to
win a large number of small victories. In
summation, there are three major issues to
solve: how is the CPC going to fund the war
effort, or possibly solicit foreign aid, how is
the CPC going to deal with the Japanese
external threat, and how is the CPC going to
go about defeating the KMT in a battle for
China’s dominance. It will be a long war, and
there are so many possible outcomes of every
single event, but with the right strategy and
diplomacy, Communism may prevail in China,
and the brilliance of the CPC will be felt for
the whole world to hear.
Questions to Consider
1. How is the revolutionary army going
to go about creating a force which has
the power to defeat the KMT- and
how will it fund this?
2. Is the best choice to attempt to
defend against the Japanese or attempt
to avoid them altogether- and how
will the CPC go about doing this?
3. Which geographical locations would
be the best for defensive positions
against the KMT- and where should
the CPC strike first?
4. Who will be the leaders of the war
movement- who will be the best to
issue commands on the battlefield?
5. How will the CPC go about
convincing the USSR and other
countries to help with the war effort?
6. What other plans could be made to
increase the chance of victory?
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