ABSTRACT
The Civil War era (1945-1949) is one of the most under-studied periods of Chinese history. Not since Suzanne Pepper's seminal study1 has there been a major treatment of this period. While republican history has experienced a significant revival in recent years, rescuing it from themes of disintegration and verdicts of failure,2 most of the key works have stopped short of the Civil War, with the new conventional terminal date being the outbreak of the War of Resistance in 1937.3 There have been important exceptions to this rule – especially in studies of students and workers, who were so active and important in the social movements of the late 1940s.4 But in general the reap-
praisal of the republican era has focused on the prewar years – and the Guomindang's reputation for nation-building has, to a large degree, been protected from any close scrutiny of the Civil War era.
