Although the war had been raging since 1927, a decisive moment was not achieved for decades. The fight between Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party had been put on hold by the Sino-Japanese War (WWII) but after the Japanese invaders were finally defeated hostilities immediately resumed. This new period of the Civil War would latterly be known as the Chinese Communist Revolution and Mao’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was far more successful against the KMT than it had been in the 1930s.
The Communists believed that the key to overthrowing the KMT national government lay in first seizing control of the northeast region of Manchuria. Manchuria was China’s most industrialised area and had been under Soviet control in the immediate aftermath of WWII. The Soviets had withdrawn in 1946 and both the KMT and PLA began to increase their presence in the region. For the first time since the Civil War began, the Communists’ operational strength in Manchuria was greater than the KMT.