129 - The Chinese Communist Revolution and the Korean War

We were talking last episode about how the western allies tried to contain the spread of communism in Europe, but I mentioned that Communism was spreading in Asia as well.  This is about to be a problem in China, which, on the face of it, seems an unlikely hotbed for communism.  Back in 1912, before both world wars, the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing dynasty, collapsed.  The Qing had ruled China since the 1600’s, but the dynasty had fallen into disarray, and China was really being ruled by a loose system of sort of feudal warlords.  When the dynasty collapsed in 1912, it was replaced by the Chinese Republic, but the republic’s hold on power wasn’t very strong, and in many places, the warlords still ruled.  In 1921, the Chinese Communist party was created, and in 1927, a civil war broke out between the communists and the nationalists, who were strongly anti-communists.