Editing Sino-Soviet split (section)

=== Reluctant co-belligerents ===
[[File:重慶會談 蔣介石與毛澤東.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, 1945]]
During the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]], the [[Chinese Communist Party]] (CCP) and the nationalist [[Kuomintang]] party (KMT) set aside their [[Chinese Civil War|civil war]] to expel the [[Empire of Japan]] from the [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Republic of China]]. To that end, the Soviet leader, [[Joseph Stalin]], ordered [[Mao Zedong]], leader of the CCP, to co-operate with [[Chiang Kai-shek]], leader of the KMT, in fighting the Japanese. Following the [[surrender of Japan]] at the end of [[World War II]], both parties resumed their civil war, which the communists [[Chinese Communist Revolution|won]] by 1949.{{Sfn|Zubok|Pleshakov|1996|p=56}}

At World War II's conclusion, Stalin advised Mao not to seize political power at that time, and, instead, to collaborate with Chiang due to the 1945 [[Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance|USSR–KMT Treaty of Friendship and Alliance]]. Mao obeyed Stalin in communist solidarity.{{Sfn|Kohn|2007|p=121}} Three months after the Japanese surrender, in November 1945, when Chiang opposed the annexation of [[Tannu Uriankhai]] (Mongolia) to the USSR, Stalin broke the treaty requiring the Red Army's withdrawal from [[Manchukuo|Manchuria]] (giving Mao regional control) and ordered Soviet commander [[Rodion Malinovsky]] to give the Chinese communists the Japanese leftover weapons.{{Sfn|Goncharov|Lewis|Xue|1993|pp=2–14}}{{Sfn|Clubb|1972|p=344–372}}

In the five-year post-World War II period, the United States partly financed Chiang, his nationalist political party, and the [[National Revolutionary Army]]. However, Washington put heavy pressure on Chiang to form a joint government with the communists. US envoy [[George Marshall]] spent 13 months in China trying without success to broker peace.<ref>Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, ''The China Mission: George Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945–1947'' (2018).</ref> In the concluding three-year period of the Chinese Civil War, the CCP defeated and expelled the KMT from mainland China. Consequently, the [[Republic of China retreat to Taiwan|KMT retreated to Taiwan]] in December 1949.