.
China's political-economy gravitated to the communists even further since the Chinese people were becoming more nationalistic, in no small part to the Japanese invasion. Chiang Kai-shek's government was too weak at first to fight the Japanese and its subsequent concessions were humiliating to most Chinese. At first, only the CCP and its Red Army were willing to fight the invaders.
Along the same lines, Lowell Dittmer's "The Legacy of Mao Zedong- (1980) suggests that militarily, the Red Army grew stronger, while the Nationalist Army was always dogged by incompetence and ineffectiveness. Dittmer's work overall places great emphasis on Mao's ability to sense what factors were on his side, rather than any specific "genius- qualities. Like George Washington in the American colonies or General Giap in Vietnam, Mao was smart because he recognized factors were in his favor. He understood that the overall conditions of China lent themselves to a revolution. .
One of many problems with the "traditional- explanation is that if people bought into the revolution because it was meant to be "liberating,"" than how does one explain the post-war atrocities of the Mao regime? Did the people go along with these too, suggesting they were more interested in stability and nationalism than political freedom? Or were the people "betrayed?- If the latter is the case, than Taiwan would probably have encountered the same serious problems the mainland did, had it not allowed for market freedom, local elections in the 1970s, and full democracy from the late 1980s. Had China not abandoned radicalism in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaopeng, it might have spiraled even deeper into the abyss of the Cultural Revolution. Taiwan, too, may have ended up with serious social unrest had it not moderated its status in the 1980s.
The greatest weaknesses, however, maybe the most obvious ones. For starters, how much of China's poor performance could the KMT really have changed? Surely, the KMT could have been more progressive.