One thing has to be made perfectly clear: A peace accord President Ma Ying-jeou wants to negotiate with the People's Republic of China has nothing to do with Chinese unification. The pact is one to end formally the long Chinese civil war, which started or resumed right after World War II.
Chiang Kai-shek began to attack Mao Zedong's stronghold in Jiangxi long before the Japanese kicked off their undeclared war on China on July 7, 1937. Mao's defeated ragtag army took off for its Long March, and finally reached Yenan near Xian, where Chiang was kidnapped by rebels and had to agree to suspend the civil war in 1936. Chiang's Kuomintang decided to work together with Mao's Chinese Communist Party after what is known as the Xian Incident to resist Japanese aggression. Chiang was released on Christmas Day in that year and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident occurred the next year to lead the Japanese Empire to go to war with the United States in 1941. As soon as the Pacific War, a part of World War II, had ended, the war between Chiang and Mao began with a vengeance.
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