The Chinese Civil war came out of a century of disaster for the Chinese people. It was far from the only war to happen in a power struggle that naturally occurs when a vacuum is created, in this case the fall of the Qing. As the Qing were on their way out, the nation was ravaged by armed conflict from fanatical quasi christian groups (the Taiping) to xenophobic terrorists (the boxers). The Chinese Civil War, between Mao's communists and the Kuomintang, came from those horrid times. It wasn't like the American Civil War or the English Civil War. Those conflicts started over long brewing issues that finally turned to war. China was hardly a state, and if the communists weren't fighting the Kuomintang, then somebody would have been fighting somebody else.