Following the failure of the Political Consultative Conference, China soon plunged into an all-out civil war. It was a hopeless situation for all those who pleaded for peace and democracy. To vent their anger and frustration, they could take to the streets, demonstrating against civil war, hunger, and the government, and in so doing risk arrests and their lives. Other than that, there was not much they could do. Yet in the intellectual marketplace of ideas, there remained a liberal forum at the center of which were the independent, nonparticipatory elite plus some MPG thinkers who had withdrawn from political engagement. Standing on the sideline, claiming impartiality, disclaiming selfinterests, pondering the future of China, and wondering where Chinese liberalism was headed, these liberal elements were a diffuse and unorganized coterie of university professors and intellectuals fighting a battle already lost. Theirs was the last voice, a swan song, or perhaps a requiem. Maintaining their faith in liberalism, they still spoke, desperately, of the continued necessity of a middle force representing the will of the people. Finding themselves at a crossroads, they could not help but wonder where they were going. The tragedy was that, as they faced the prospect of a final CCP victory and pondered what it meant for them, the road to democracy was closed long before they realized.

Earlier works on the civil war period have shown that the Nationalist government drove the liberals to the communist camp rather than the CCP winning them over.