Fighting on all Fronts (50 page)

Compare that to the KMT army which drew on assistance from imperialist supporters. Russia, for example, sent US$250 million in 1928,
⁶⁸
a figure much greater than the paltry US$15,000 per month spent on its Comintern operations across the Orient.
⁶⁹
The USA subsidised Chiang from 1933.
⁷⁰
Even before Pearl Harbor it provided the “Flying Tigers” air squadron plus many millions of dollars in additional military aid.
⁷¹
Consequently KMT officers lived in luxury though their troops earned very little at a time when inflation stood at 243 percent.
⁷²
Yet, notwithstanding the generosity of its foreign backers, Chiang’s army still took 60 percent of the Nationalist budget.

Mao claimed that “there are two totally different states in the territory of China. One is the so-called Republic of China, which is a tool of imperialism… The other is the Chinese Soviet republic, the state of the broad masses of exploited and oppressed workers, peasants, soldiers and toilers”.
⁷³

It would be a mistake to idealise the role of the CCP, however. The Communists were ideologically tied to Stalinism (if strategically wary of Russian foreign policy demands) and were ready to accept aid from imperialism if it was on offer. In late 1944 and early 1945 there were serious negotiations between the CCP and the USA.
⁷⁴
A recent account suggests that “the picture of the ‘revolutionary holy land’” given by Snow and others was “too rosy…the view from the archives reveals a greater importance for local military superiority, a far greater role for coercion, and a smaller role for popular participation”.
⁷⁵

There are, for example, serious question marks about how genuine the 1940 “New Democracy” policy
⁷⁶
really was as there was only one party inside the Red bases. The so-called “three thirds” system of that year assigned just one third of official positions to CCP members but was largely a sham.
⁷⁷
Although the CCP provided a channel for a popular movement against foreign occupation and domestic exploitation, the broad masses did not and could not control it.

The move to united front propaganda and moderation of land policy also led to the CCP taking a more conservative attitude towards women than previously. By 1942 “the CCP abandoned any attempt to mobilise women behind appeals to emancipation and gender equality”.
⁷⁸
Women’s economic participation was encouraged but political involvement was discouraged. Nevertheless, the people’s war had a dynamic of its own so that over the course of the conflict:

women [were] mobilised by the climate of social change in which they lived. This was a climate for which the CCP was partly—particularly
through its call for gender equality and women’s emancipation at the start of the war—but only partly, responsible.
⁷⁹

Criticisms need to be seen in the context of the situation of the KMT and Japanese occupation and, while recognising the limitations, the achievements of the people’s war under CCP leadership should not be underestimated. Stalinism in Russia reflected a new exploiting class but in Yenan there was little surplus available and survival depended on Spartan equality and strong ideological commitment.

People’s war and inter-imperialist war employed contrasting strategies. Chiang prioritised defeating the Red Army over fighting the invader but after 1937 he had no choice but to mount resistance. Tokyo’s highly efficient conventional army had limited numbers of personnel so it directed its chief blows against the Nationalist government, hoping to rapidly annihilate it. There were therefore some major set-piece battles such as the struggle over Wuhan (June to October 1938) during which a million Chinese soldiers were wounded or died.
⁸⁰

Chiang’s troops were successful on occasion. Victory in 1938 in the Battle of Taierzhuang, “the Chinese Stalingrad”,
⁸¹
destroyed the myth of Tokyo’s invincibility. To the extent that the Nationalist government survived, “trading space for time” did not fail entirely. But it was costly and inefficient and did not take into consideration the consequences for civilians. For example, in 1938 dykes on the Yellow River were breached to create a temporary watery barrier to Japanese troops of up to 20 miles wide. But 6 million people were displaced and an estimated 800,000 died.
⁸²

The alternative was to employ guerrilla tactics. A commentator wrote in 1940 that “the question on the Chinese side can be reduced to this: How effectively can all of China’s military forces employ the method of fighting used by the Chinese Communists between 1930 and 1936?”
⁸³
Such methods required popular backing, to feed and hide partisans after hit and run operations and provide enthusiastic fighters capable of local initiative rather than depending on orders from a hierarchy, as well as belief in a cause rather than obedience under the whip. Such attributes were entirely lacking on the Nationalist side and cursory attempts at partisan warfare were abandoned.
⁸⁴

For the CCP such methods came naturally
⁸⁵
and were indeed a necessity. Firstly, they lacked the arms to fight prolonged conventional battles.
Their own weapons production was minimal so arms had to be seized from the enemy. During the civil war period, for example, 80 percent of guns and 70 percent of ammunition were taken from the KMT
⁸⁶
and Japanese supplies played the same role later.
⁸⁷
It was not sheer bravado for Mao to ask: “Should we fear…the fact that [the enemy] has weapons? We can find a way to seize his weapons”.
⁸⁸
Secondly, the CCP’s Red bases were behind Japanese lines. Once again the Red Army was surrounded by an enemy that was far superior in firepower and guerrilla tactics were again applicable. The situation was summed up by this slogan: “The enemy advances, we retreat. The enemy camps, we harass. The enemy tires, we attack. The enemy retreats, we pursue”.
⁸⁹

Even so, conditions were difficult. In addition to the “three alls”, the Japanese adopted the KMT tactic of installing troops into a string of blockhouses at regular intervals across the countryside. This was designed to intimidate the population and smash resistance. At the lowest point the population of the Red bases fell from 44 to 25 million and troop numbers declined by a quarter.
⁹⁰
Yet the people’s war proved resilient. A study of one CCP-controlled area shows how hatred of occupation and privileged Chinese elements was a factor:

Villages during the war were like small boats drifting on a vast ocean, tossed about and threatened with being swallowed by mounting waves. The villages in Licheng county during the war suffered tremendously from the repeated mopping-up operations of the Japanese army. Villagers had their houses burned, were deprived of their domestic animals, and lost family members. In order to resist the Japanese forces, the leaders of the villages organised guerrilla corps. Villagers were held responsible for providing guerrilla soldiers with food. Given the Communist Party of China’s policy of making the “distribution of burdens more reasonable and equitable”, better-off families must have been forced to take on heavier burdens in providing food for the guerrillas. Some of the well-off families who were displeased with such an arrangement sometimes opted to defend the village by collaborating with the Japanese Army but ended up being executed as “collaborators”.
⁹¹

Partisan warfare effaces the division between soldiers and civilians. In Red areas large numbers were involved in bodies such as the “Youth National Salvation Association”, “Women’s Association” and “Peasants’ Association”.
⁹²
Snow estimates that in 1943 the Red Army was backed by a militia of 7 million with another 12 million in anti-Japanese associations.
⁹³
Liu Shao-ch’i, an army political commissar during the war, wrote:
“Who will fight Japan? Too many think it should be done by specialists, summed up as ‘Let the Eighth Army do it.’ Wrong. The army must indeed fight the enemy, but the people—every single Chinese citizen—also ought to be armed and ought to fight the enemy”.
⁹⁴

Mao’s partisan strategy generally involved avoidance of frontal attacks. This has led some to suggest he was no more committed to fighting Japan than Chiang, both leaders being intent on marshalling resources to fight each other after the war. A Comintern representative within Red territory itself made this criticism,
⁹⁵
and the Nationalist press claimed the Red Army devoted twice as much effort to the civil war as Japan: “the ‘move and hit’ style of Communist guerrillas, much lauded by Mao, was in fact mostly moving, and very little hitting”.
⁹⁶
Perhaps such accusations spurred the Eighth Route Army to launch the “Hundred Regiments” anti-Japanese offensive in 1940. It proved costly and led directly to Okamura’s “three alls” policy.

However, a simplistic comparison of Communist and Nationalist contributions in the fight against Japan is unfounded. Chiang had Allied backing, a large-scale state and over 4 million troops. The Communists began with around 50,000 soldiers, though this had grown to 500,000 by the end.
⁹⁷
Another way of considering the issue is to observe that, excluding Manchuria, half of the Japanese army was involved in fighting the Chongqing government while the other half (with puppet troops) spent their time confronting the Communist threat behind its lines.
⁹⁸

Ultimately neither the Nationalist nor Communist war strategies succeeded. By 1944 Japan was close to victory in China. It was the combined pressure of US bombing (including the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945) and the Russian invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria (on 9 August 1945) that led to the formal ending of war on “Victory over Japan” Day (V-J Day) on 14 August 1945.

In 1937 China prefigured the Second World War in the way it interwove massive domestic social struggles and inter-imperialist war. It continued to reflect these characteristics even after peace was concluded. It was at that moment that the question of what the fighting had been for arose. Would the end of occupation bring improvements for ordinary people or just the victory of one imperialist gang over another? The answer to that question would have far-reaching consequences. Fenby describes what
the return of Nationalist government meant: “Peasants who had taken part in [Communist] land reform were publicly executed. Farmers who had campaigned for rent reductions were buried alive, sometimes together with their families”.
⁹⁹

The key post-war events took place in the north east province of Manchuria: “Nearly one sixth the size of the United States, with a population of about 45,000,000, Manchuria in 1945 was the richest single region of East Asia in natural resources, developed and potential power sources, industry, transport facilities, and agricultural production”.
¹⁰⁰
For this reason the Nationalist government’s slogan was: “China will survive or perish with the Northeast”,
¹⁰¹
believing its fate depended on preventing a Communist takeover there.

A simple chronology demonstrates how quickly imperialism showed its hand. Even before V-J Day the former enemies—Russia, the USA and Japan—came together behind Chiang Kai-shek. Having “traded space for time”, the KMT government’s writ only ran in the south west. So, on 10 August 1945 Washington pledged to help the Nationalists retake the north: in addition to 60,000 US troops already deployed south of the Great Wall, 53,000 Marines and half a million Nationalist soldiers were to be shipped or flown into Manchuria.
¹⁰²
The same day Stalin warned the Nationalist foreign minister that “the Chinese Communists would get into Manchuria first”
¹⁰³
unless the Soviet Union also played its part in preventing that eventuality. Moscow therefore approved a treaty granting Chiang “full authority” as soon as military operations were concluded.
¹⁰⁴
The following day Chiang incorporated the 1 million or so puppet troops who had been collaborating with Tokyo into his own forces. He asserted they had been an “underground army” for the KMT all along.
¹⁰⁵

Only Japan was missing here. But rumours abounded of a secret agreement between the Nationalists and the Japanese military
¹⁰⁶
and three days after Tokyo’s surrender General MacArthur’s Order Number One ordered Japan to “hold intact and in good condition” all its conquests “pending further instructions”.
¹⁰⁷
These came from Chiang who openly negotiated with General Okamura, notorious author of Japan’s “three alls” policy and forced prostitution. The latter formally agreed to “surrender unconditionally…to the forces specified by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, all arms, ammunition, equipment, supplies, records, information and other assets of any kind belonging to the Japanese forces”.
¹⁰⁸
Privately he promised to “assist the National Government” and “resolutely chastise” the Communists.
¹⁰⁹
As a consequence:

for the better part of a year after the war was over, much of the Japanese Army remained in China, most of it fully armed and frequently still in charge of rail zones, cities, and even many towns in North China…there were in eastern and north western Manchuria eighty thousand Japanese troops as late as 30 January, 1947, completely equipped and operating under the command of Chiang Kai-shek’s headquarters. Such troops were being issued rations that were at least twice as generous as those given to Nationalist soldiers…some Japanese comprised a part of Chiang’s officer corps. Chiang’s efforts to make use of the defeated Japanese were dwarfed, however, by those of his ally, the warlord Yen Hsi-shan. Yen not only employed Japanese officers but also was determined to use the entire Japanese army stationed in his north western province of Shansi against the Communists, which he succeeded in doing for nearly four years after the war’s end.
¹¹⁰