Stalemate

During the stalemate phase of the war, beginning in 1939, Japan tried to subdue Chinese resistance by blockade. China’s main seaports were occupied, from the south to the north. In at least one, Foochow (Fuzhou), the occupation was only intermittent, but in most of them it was continuous. When, in 1940, France fell to the Germans, Japan took the occasion to advance in French Indochina and block the railroad that led from the coast to K’un-ming (Kunming) and the highways from the Indochinese coast to the interior.

For a time Japan induced the British to close the road that led from Burma (Myanmar) to K’un-ming in Yünnan, but the Burma Road would reopen and become one of the vital supply lines of the war. Then, following years of increasing tension, came the sudden outbreak of war between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and Japan on the other. The Japanese, taking advantage of their preparedness and of their favourable geographic position, quickly made themselves dominant on the coasts of east Asia. Their capture of Hong Kong and of Burma in 1942 shut doors by which goods had moved in and out of unoccupied China. The only routes that now remained to connect the Chinese with their allies abroad were the long and poorly constructed roads across Sinkiang (Xinjiang) and the air passage from Assam. Corruption on the part of Japanese officials and the skill of blockade runners allowed some goods to trickle through the Japanese lines along the coast.

Nationalist China had serious economic and social problems. Lacking modern industry and transport facilities, the western provinces struggled to support the huge armies and the government. The region was crowded with refugees, and some of its cities were bombed. The shortage of manufactured goods and the costs of war brought on inflation, which was intensified by the government’s fiscal policy. These factors caused great hardship and encouraged hoarding, speculation, and graft. The army, unable to take the offensive against the superior Japanese forces, steadily deteriorated. In the schools and universities, a shortage of books and equipment, malnutrition, and attempted regimentation by the government all had a deteriorating effect.

The government, too, was deeply affected by the war. It had lost its industrial and financial base in east China and the flower of its armies. The strong public support it had enjoyed during the early years of resistance waned and turned to apathy or hostility. The government was blamed for the ills of inflation, corruption, and heavy taxation. When the communists began to reappear as rivals rather than subordinates, the Nationalist government retaliated with repressive measures, which it also applied to other groups. Essentially an authoritarian regime, it tended to become more repressive and less efficient as the war dragged on. Yet with all these difficulties, the Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership refused to surrender or negotiate with Japan.

The scattered areas controlled by the Communist Party and its armies grew during the war until they covered large parts of north and east China. In these border regions and “liberated areas,” the regime was popular with the people. This was partly the result of economic and social reforms, which improved the conditions of the peasantry, and partly the result of the system of local government, which encouraged wide participation of the public through mass organizations (even though control was held firmly by the party). The army was also popular because of its good discipline and close relations with the common people upon whom it depended for existence.

During the stalemate period, relations between the Nationalists and the communists were embittered by many military clashes for which each side blamed the other. The communists did everything possible to strengthen themselves, whereas the Nationalist government tried to keep them confined by blockade and other means. In effect the Chinese Civil War was merely submerged, after 1938, in the larger war with Japan.

In the occupied regions, Japan tried to win support and lessen its military burden by setting up a puppet regime at Nanking (1940). To head it, the Japanese selected Wang Ching-wei, once an intimate companion of Sun Yat-sen, whose tradition Wang Ching-wei professed to be continuing. Japan also went through the motions of restoring to Chinese administration the French concession and the international settlement in Shanghai, which it had taken over after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet Japan was no more successful than it had been previously in inducing many Chinese of ability and integrity to serve in these administrations. Obviously, too, no important step could be taken by these regimes without the approval of the Japanese authorities.

Allied influence and the Japanese surrender

In the last phase of the war, from early 1944 to August 1945, some help was beginning to come to China from the outside, chiefly from the United States. War matériel was being flown from India, and Chinese pilots and mechanics were being trained. Japanese strongholds were bombed by U.S. and Chinese planes. In India the United States also was training and equipping Chinese forces that had taken refuge there after the fall of Burma. Yet the main theatre of war was far from China, whose armies by then were too debilitated to play an important part in the final campaigns.

The Nationalist government had been seriously undermined by seven years of war and inflation, while the strength of the communists, under Mao Zedong, had grown. As Japan withdrew divisions to fight in the Pacific islands, the communist armies were able to move in and organize more “liberated areas.” The danger of fratricidal war in the event of Japan’s defeat became obvious. The U.S. government was drawn into China’s domestic crisis because the United States had provided the main external supports—financial, military, and diplomatic—for the Nationalist government. The United States also had wished for China to take a place as a stabilizing influence in eastern Asia after the war. In various ways U.S. representatives in China tried to bring about a reconciliation between the Kuomintang and the communists. A fundamental difficulty, besides the bitter distrust and intransigence of both Chinese parties, lay in the United States’ position of trying to mediate between them while supporting one side, the Nationalists, as the government of China. Resumption of hostilities between the Nationalists and the communists seemed inevitable, and the fragile peace of the United Front collapsed shortly after the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.