I wonder why everyone is talking about the Second Sino-Japanese War and later events when I deliberately specified that PODs could be as early as 1925, before the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang had grown hostile, and before Chiang Kai-Shek actually had control over the party (though I suspect it was something like the situation right before Stalin gained control over the USSR; theoretically, he didn't have power, but the chips were falling towards him).