Nationalist China by today

The Hundred Regiment Offensive was a strategic mistake. The Japanese retaliation was highly effective and caused the Communist forces under Mao to shrink from 400,000 to 200,000 and never recovered during the war.

Mao's forces had no means to replace the weapons they lost because unlike the national army, they had extremely limited arms industry, lack of raw materials, nowhere to buy weapons and no one willing to supply them. Hence operations had to take into consideration how much weapons could be captured versus expended. Sometimes they would ambush the Japanese at night just to get them to fire their ammo so the guerrillas could pick up the brass later and reload them.

Large scale operations were not possible logistically.
 
But their level of support varied; and for much of the period they advocated a policy of "moderate" land reform, with hardcore land reform being used only when they were either secure, or trying to make sure the peasants had no choice but to fight for them.
In my opinion Chiang should have pursued land reform immediately post war, maybe even during the war with Japan. It may have been contrary to his way of thinking and against the interests of some of his land owning supporters, but it was the only way for the Nationalists to win. Actually some anti-Communist warlords, like Yan Xishan did some moderate land reforms and were well received.

One reason the Nationalist soldiers were unmotivated was because they were poor peasants who had nothing to gain from fighting the Communists while their counterparts were being promised land, or they were fighting to protect the land that was already distributed to their families. As one would expect, the civil war was about fighting for the Chinese dream: land ownership, not really about ideology.

The CCP may have based its claim to support on Chinese Nationalism, but the fact remains that they launched one offensive during the Sino-Japanese War, and Mao actively ignored requests from Moscow to launch more.
I think most people vastly overestimates the actual fighting strength of the Communist armies. As I explained in the earlier post, they had no logistics for major campaigns. It was an army designed for guerrilla warfare, not conventional stand up fights.

While its true the Communists only launched one major offensive, the Nationalists also only launched very few offensives. Nearly all of the major campaigns fought in China were defensive in nature. The Nationalists engaged in more campaigns because their forces were much larger and drew the lion's share of Japanese attention. The Communists also defended their turf when attacked, but these were smaller counter insurgency engagements. This should not be taken to indicate a lack of action in north China however, as the Communist forces lost half of their fighting strength in the COIN war, a much larger portion than the Nationalist forces in their theater.
 
The Hundred Regiment Offensive was a strategic mistake. The Japanese retaliation was highly effective and caused the Communist forces under Mao to shrink from 400,000 to 200,000 and never recovered during the war.

Mao's forces had no means to replace the weapons they lost because unlike the national army, they had extremely limited arms industry, lack of raw materials, nowhere to buy weapons and no one willing to supply them. Hence operations had to take into consideration how much weapons could be captured versus expended. Sometimes they would ambush the Japanese at night just to get them to fire their ammo so the guerrillas could pick up the brass later and reload them.

Large scale operations were not possible logistically.

The Japanese retaliation was indeed brutal, but it made for a propaganda coup for Mao and the Communists, which perhaps was the actual objective. For example, when General Giap launched the Tet Offensive, he knew that he couldn't hope to beat the US forces militarily, and in fact it was a military disaster for the Vietcong and the NVA, but rather he acheived his objective in turning public opinion in the US against the War.

Therefore, in the Communists case, the Communists had to launch the offensive not only to preserve their Nationalist credentials, but to provoke an elicit response from the Japanese that while it may decimate much of the Communists actual military strength and significantly reduced the area it actually controlled, it would in the process elicit popular support in the countryside and when the communists did return to the region would make them that much more receptive to the Communist message.
 
The Japanese retaliation was indeed brutal, but it made for a propaganda coup for Mao and the Communists, which perhaps was the actual objective. For example, when General Giap launched the Tet Offensive, he knew that he couldn't hope to beat the US forces militarily, and in fact it was a military disaster for the Vietcong and the NVA, but rather he acheived his objective in turning public opinion in the US against the War.

Therefore, in the Communists case, the Communists had to launch the offensive not only to preserve their Nationalist credentials, but to provoke an elicit response from the Japanese that while it may decimate much of the Communists actual military strength and significantly reduced the area it actually controlled, it would in the process elicit popular support in the countryside and when the communists did return to the region would make them that much more receptive to the Communist message.
I won't read that much into it. The offensive was launched because the perception was they were punching below their weight. It was mostly Zhu De's idea, and opposed by Mao and he blamed Zhu for it ever since.

In 1937 Mao had 40,000 men and this grew to 400,000 in two years with prospect for continued expansion. The Japanese Three All campaign wiped out half of the Communist forces, and it never grew back until the end of the war. How could this be considered a success at any level? I interpret it as a sign of Mao's lack of authority at the time. They recruited a massive force very quickly. But these men had little training/equipment and a lot of enthusiasm to see action. The pressure was too great for Mao to restrain.
 
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Interesting discussion. I honestly have no idea at this point whether Bmao, Faeelin, or tallwingedgoat is right or not, everyone keeps on bringing up such convincing points! :)
 
Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States fully understood what was going on in China, so therefore their advice to Mao and Chiang was flawed more times than not. The Chinese Communists launched one offensive, the Hundred Regiments, which was essentially a large scale sabotage mission, but they were successful in that.

For the most part it's considered a strategic disaster, especially in light of the Three Alls.

Stalin had a neutrality apct with the Japanese, but Japanese incursions into Soviet territory were a nightmare ofr the Soviets, and were a major reason for the USSR's decision to aid Chiang during the civil War and basically beg the CCP to not stir shit up.

(Chinese-Soviet relations, 1937-1945: the diplomacy of Chinese nationalism‎,
by John W. Garver
is a fascinating look at this topic).

Had Mao followed Stalin's advice to launch more offensives against Japan (which I'm not sure he actually did since until 1945 Stalin had a neutrality pact with Japan), Mao would have whittled his military forces down and not had enough left to fight the Civil War both the Nationalists and Communists knew would have to be fought once the Japanese were gone.

But then your argument that Chiang shouldn't have attacked the CCP doesn't seem relevant.

Just because one launches more offensives doesn't necessarily entitle one as being more 'Nationalist'. Whatever Mao's methods, he played his hand very well during the Japanese Invasion, and it gave him a solid base of operations once the Civil War heated up again.

I freely acknowledge that Mao took advantage of the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese during the Sino-Japanese War to carve out a base of support while the KMT engaged in a fight for its life, opportunistically expanding into KMT territory despite the pretense of a United Front, while Mao gleefully hoped Chiang would lose so that all "Patriotic resistance" would follow Yenan's orders, yes.

tallwingedgoat said:
The Nationalists engaged in more campaigns because their forces were much larger and drew the lion's share of Japanese attention. The Communists also defended their turf when attacked, but these were smaller counter insurgency engagements. This should not be taken to indicate a lack of action in north China however, as the Communist forces lost half of their fighting strength in the COIN war, a much larger portion than the Nationalist forces in their theater.

Half of a much smaller force doesn't mean greater action. The Japanese knew the reat threat was Chongqing.
 
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