Did the communists contribute against the Japanese ? I've read contradicted claims...

Did the communists contribute against the Japanese ? I've read contradicted claims. Some say they didn't do shit in order to fight the Kuomintang after. Other say people's war and guerillas contributed more against the Japanese than the Kuomintang.

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The version I've heard is that the Nationalists waged a more typical war, whereas the Communists waged a guerilla war, similar to you.

I'm not knowledgeable on the topic, but I am interested.

I mean, is it even possible to answer this question? Didn't PRC numbers swell over the years? Can you strictly categorize everyone who fought as nationalist or communist? It just seems like a nonsensical question to me. It's not like commie supporters all around the country went into hiding and withheld contributing to the war effort, right?

They contributed only very little, by raiding supply lines every now and again, and explicitly conserved their strength in preparation for restarting the civil war later. The KMT's National Revolutionary Army did the bulk of real fighting, defending cities, and inflicting casualties on the Japanese, losing much of their fighting strength and almost all of their veteran German-trained elite troops in the process.

They did jack and shit. The Nationalist, aided by America, fought back. The communist just sat back playing with their dicks.

Yes but did not fight nearly as much as the KMT, sometimes they just hid in the hills while KMT and Japan fought it out and would show up late. They were useful in gathering a larger front against the Japanese but weren't totally reliable, they also did not have as good means of fighting because they didn't receive that support the KMT did from the west and were mostly used to fighting in a guerrilla fashion.

Nationalist (including regional warlords):

1,700,000 (1937)[1]
2,600,000 (1939)[2]
5,700,000 (1945)[3]
Communist:

166,700 (1938)[4]
488,744 (1940)[4][5]
1,200,000 (1945)[6]
Japan:

600,000 (1937)[7]
1,015,000 (1939)[8]
1,124,900 (1945)[9]
(Excluding Burma campaign and Manchuria)

Flag of the Republic of China-Nanjing (Peace, Anti-Communism, National Construction).svg Collaborators: 900,000 (1945)[10]
Casualties and losses
Nationalist:
Official ROC data:
1,320,000 killed,
1,797,000 wounded,
120,000 missing
Total: 3,237,000[11][12]

Other estimates:
1,319,000–4,000,000+ dead and missing,
500,000 captured,[13][14]
3,211,000–10,000,000+ total[14][15]

Communist:
Official PRC data:
160,603 killed,
290,467 wounded,
87,208 missing,
45,989 POW.
Total: 584,267[16]

Other estimates:
446,740 total[15]

Total:
3,800,000–10,600,000+ military casualties after July, 1937.
500,000 captured,[13][14]
266,800–1,000,000 POWs dead[13][14]

Chinese civilian losses:
17,000,000–22,000,000 civilians dead[12]


Chinese Communists definifely contributed their fair share. KMT was more important though simply because they had far more men.

[Citations needed]

Why do people who haven't read even one source comment on historical issues like they are infallible geniuses who know the truth?

>This is a highly contentious and politicized issue whose intellectual roots stem back to both the Sino-Japanese War and the aftermath of the CCP's victory over the KMT. The Nationalists popularized a claim during the war that the CCP was devoting only a fraction of its resources towards fighting the Japanese and was building a powerbase to attack the KMT after the war. Conversely, Mao conducted a public relations drive, including the famous Dixie Mission to Yan'an, that argued the CCP had a wide-scale and determined guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, in contrast to the lackadaisical and corrupt KMT.

>The swift and unexpected victory of the CCP in the Civil War gave currency to the CCP's wartime line. The negative opinions of Chiang Kai-Shek held by many American officers and would reenforce the CCP's contention that the KMT squandered whatever influence it had with the Chinese people because of the Nationalists' rampant corruption and incompetence. Subsequent commentators in the 1960s and 1970s like Chalmers Johnson and Mark Selden would further argue that the needs of guerrilla warfare created a large-scale peasant force where nationalism coupled with land-reform in turn transformed the CCP into a mass movement led by Mao.

>Now each of these broad interpretations of Chinese history has their partisans, current research into the Sino-Japanese War is presenting a more differentiated and less politicized picture of events. One of the basic problems of the CCP perfidy vs. KMT corruption debate is that they are predicated upon the notion that China in the 1930s could have fought and sustained a modern war against an industrial power like Japan. This is built on a number of assumptions about China's actual strength and ignores the real limits faced by the KMT.

>The NRA's battles around Shanghai in 1937 is a case which has benefited greatly from scholarly reevaluation. Chiang deployed many of his best troops to defend the city and they were destroyed by the Japanese in savage fighting. Older scholarship, such as Frank Dorn's The Sino-Japanese War saw this as a baleful commentary on Chiang's military acumen. However, such condemnation excluded the political ramifications of taking a stand and offering the Japanese fierce resistance.

>The KMT was on a precarious ledge in 1937 and a strong battle, even if a defeat, was vital to show the other powers like the Soviets that the Nationalists would not wither away under Japanese pressure. The throwing away of precious NRA units was a cold strategy, but it is unlikely they could have achieved different results if better deployed. The KMT's main strategic goal was to outlast Japan and it was one of the few strategies that was viable for Chiang. Criticism of the endemic corruption within the NRA and the overall poor performance of the KMT's military should take this strategic priority into account. The fact that the KMT resisted Japan was a victory of sorts, even if the KMT lost. Given that the KMT managed to hold out throughout the duration of the war, this strategy possesses some validity.

>The CCP's guerrilla activities has also undergone a similiar transformation in recent historiography. Whereas older scholarship has taken Mao's PR campaign at face value, the general trend among contemporary historians is to be more skeptical of CCP claims.

>The peak of CCP activities was Battle of the Hundred Regiments in late 1940 in which CCP Eight Route Army attacked Japanese and puppet-Chinese armies in Central China. Although the CCP would use the Hundred Regiments as an example of its commitment against the Japanese, the Eight Route Army's losses prompted a drawback in massed operations. Japanese counterinsurgency, the Three Alls "kill all, burn all, and destroy all," did pacify the countryside, but limited the extent to which Japanese forces could expand into China.

>From 1940 onwards, the CCP husbanded its forces and presented its limited operations as part of a larger shadow war against Japan. The Ichi-go offensive in 1944 allowed the CCP to expand into areas the Japanese abandoned in their drive to occupy regions of southern China. This was a winning strategy for the civil war, but not exactly a mobilization of a people in arms as argued by Selden. The collapse of the Japanese military in 1945, which caught Mao by surprise, meant that the CCP was in the right place and time to utilize captured Japanese equipment. The fact that the CCP had preserved its remaining forces allowed it to present itself as a force for order in the resulting power vacuum.

>So this leaves the question of who did the majority of fighting against the Japanese- the KMT or the CCP?. The problem with framing the question in these terms is that both the CCP and the KMT were not fighting a war in the sense that the other Allies were.

>Of the Allies, Britain's approach most closely resembles the KMT, yet Chiang arguably receives more flak than Churchill even when the latter pursued questionable operations to prove Britain was still in the fight such as Greece in 1941. Neither the Soviet nor American grand strategies was to hang on and outlast the Axis, but they had the resources to safely rely upon a strategy of total defeat of the enemy. Such an option was not open to either Mao or Chiang, so they pursued different strategies. Both the CCP and the KMT wanted to survive the war, and they both did, rendering the question of who did the most fighting somewhat moot.

>Sources
>Gordon, David M. "The China-Japan War, 1931-1945." The Journal of Military History 70, no. 1 (2006): 137-182.
>Peattie, Mark R., Edward J. Drea, and Hans J. Van de Ven. The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2011.
>Spector, Ronald H. In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia. New York: Random House, 2007.

Good post user

We need more of you.

>Both the CCP and the KMT wanted to survive the war, and they both did, rendering the question of who did the most fighting somewhat moot.
That makes sense.
Thanks for the post kind user.

He makes a good point about the KMT strategy essentially being the same as that of the UK, to outlast the enemy until America arrives, and yet churchill is this great hero, author of the "victory" of Dunkirk.

Correct.

Nobody really knows because
1. The Communists weren't this coherent entity, it's like trying to argue how many casualties were caused by partisans instead of the Red Army
2. The KMT, ruling party at the time, had a vested interest in making it sound like the commies didn't do shit.
3. The CCP, ruling party now, has a vested interest in making it sound like the KMT didn't do shit.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Fourth_Army_incident

>CCP agrees to fight the Japanese
>GMD ambushes and kills them

Blame the CCP for driving Chiang's name into the dirt because muh communism and blame the US for driving Chiang's name into the dirt because muh Stilwell.

yeah let's completely ignore the fact that Chiang was incredibly incompetent and oversaw a complete implosion of the Chinese economy, while massively enriching himself and his friends.

Not saying that Chiang was a saint but you're just parroting fifty year old historiography. That doesn't mean he wasn't faultless (would argue he was fairly good given he had to balance western demands for liberal governance with internal bureaucratic issues) but the situation was far more nuanced and there were concerted campaigns to denigrate him for political reasons.

More like blame Anglo propaganda.

A bit. The KMT did hell of a lot more actual fighting and the communists spent most of their time building up for the renewal of the civil war and taking advantage of the KMT's exhaustion.

>you're just parroting 50 year old historical facts

FTFY

The vast majority of Chinese (aka peasants) didn't support the Communists because Stilwell wrote some letters in english for FDR

[Citation needed]

The commies nearly got defeated by the Japanese during their 1938-1939 Northern encirclment campaign. How exactly does losing 90% of your forces = hiding and preserving them

Could you explain that part to me, please? I don't quite get what the implication is.

The idea is that their goals were not standard, so measuring them by standard metrics of "fighting" is not correct.

It wasn't a question of who fought the Japanese more because no matter how much each side fought neither the KMT nor the CCP could ever have defeated the Japanese in the field like the Americans and the Soviets could have, barring some kind of ludicrous disaster occurring. So each of them simply had to survive until someone else defeated the Japanese for them. For the Communist guerillas this meant going underground and hiding while occasionally raiding, for the Nationalists this meant throwing their soldiers into a meatgrinder to show the Allies they were pulling their weight and deserved material aid.