Mao noted that while military doctrine in general favored both "moving" and "fighting," few people did as much moving as the Chinese Communists: "We generally spend more time in moving than in fighting and would be doing well if we fought an average of one sizeable battle a month,"24 As Mao saw it, the rejection of guerrilla warfare and fluidity had been practiced on a large scale. But upon the arrival of the Communist army in northern China and the establishment of base areas, conditions had again changed. Guerrillaism was part of the infancy of the Red Army; this involved irregularity, decentralization, lack of uniformity, absence of strict discipline and, generally speaking, simple methods of work. These were the negative aspects, but there were others that were still valid: the principle of mobile warfare, the guerrilla character of certain strategic and tactical operations, the inevitable fluidity of base areas and the rejection of premature regularization in building the Red Army.25
The task, as Mao saw it in 1936, was to end those practices of the Chinese guerrilla struggle that had become obsolete and to prepare for a new stage in which battle lines would become more stable and positional warfare more frequent. At the same time, it was vital not to discard the positive and still applicable lessons of the guerrilla past and not to "rush blindly" into something new, simply due to its newness.
In 1937, China, "a large and weak country," was attacked by a "small and strong country." Mao was optimistic about the outcome. The Chinese regular armies had been beaten but the Japanese did not have sufficient manpower to occupy the whole of China, and many gaps were left. In these circumstances Communist strategy should be to engage in independent ("exterior line") operations rather than in interior line actions in support of regular troops.
Mao's prescriptions for the war against Japan were simple and straightforward, and can be summarized as follows: the basic aim in war is to preserve one's strength and destroy that of the enemy. In revolutionary war this principle is directly linked with basic political aims — to drive out the Japanese and to build an independent, free and happy (that is, Communist) China. The correct approach during the early phase of the war is the strategic defensive or, to be precise, the frequent and effective use of the tactical offensive within the strategic defensive. Guerrilla warfare involves careful planning and flexibility ("breaking up the whole into parts" and "assembling the parts into a whole"). Pure defense and retreat can play only a temporary role in self-preservation; the offensive is the only means of destroying the enemy, and it is also the principle means of self-preservation. Offensive operations must be well organized and not be launched under pressure.26
The constant repetition by Mao of these elementary insights does not detract from their educational value. But there was yet another major problem: how to coordinate guerrilla with regular warfare. Such coordination should exist on the level of general strategy — pinning the enemy forces down behind the front line, disrupting his supply lines, and, generally speaking, spreading demoralization among his troops and providing fresh courage to the Chinese people. But there should also be coordination in specific campaigns and battles. Mao saw the third main problem of the Communists' revolutionary war to be the maintaining of the vital base areas: it would be impossible to sustain guerrilla operations in a protracted war behind the enemy lines without such strategic bases. They constituted the rear in a war without rear; without such bases the guerrillas would be mere "roving rebels" in the ancient Chinese tradition, noisy but ineffectual.27
Mao correctly predicted that a long time would pass before the Communists could launch their strategic counteroffensive to recover the lost territories. Meanwhile a great part of China's territory would remain in Japanese hands. Guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines would have to be extended over all this vast area. This would be impossible without bases either in the mountains, the plains or "river-lake-estuary regions." Mao differentiated between guerrilla zones and base areas. A "zone" becomes a base area only after large numbers of enemy troops have been annihilated, the puppet (collaborationist) regime destroyed and the masses roused to activity. The key to establishing a base area is the building up of armed force. Economic and also geographic conditions — mountains being preferable to plains — are of importance, but in view of the vastness of China's territory and the shortage of Japanese troops, guerrilla warfare can be conducted and sustained also in the plains. Propitious geographical conditions are desirable but not vital. Essential on the other hand is coordinating with and mobilizing the masses and organizing self-defense corps among the villagers to assist the hard core guerrillas. Existing base areas should be consolidated so as to enable them to withstand enemy attacks. At the same time they should be constantly expanded: conservatism in guerrilla warfare will not achieve the target, namely the confinement of the enemy to a few cities.
How are guerrillas to cope with enemy attempts to conquer the base areas? Mao advised guerrilla commanders to smash the enemy's converging attacks upon them. They should contemplate giving up their base area only after having failed repeatedly to achieve this objective. Mao (wrongly) predicted that the Japanese would not be able to use the blockhouse system because they were too few in number to make it work effectively. Once the enemy offensive had been halted the guerrillas could go over to the offensive — not by attacking the main enemy forces entrenched in defensive positions, but by driving out or destroying small enemy detachments and by expanding their base areas.
Mao maintained that since the war would be protracted and ruthless, the Japanese invaders could be defeated only if the guerrillas gradually transformed themselves into a regular army and adopted a system of mobile warfare. In. certain mountain regions the elements of mobile warfare had existed from the beginning of the war and could simply be expanded. This involved increasing numbers and improving military and political quality.28 Lastly was the problem of command. There cannot possibly be a high degree of centralization in guerrilla operations, otherwise their flexibility would be restricted and their vitality sapped. On the other hand, the centralization of command is essential for coordinating guerrilla with regular warfare. If absolute centralization is harmful and absolute decentralization ineffectual, the answer is to centralize the strategic command for the overall planning and directing of a guerrilla war and to decentralize it for campaigns and battles. In other words the central command should not interfere in details such as the specific dispositions for a battle.
Ten months after the outbreak of the war with Japan Mao outlined in detail his famous concept of protracted war.29 There was no ground for pessimism (he wrote), for China would prevail in the end. Nor was there reason for excessive impetuosity; victory would take a long time. Even before the outbreak of the war Mao had stressed the importance of mobile warfare in combination with the operations of a great number of guerrilla units. The war of national liberation would gain support both at home and abroad. In view of China's vast territory, rich resources and large population, it could sustain a long war despite its being a semicolonial, semifeudal country. Japan's war, on the other hand, was reactionary and barbarous, its manpower and material resources inadequate and its international position unfavorable. Thus everything depended on perseverance. Mao assumed that the war would pass through three stages: at first the Japanese would take the strategic offensive. Later on the enemy would engage in strategic consolidation and the Chinese would prepare for the counteroffensive ("strategic stalemate"). Lastly the Chinese would pass over to the strategic counteroffensive. From inferiority China would move to parity and eventually to superiority. Mao assumed that the first stage would last a long time because the Chinese forces would not soon have the technical equipment for a massive counteroffensive. Chinese guerrilla forces would operate in the enemy's rear in large numbers, and the country would suffer devastation. Mao predicted a very painful period that eventually, with the change in the balance of forces in China and the changes in the international situation, would be overcome. In the last stage of the war mobile warfare would still be
conducted but positional warfare would be of growing importance.
Mao attributes the greatest importance to man's dynamic role in war. His emphasis upon the decisiveness of men, not arms, explains the central role of political mobilization in his thinking. Guerrilla operations per se cannot win a war. The strategic role of guerrilla troops is twofold: to support the regular armies and to transform themselves into regular army units. In the second stage of the war against Japan the guerrillas will fulfill the first role, but in the third stage mobile warfare will become paramount and be conducted by former guerrilla forces.
Mao was preoccupied with problems of grand strategy and political analysis, but he also provided guidance on basic tactics. His lectures provide a great deal of sound advice: avoid attacking strong enemy positions and fighting hard battles; take precautions when on a march or a halt; stage concealed attacks from ambushes; and try "to cause an uproar in the east, and to strike in the west."30 Most of this is derived from the writings of Sun Tzu, The Water Margin, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and, of course, Mao's own experience since his first exploits in the "Autumn Harvest Uprising."
Other Chinese Communist military leaders were, for all one knows, Mao's equals with respect to understanding the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, but he was the only one to develop a comprehensive guerrilla doctrine. Lin Piao in 1938 explained why northern China was ideal guerrilla country: "Enemy mechanized units find it difficult to penetrate mountain ranges; large units learn that it is logistically infeasible to encamp in hilly regions, while smaller units are easily annihilated on arrival."31 The enemy could probably neither use blockhouse tactics nor enjoy local support; he would exist in a vacuum. The main difficulty facing the Communists was to defeat a stubborn enemy imbued with the Samurai tradition who believed that his victory was inevitable. A developed network of railroads and communications facilitated swift movement against the guerrillas by enemy cavalry and mechanized units, but these and other unfavorable conditions would be overcome in time.
Mao emphasized more than once that it was necessary to study what foreign specialists (including, needless to say, the Marxists) had to say about military problems. But he ridiculed those who wanted to apply foreign models in China. This attitude can also be found in Chu Teh's occasional speeches. On the basis of their experience the Chinese Communists had developed a native military science which combined theory with practice and which corresponded with the needs of the Chinese people. According to Chu the three essential points for conducting a battle were to avoid rashness in attack, to avoid conservatism in defense and to resist any tendency to run in panic from the enemy when withdrawing from a point.32 All this clearly is elementary common sense; all military leaders in history have tried to act according to these principies, even, it must be assumed, the Kuomintang generals. Thus, the key to Communist success can be found neither in Chu Teh's speeches nor even in Mao's writings. The Chinese Communists' theoretical contribution to military science is limited. Their real achievement was a practical one: first, to survive; later on, to consolidate and expand their bases; and lastly, to establish a regular army that eventually defeated the government forces.
Mao's military writings are likely to create a mistaken impression in some respects: that the Chinese Communists were engaged in constant fighting against the Japanese invaders, that the Communists were facing (strategically) an overwhelmingly strong enemy, that most of the Japanese war effort was directed against the Communists and that in the end the Japanese were defeated mainly due to the relentless attacks of the Chinese Red Armies. In reality the Communists devoted more of their time and effort to fighting the Kuomintang (and vice versa) than the Japanese. The whole of occupied China — an area larger than Western Europe — was held by small Japanese forces (about 400,000 in 1939-1940, about a million by the end of the war). Until 1940-1941 the Japanese virtually ignored the Communists, whose pinpricks had hardly any military impact. But even after 1940 only about one-quarter of the Japanese forces in China were operating against the Communists. The Chinese Red Army, on the other hand, counted 400,000 soldiers by 1940; in other words it had overwhelming numerical superiority' over the Japanese forces confronting it. The Communists' arms and equipment were vastly inferior, but the supposition that a few courageous guerrillas out-fought forces superior to them in every respect is historically quite untenable. The number of Japanese soldiers tied down by the Chinese Communists was proportionally smaller than the number of German soldiers that were needed to police the occupied European countries, even if one includes the puppet troops whose military value was very nearly nil.
The Japanese troops in China were not defeated by the Communists; the change in the balance of power that led to the Japanese surrender in 1945 had little, if anything, to do with the fighting in China. It seems virtually certain in retrospect that the Japanese troops in China would have surrendered even if neither the Kuo-mintang nor the Communists had fired a single shot against them between 1937 and 1945. Mao correctly understood, even if he did not directly say so, that the main obstacle on the Communists' road to power was the Kuomintang, not the Japanese. The Japanese forces, as he saw it, would be defeated sooner or later because the material base of Japanese imperialism was simply too narrow to dominate a country such as China for any length of time. Once the United States had entered the war, its outcome, despite the initial setbacks, was virtually certain because the Japanese High Command had to disperse the limited manpower at its disposal over a vast area from Burma to the Philippines, not to mention Manchuria. The anti-Japanese struggle was essential from the Communist point of view. But equally there is no doubt that from 1942 both the Communists and the Kuomintang prepared themselves for the postwar contest and that this became their overriding concern.
During the whole war the Communists fought two major battles against the Japanese — the Battle at P'inghsingkuan in September 1937, in which they inflicted some 5,000 casualties on the enemy, and the offensive of the "hundred regiments" which began in August 1940, lasted for three months and resulted in some 25,000 Japanese casualties and some 20,000 prisoners. As a result of the "hundred regiments" offensive, the Japanese began to take the Communists seriously and initiated the "three-all" counterinsurgency policy — burn all; kill all; destroy all. By the end of 1942 the number of Red Army soldiers had fallen from 400,000 to 300,000 and the population in the base areas had shrunk from 44,000,000 to 25,000,000. The Japanese, however, were too weak to keep up their counteroffensive. After 1942 the Red Armies again expanded; by the spring of 1945 there were almost a million soldiers in the 4th and 8th Communist Route Armies (not to count a militia of about 2,200,000) and the population in the base areas had risen to well over 100,000,000. Wherever the Japanese were really concerned, it must be noted, they managed to stamp out the guerrillas without undue difficulty; this refers above all to Manchuria, China's main industrial center. By staging paramilitary special operations and establishing defense hamlets, and, above all, by following a policy of propaganda and pacification (treating the peasants less brutally than elsewhere) they had liquidated the guerrillas there by 1940. It should be added in fairness that the quality of Japanese forces in Manchuria was superior to that of Japanese troops in other parts of China and that the Manchurian guerrillas had no active sanctuary. During the long severe winters they had nowhere to hide.33
The one battle of 1937 and the campaign of 1940 apart, there were no major encounters between the Chinese Communists and the Japanese. The transition to mobile warfare that Mao had demanded did not, in fact, occur until after the war had ended.34 Until then there was some but not much guerrilla warfare. The occasional mining of a road or a railway line were pinpricks, and not enough to provoke Japanese retaliation on a massive scale. Most of this was "sparrow warfare," carried out by groups of three to five men. The Communists "encircled the cities" in some parts of China because the Japanese did not have sufficient forces to garrison the whole countryside. But the Japanese garriso
ns were not cut off and it is not even certain that they suffered any serious inconvenience.
The main effort of the Communists was invested not in the military but in the political field, in organization and propaganda. Their prestige inside China and among foreign observers was steadily rising: the Communists had purpose and determination; they were well organized and there was no corruption in Yenan. The Communist victories of 1937 and 1940, even if militarily insignificant, had a considerable psychological effect, whereas the prestige of the Kuo-mintang, which had to bear the brunt of the Japanese attacks up to the end of the war, lacked inspiration and steadily dwindled;35 they had neither the ability nor the will to fight. In the Japanese offensive of 1944 the Chinese government lost 700,000 troops and areas with a population of sixty million without putting up any serious resistance. The steady rise of Communism has to be viewed against the dismal record of the Nationalists and the decay and disintegration of the state apparatus and the army.
An investigation into the etiology of Communist achievements shows no single pattern of success.36 Communist influence certainly did not increase as a result of extreme revolutionary politics. If the Communists had learned anything from their unfortunate experience in Kiangsi, it was the need for caution and a moderate line in dealing with the peasantry. While carrying out agrarian reform in the areas under their control in noxthern China, they acted with great prudence, and at times even refrained altogether from carrying out any changes affecting land tenure. It has been maintained that the Communists' appeal to peasant nationalism was the key to their success, just as in Yugoslavia the partisans prevailed as the patriotic party rather than as a movement of socialist revolution.37 This interpretation has much to recommend itself: Japanese terror, exploitation and devastation was certainly a very important factor in mobilizing the peasant masses. But, on the other hand, the peasants of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region, where the Communists had their main base, were not exposed to Japanese brutality. For them the invasion was something fairly remote. And for the Communist enclaves in the Japanese rear, the Red Armies could not offer real protection against Japanese punitive raids. The Communists' influence in these areas remained limited even though they recruited many soldiers from them. The Red Chinese were the party of the poor in contrast to the Kuomintang, and peasant nationalism did play an important role, but this was only a prerequisite for success; it does not, by itself, explain the Communist victory. They made real headway only after the peasant war became a patriotic war.38 But conversely, it was only after the Japanese invasion had wrought havoc in China, when the Chiang government was fatally weakened and could no longer fight the Communists, that they could expand their bases.
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