View source for Second Sino-Japanese War

{{Short description|1931–1945 conflict in East Asia}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}
{{Infobox military conflict
| conflict          = Second Sino-Japanese War
| partof            = the [[interwar period]] and the [[Pacific War|Pacific Theater]] of [[World War II]]
| image             = {{Multiple image |total_width=300 |border=infobox |perrow=2/2/2
 | image1 = Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces in Battle of Shanghai 1937.jpg
 | image2 = Eighth Route Army fighting on Futuyu Great Wall, 1938.jpg
 | image3 = US equipped Chinese Army in India marching.jpg
 | image4 = Nanking bodies 1937.jpg
 | image5 = 轟炸重慶.jpg
 | image6 = Wuhan 1938.jpg
 | footer = Clockwise: {{flatlist|class=inline|
* Japanese landing forces in gas masks during the [[Battle of Shanghai]]
* [[National Revolutionary Army|NRA]] forces on the [[Great Wall]]
* [[Nanjing Massacre]] victims on the [[Qinhuai River]] shore
* Chinese machine gun nest at the [[Battle of Wuhan]]
* Japanese [[Mitsubishi Ki-21]] in the [[bombing of Chongqing]]
* [[Chinese Expeditionary Force]] marching in India
 }}
}}
| date              = 7 July 1937{{snd}}2 September 1945 ({{Age in years, months, weeks and days|7 July 1937|2 September 1945}})
| place             = {{hlist | [[Mainland China]] | [[British rule in Burma|Burma]] | [[Korea under Japanese rule|Korea]] | [[French Indochina|Vietnam]] | [[Taiwan under Japanese rule|Taiwan]]}}
| territory         = China recovers territories lost to Japan since the [[Treaty of Shimonoseki]]
| result            = Chinese victory
| combatant1        = {{bdl |wrap=
; {{flagicon|Nationalist government}} {{normal|[[Nationalist government|China]]}}
: {{flagicon image|Naval Jack of the Republic of China.svg}} [[Kuomintang]]
: {{flagicon image|Flag of the Chinese Communist Party (Pre-1996).svg}} [[Chinese Communist Party]]
}}
| combatant2        = {{bdl |wrap=
; {{normal|{{flagcountry|Empire of Japan}}}}
: {{flagicon|Manchukuo}} [[Manchukuo]]
: {{flagicon|Mengjiang}} [[Mengjiang]]
: {{flag|Wang Jingwei regime|1943}}
}}
| commander1        = {{plainlist|
* {{flagdeco|Republic of China (1912–1949)}} [[Chiang Kai-shek]]
* {{flagicon image|Flag of the Chinese Communist Party (Pre-1996).svg}} [[Mao Zedong]]
* {{flagdeco|Republic of China (1912–1949)|army}} [[He Yingqin]]
* {{flagdeco|Republic of China (1912–1949)|army}} [[Chen Cheng]]
* {{flagdeco|Republic of China (1912–1949)|army}} [[Cheng Qian]]
* {{flagdeco|Republic of China (1912–1949)|army}} [[Bai Chongxi]]
* {{flagdeco|Republic of China (1912–1949)|army}} [[Xu Yongchang]]
* {{flagdeco|Republic of China (1912–1949)|army}} [[Li Zongren]]
}}
| commander2        = {{plainlist|
* {{flagdeco|Empire of Japan}} [[Hirohito]]
* {{flagdeco|Empire of Japan|}} [[Fumimaro Konoe]]
* {{flagdeco|Empire of Japan|army}} [[Hideki Tojo]]
* {{flagdeco|Empire of Japan|army}} [[Shunroku Hata]]
* {{flagdeco|Empire of Japan|army}} [[Yasuji Okamura]]
* {{flagdeco|Empire of Japan|army}} [[Prince Kan'in Kotohito|Prince Kotohito]]{{Natural Causes}}
* {{flagdeco|Empire of Japan|army}} [[Otozō Yamada]]
* {{flagdeco|Empire of Japan|army}} [[Hajime Sugiyama]]
}}
| strength1         = 16 million+ total<ref name="何應欽">{{cite book |date=2015 |last=Yingqin |first=He |script-title=zh:八年抗戰之經過 |publisher=Zhonghe Publishing}}</ref>{{rp|436}}{{udl |wrap=
; Nationalists
: 1.7 million (1937)
: 2.6 million (1939){{sfn|Hsiung|1992|p=171}}
: 5.7 million (1945)<ref name="Horner2003">{{cite book |first=David Murray |last=Horner |title=The Second World War: The Pacific |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DShPzguQ64UC&pg=PA14 |access-date=6 March 2011 |date=24 July 2003 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-415-96845-4 |pages=14–15}}</ref>
; Communists
: 640,000 (1937)<ref name="China's Bitter Victory">{{cite book |last=Hsiung |first=James C. |title=China's Bitter Victory |year=1992 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-56324-246-5 |page=79}}</ref>
: 166,700 (1938)<ref name="八路军·表册">{{cite book |publisher=中国人民解放军历史资料丛书编审委员会 |script-title=zh:八路军·表册 |year=1994 |isbn=978-7-506-52290-8 |page=3 |language=zh}}</ref>
: 488,744 (1940)<ref>丁星, 《新四军初期的四个支队—新四军组织沿革简介(2)》【J】, 铁军, 2007年第2期, 38–40页</ref>
: 1.2 million (1945){{sfn|Hsiung|1992}}
}}
| strength2         = 4.1 million total{{sfn|Hsu|p=535}}{{udl |wrap=
; Japan
: 600,000 (1937)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Black |first1=Jeremy |title=Avoiding Armageddon: From the Great Wall to the Fall of France, 1918–40 |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-4411-2387-9 |page=171 |publisher=A&C Black}}</ref>
: 1,015,000 (1939)<ref name="RKKA General Staff">[http://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/1001032 RKKA General Staff, 1939] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160425061436/http://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/1001032 |date=25 April 2016 }}. Retrieved 17 April 2016</ref>
: 1,124,900(1945)<ref>[http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/AJRP2.nsf/530e35f7e2ae7707ca2571e3001a112d/e7daa03b9084ad56ca257209000a85f7?OpenDocument Ministry of Health and Welfare, 1964] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160311073745/http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/AJRP2.nsf/530e35f7e2ae7707ca2571e3001a112d/e7daa03b9084ad56ca257209000a85f7?OpenDocument |date=11 March 2016 }} Retrieved 11 March 2016</ref>(excluding Manchuria and [[Burma campaign]])
; Puppet states
: 900,000–1,006,086 (1945){{sfn|Jowett|page=72}}<ref name=統計>{{cite book |last=Liu |first=Tinghua |author-mask=Liu Tinghua (刘庭华) |script-title=zh:中国抗日战争与第二次世界大战系年要录·统计荟萃 1931–1945 |year=1995 |publisher=Haichao chubanshe |isbn=7-80054-595-4 |pages=312−314 |language=zh}}</ref>
}}
| casualties1       = {{udl |wrap=
; Official Nationalist data
: 1,319,958 killed
: 1,761,335 wounded
: 130,116 missing
: 3,211,409 total{{sfn|Hsu}}<ref name=Clodfelter>Clodfelter, Micheal "Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference", Vol. 2, pp. 956. Includes civilians who died due to famine and other environmental disasters caused by the war. Only includes the 'regular' Chinese army; does NOT include guerrillas and does not include Chinese casualties in Manchuria or Burma.</ref>
; Other Nationalist estimates
: 3–4 million+ dead and missing
: 500,000 captured{{sfn|Rummel|1991|loc=Table 6A}}
: 3.2–10 million+ total{{sfn|Rummel|1991|loc=Table 5A}}
; Official Communist data
: 160,603 dead
: 290,467 wounded
: 87,208 missing
: 45,989 POWs
: 584,267 total<ref>Meng Guoxiang & Zhang Qinyuan, 1995. "关于抗日战争中我国军民伤亡数字问题".</ref><ref name="中国抗战损失与战后索赔始末">{{cite book |date=1995 |title=中国抗战损失与战后索赔始末 |trans-title=Losses in China's War of Resistance and the Whole Story of Post-war Reparation Claims |last1=Guoxiang |first1=Meng |last2=Dewen |first2=Yu |publisher=Anhui People's Publishing House |page=99}}</ref>
; Other Communist data
: 161,067 killed
: 285,669 wounded
: 446,736 total{{sfn|Rummel|1991|loc=Table 5A}}<ref name="中国抗战损失与战后索赔始末"/>{{efn|From September 1937 until March 1945 (including losses of the South China Anti-Japanese Column from 1943 until March 1945). Does not include the number of missing and POWs.}}
; Total
: 3.8–10.6 million+ casualties{{efn|name=1937B}}
: 1 million+ captured{{sfn|Rummel|1991|loc=Table 6A}}
: 266,800–1,000,000 POWs dead{{sfn|Rummel|1991|loc=Table 6A}}
}}
| casualties2       = {{udl |wrap=
; Japanese medical data
: 455,700<ref>[http://www.zephyr.dti.ne.jp/~kj8899/chidorigafuchi.jpg Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180916100524/http://www.zephyr.dti.ne.jp/~kj8899/chidorigafuchi.jpg |date=16 September 2018}} Retrieved 10 March 2016</ref>–700,000 military dead<ref name="Yomiuri Shimbun">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uKodAQAAMAAJ |script-title=ja:戦争: 中国侵略 |trans-title=War: Invasion of China |publisher=Yomiuri Shimbun |language=ja |page=186 |year=1983 |access-date=16 January 2017}}</ref>{{efn|This number does not include Japanese killed by Chinese forces in the Burma campaign and does not include Japanese killed in Manchuria.}}{{efn|name=1937B}}
: 1,934,820 wounded and missing<ref>He Yingqin, "Eight Year Sino-Japanese War"</ref>
: 22,293+ captured{{efn|Excluding more than 1 million who were disarmed following the surrender of Japan}}
: 2.5 million+ total casualties{{efn|name=1937B}}
; Puppet state forces
: 288,140–574,560 dead
: 742,000 wounded
: Middle estimate: 960,000 dead and wounded{{sfn|Rummel|1991|loc=Table 5A}}
; Total
: 3.0–3.6 million casualties{{efn|name=1937B|After July 1937; excluding Manchuria and Burma}}{{efn|Including casualties of Japanese puppet forces. The combined toll is most likely around 3,500,000: 2.5 million Japanese, per Chinese records, and 1 million collaborators.}}
}}
| casualties3       = 15<ref>Ho Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953, Harvard University Press, 1953. p. 252</ref>–22<ref name=Clodfelter />&nbsp;million total casualties
| notes             = {{notelist}}
| campaignbox       = {{Campaignbox Second Sino-Japanese War}}
{{Campaignbox Pacific War}}
{{Campaignbox World War II}}
{{Japanese colonial campaigns}}
}}
{{Infobox Chinese
| s = 抗日战争
| t = 抗日戰爭
| p = kàng rì zhàn zhēng
| bpmf = ㄎㄤˋ ㄖˋ ㄓㄢˋ ㄓㄥ
| altname = Alternative name
| s2 = 抗战
| t2 = 抗戰
| p2 = kàng zhàn
| s3 = 八年抗战
| t3 = 八年抗戰
| p3 = bā nián kàng zhàn
| s4 = 十四年抗战
| t4 = 十四年抗戰
| p4 = shí sì nián kàng zhàn
| t5 = 第二次中日戰爭
| s5 = 第二次中日战争
| p5 = dì èr cì zhōng rì zhàn zhēng
| t6 = (日本)侵華戰爭
| s6 = (日本)侵华战争
| p6 = (rì běn) qīn huá zhàn zhēng
| kanji = {{unbulleted list|支那事変|日支戦争|日中戦争}}
| kunrei = {{unbulleted list|Sina zihen|Nissi sensou|Nittyuu sensou}}
| hiragana = {{unbulleted list|しなじへん|にっしせんそう|にっちゅうせんそう}}
| katakana = {{unbulleted list|シナジヘン|ニッシセンソウ|ニッチュウセンソウ}}
| romaji = {{unbulleted list|Shina jihen|Nisshi sensō|Nicchū sensō}}
}}

The '''Second Sino-Japanese War''' was fought between the [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Republic of China]] and the [[Empire of Japan]] between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to [[Manchuria]] that started in 1931.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Carter |first1=James |date=20 September 2023 |title=The Origins of World War II in Asia |url=https://thechinaproject.com/2023/09/20/the-origins-of-world-war-ii-in-asia/ |access-date=13 July 2024 |website=The China Project}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=China's War with Japan |url=https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/chinas-war-japan |access-date=13 July 2024 |website=Faculty of History, University of Oxford}}</ref> It is considered part of [[World War&nbsp;II]], and often regarded as the beginning of World War{{nbsp}}II in Asia. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bix |first=Herbert P. |title=The Showa Emperor's 'Monologue' and the Problem of War Responsibility |journal=Journal of Japanese Studies |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=295–363 |year=1992 |doi=10.2307/132824 |issn=0095-6848 |jstor=132824}}</ref> It is known in [[China]] as the '''War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression'''.{{efn|{{lang-zh|t=抗日戰爭|s=抗日战争}}}}

On 18 September 1931, the Japanese staged the [[Mukden incident]], a [[false flag]] event fabricated to justify their [[Japanese invasion of Manchuria|invasion of Manchuria]] and establishment of the puppet state of [[Manchukuo]]. This is sometimes marked as the beginning of the war.<ref name="Hotta2007">{{cite book |last=Hotta |first=E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kih_DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA75 |title=Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945 |date=25 December 2007 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0-230-60992-1 |page=40}}</ref><ref name="Paine2012">{{cite book |last=Paine |first=S. C. M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bAYgAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA123 |title=The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 |date=20 August 2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-56087-0 |page=123 |access-date=28 November 2017}}</ref> From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan engaged in skirmishes, including [[January 28 incident|in Shanghai]] and in Northern China. [[Nationalist government|Nationalist]] and [[Chinese Communist Party]] (CCP) forces, respectively led by [[Chiang Kai-shek]] and [[Mao Zedong]], had fought each other in the [[Chinese Civil War]] since 1927. In late 1933, Chiang Kai-shek [[Fifth encirclement campaign against the Jiangxi Soviet|encircled]] the Chinese Communists in an attempt to finally destroy them, forcing the Communists into the [[Long March]], resulting in the Communists losing around 90% of their men. As a Japanese invasion became imminent, Chiang still refused to form a united front before he was [[Xi'an Incident|placed under house arrest by his subordinates who forced him]] to form the [[Second United Front]] in late 1936 in order to resist the Japanese invasion together.

The full-scale war began on 7 July 1937 with the [[Marco Polo Bridge incident]] near Beijing, which prompted a full-scale Japanese invasion of the rest of China. The Japanese captured the capital of [[Battle of Nanking|Nanjing]] in 1937 and perpetrated the [[Nanjing Massacre]]. After failing to stop the Japanese capture of [[Battle of Wuhan|Wuhan]] in 1938, then China's de facto capital at the time, the [[Nationalist government]] relocated to [[Chongqing]] in the Chinese interior. After the [[Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact]], Soviet aid bolstered the [[National Revolutionary Army]] and [[Republic of China Air Force|Air Force]]. By 1939, after Chinese victories at [[Battle of Changsha (1939)|Changsha]] and with Japan's lines of communications stretched deep into the interior, the war reached a stalemate. The Japanese were unable to defeat CCP forces in [[Shaanxi]], who waged a campaign of sabotage and [[guerrilla warfare]]. In November 1939, Nationalist forces [[1939–1940 Winter Offensive|launched a large scale winter offensive]], and in August 1940, CCP forces launched the [[Hundred Regiments Offensive]] in central China. In April 1941, Soviet aid was halted with the [[Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact]].

In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise [[attack on Pearl Harbor]] and declared war on the United States. The US increased its aid to China under the [[Lend-Lease Act]], becoming its main financial and military supporter. With [[Japanese occupation of Burma|Burma]] cut off, the [[United States Army Air Forces]] airlifted material over [[the Hump|the Himalayas]]. In 1944, Japan launched [[Operation Ichi-Go]], the invasion of [[Henan]] and [[Changsha]]. In 1945, the [[Chinese Expeditionary Force]] resumed [[Battle of Northern Burma and Western Yunnan|its advance in Burma]] and completed the [[Ledo Road]] linking India to China. China launched large counteroffensives in South China, repulsed a [[Battle of West Hunan|failed Japanese invasion of West Hunan]], and [[Second Guangxi campaign|recaptured Japanese occupied regions of Guangxi]].

Japan formally [[Japanese Instrument of Surrender|surrendered]] on 2 September 1945, following the [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]], [[Soviet–Japanese War|Soviet declaration of war]] and subsequent invasions of [[Manchukuo]] and [[Korea under Japanese rule|Korea]]. The war resulted in the deaths of around 20 million people, mostly Chinese civilians. China was recognized as one of the [[Big Four (World War II)|Big Four Allied powers]] in [[World War II]]<ref name= "Richard">{{cite book |last= Frank|first= Richard|date= 2020|title=Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War: July 1937-May 1942 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|page=112}}</ref> and one of the "Four Policemen", which formed the foundation of the United Nations. It regained all lost territories and became one of the [[Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council|five permanent members]] of the [[United Nations Security Council]].{{sfn|Mitter|2013|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bqc_YkuyaCIC&pg=PA369 369]}}<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HymSg_Pp7X0C&pg=PA223 |title=The New York Times Living History: World War II, 1942–1945: The Allied Counteroffensive |last=Brinkley |first=Douglas |isbn=978-0-8050-7247-1 |year=2003 |publisher=Macmillan |access-date=2 September 2015}}</ref> The Chinese Civil War resumed in 1946, ending with a communist victory and the [[Proclamation of the People's Republic of China]] in 1949, while the government of the Republic of China [[Retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan|relocated on Taiwan]].

==Names==
The term "Japanese invasion of China", a term used mainly in non-Japanese narratives.<ref>{{cite web |title=Japanese Invasion of China: 7 July 1937 |url=https://www.lermuseum.org/interwar-years-1919-1938/japanese-invasion-of-china-7-july-1937}}</ref>

=== Chinese ===
In China, the war is most commonly known as the "War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression" ({{lang-zh|t=抗日戰爭|s=抗日战争}}), and shortened to "Resistance against Japanese Aggression" ({{zhi|c=抗日}}) or the "War of Resistance" ({{zhi|s=抗战|t=抗戰}}). It is also referred to by PRC as part of the "Global Anti-Fascist War" as Imperial Japan was then allied with [[Nazi Germany]] and [[Fascist Italy]]. 

The war has often been termed the Eight Years' War of Resistance" ({{zhi|s=八年抗战|t=八年抗戰}}), a traditional view which dates the war's beginning to the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|page=90}} In an alternative view of [[Chinese historiography]], the 18 September 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria marks the start of the" Fourteen Years' War of Resistance" (十四年抗战; 十四年抗戰).<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Mitter |first=Rana |title=China's Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism |publisher=The Belknap Press of [[Harvard University Press]] |year=2020 |isbn=978-0-674-98426-4 |location=Cambridge, MA |pages=}}</ref>{{Reference page|pages=90-94}} In 2017, the Chinese government officially announced that it would adopt this view.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|page=90}} Under this interpretation, the 1931–1937 period is viewed as the "partial" war, while 1937–1945 is a period of "total" war.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|page=93}} This view of a fourteen-year war has political significance because it provides more recognition for the role of northeast China in the War of Resistance.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|pages=92-93}}

===Japanese===
In contemporary Japan, the name "Japan–China War" ({{langx|ja|日中戦争|translit=Nitchū Sensō}}) is most commonly used because of its perceived objectivity.  Dating the beginning of the war may also vary in Japanese context, with one [[Historiography of Japan|Japanese historiographical]] view regarding the war as a "Fifteen-Year War" (''Jyugonen Sensô''), covering the period beginning with the invasion of Manchuria through the atomic bombings, and including both the war in China and the Pacific war.<ref name=":2" />{{Reference page|page=91}}

When the invasion of [[China proper]] began in earnest in July 1937 near [[Beijing]], the [[Empire of Japan|government of Japan]] used "The North China Incident" ({{langx|ja|北支事變/華北事變|translit=Hokushi Jihen/Kahoku Jihen|label=none}}), and with the outbreak of the [[Battle of Shanghai]] the following month, it was changed to "The China Incident" ({{langx|ja|支那事變|translit=[[Shina (word)|Shina]] Jihen|label=none}}).

The word "incident" ({{langx|ja|事變|translit=jihen|label=none}}) was used by Japan, as neither country had made a formal [[declaration of war]] at the outbreak of hostility. From the Japanese perspective, localizing these conflicts was beneficial in preventing intervention from other countries, particularly the United Kingdom and the United States, which were its primary source of petroleum and steel respectively. A formal expression of these conflicts would potentially lead to an American embargo in accordance with the [[Neutrality Acts of the 1930s]].<ref name="en">Jerald A. Combs. [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5215/is_2002/ai_n19132406/pg_7 Embargoes and Sanctions]{{dead link|date=January 2016}}. ''Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy'', 2002</ref> In addition, due to China's fractured political status, Japan often claimed that China was no longer a recognizable political entity on which war could be declared.<ref>Rea, George Bronson. ''The Case for Manchoukuo''. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1935. Pp 164.</ref>

In [[Propaganda in Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II|Japanese propaganda]], the invasion of China became a [[holy war]] ({{langx|ja|聖戦|translit=seisen|label=none}}), the first step of the "eight corners of the world under one roof" slogan ({{langx|ja|八紘一宇|translit=[[Hakkō ichiu]]|label=none}}). In 1940, Japanese prime minister [[Fumimaro Konoe]] launched the [[Taisei Yokusankai]]. When both sides formally declared war in December 1941, the name was replaced by "Greater East Asia War" ({{langx|ja|大東亞戰爭|translit=Daitōa Sensō|label=none}}).

Although the Japanese government still uses the term "China Incident" in formal documents,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Linebarger|first=Paul M. A.|date=May 1941|title=The Status of the China Incident|jstor=1022596|journal=American Academy of Political and Social Science|publisher=Sage |volume=215|pages=36–43|doi=10.1177/000271624121500106|s2cid=144915586}}</ref> the word ''[[Shina (word)|Shina]]'' is considered derogatory by China and therefore the media in Japan often paraphrase with other expressions like "The Japan–China Incident" ({{langx|ja|日華事變/日支事變|translit=Nikka Jiken/Nisshi Jiken|label=none}}), which were used by media as early as the 1930s.

The name "Second Sino-Japanese War" is not commonly used in Japan as the China it fought a war against in 1894 to 1895 was led by the [[Qing dynasty]], and thus is called the Qing-Japanese War ({{langx|ja|日清戦争|translit=Nisshin–Sensō|label=none}}), rather than the [[First Sino-Japanese War]].

==Background==
{{main|China–Japan relations}}

The origins of the Second Sino-Japanese War can be traced to the [[First Sino-Japanese War]] (1894–1895), in which China, then under the rule of the Qing dynasty, was defeated by Japan and forced to cede [[Taiwan]] and recognize the full and complete independence of [[Joseon|Korea]] in the [[Treaty of Shimonoseki]]. Japan also annexed the [[Senkaku Islands]], which Japan claims were uninhabited, in early 1895 as a result of its victory at the end of the war. Japan had also attempted to annex the [[Liaodong Peninsula]] following the war, though was forced to return it to China following the [[Triple Intervention]] by France, Germany, and Russia.<ref name="Economist-2012-12-empty-space">{{cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/news/christmas/21568696-behind-row-over-bunch-pacific-rocks-lies-sad-magical-history-okinawa-narrative |title=The Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands: Narrative of an empty space |newspaper=[[The Economist]] |date=22 December 2012 |issue=Christmas Specials 2012 |location=London |issn=0013-0613 |access-date=26 February 2014  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140226002234/http://www.economist.com/news/christmas/21568696-behind-row-over-bunch-pacific-rocks-lies-sad-magical-history-okinawa-narrative |archive-date=26 February 2014 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.historytoday.com/joyman-lee/senkakudiaoyu-islands-conflict|title=Senkaku/Diaoyu: Islands of Conflict|work=History Today|access-date=13 August 2016|archive-date=1 February 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190201151322/https://www.historytoday.com/joyman-lee/senkakudiaoyu-islands-conflict|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11341139|title=How uninhabited islands soured China-Japan ties |work=BBC|access-date=13 August 2016|date=10 November 2014|archive-date=8 November 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191108101023/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11341139|url-status=live}}</ref> The Qing dynasty was on the brink of collapse due to internal revolts and the imposition of the [[unequal treaties]], while Japan had emerged as a [[great power]] through its efforts to modernize.{{sfn|Wilson|page=5}} In 1905, Japan defeated the [[Russian Empire]] in the [[Russo-Japanese War]], gaining [[Dalian]] and southern [[Sakhalin]] and establishing a [[Korean Empire|protectorate]] over Korea.

===Warlords in the Republic of China===
{{Main|1911 Revolution|Warlord Era}}

In 1911, factions of the Qing Army uprose against the government, staging a [[1911 Revolution|revolution]] that swept across China's southern provinces.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Liew |first1=Kit Siong |title=Struggle for democracy: Sung Chiao-jen and the 1911 Chinese revolution |last2=Sung Chiao-jen |date=1971 |publisher=Univ. of California Pr |isbn=978-0-520-01760-3 |location=Berkeley [usw.]}}</ref> The Qing responded by appointing [[Yuan Shikai]], commander of the loyalist [[Beiyang Army]], as temporary prime minister in order to subdue the revolution.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Nihart |first1=F. B. |last2=Powell |first2=Ralph L. |date=1955 |title=The Rise of Military Power in Modern China, 1895–1912. |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1983349 |journal=Military Affairs |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=105 |doi=10.2307/1983349 |jstor=1983349 |issn=0026-3931|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Yuan, wanting to remain in power, compromised with the revolutionaries, and agreed to abolish the monarchy and establish a new republican government, under the condition he be appointed president of China. The new [[Beiyang government]] of China was proclaimed in March 1912, after which Yuan Shikai began to amass power for himself. In 1913, the parliamentary political leader [[Song Jiaoren|Song Jiaoren was assassinated]]; it is generally believed Yuan Shikai ordered the assassination.<ref>{{Cite web |title=谁是刺杀宋教仁的幕后元凶?_资讯_凤凰网 |url=https://news.ifeng.com/history/zl/xz/jinmanlou/200903/0330_5763_1083398.shtml |access-date=2023-07-30 |website=news.ifeng.com}}</ref> Yuan Shikai then forced the parliament to pass a bill to strengthen the power of the president and sought to [[Empire of China (1915–1916)|restore the imperial system]], becoming the new emperor of China.

However, there was little support for an imperial restoration among the general population, and protests and demonstrations soon broke out across the country. Yuan's attempts at restoring the monarchy triggered the [[National Protection War]], and Yuan Shikai was overthrown after only a few months. In the aftermath of Shikai's death in June 1916, control of China fell into the hands of the Beiyang Army leadership. The Beiyang government was a civilian government in name, but in practice it was a [[military dictatorship]]<ref>《时局未宁之内阁问题》, 《满洲报》1922年7月27日, "论说"</ref> with a different warlord controlling each province of the country. China was reduced to a fractured state. As a result, China's prosperity began to wither and its economy declined. This instability presented an opportunity for nationalistic politicians in Japan to press for territorial expansion.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.shehui.pku.edu.cn/upload/editor/file/20191007/20191007171957_7532.pdf|title=北洋军阀时期中华民族共同体的构建路径与效应分析|website=shehui.pku.edu.cn|language=zh|access-date=30 July 2023|archive-date=30 July 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230730072104/http://www.shehui.pku.edu.cn/upload/editor/file/20191007/20191007171957_7532.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>

===Twenty-One Demands===
{{Main|Twenty-One Demands}}

In 1915, Japan issued the [[Twenty-One Demands]] to extort further political and commercial privilege from China, which was accepted by the regime of Yuan Shikai.<ref>Hoyt, Edwin P., Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict, p. 45</ref> Following [[World War I]], Japan acquired the [[German Empire]]'s [[sphere of influence]] in [[Shandong]] province,<ref>Palmer and Colton, A History of Modern World, p. 725</ref> leading to nationwide anti-Japanese [[May Fourth Movement|protests and mass demonstrations]] in China. The country remained fragmented under the [[Beiyang Government]] and was unable to resist foreign incursions.{{sfn|Taylor|page=33}} For the purpose of unifying China and defeating the regional warlords, the [[Kuomintang]] (KMT) in [[Guangzhou]] launched the [[Northern Expedition]] from 1926 to 1928 with limited assistance from the [[Soviet Union]].{{sfn|Taylor|page=57}}

===Jinan incident===
{{Main|Jinan incident}}

The [[National Revolutionary Army]] (NRA) formed by the Kuomintang swept through southern and central China until it was checked in Shandong, where confrontations with the Japanese garrison escalated into armed conflict. The conflicts were collectively known as the Jinan incident of 1928, during which time the Japanese military killed several Chinese officials and fired artillery shells into Jinan. According to the investigation results of the Association of the Families of the Victims of the Jinan massacre, it showed that 6,123 Chinese civilians were killed and 1,701 injured.<ref>Zhen Jiali, ''Ji Nan Can An (Jinan Massacre)'' (China University of Political Science and Law Press, 1987), pp. 238.</ref> Relations between the Chinese Nationalist government and Japan severely worsened as a result of the Jinan incident.{{sfn|Taylor|page=79}}{{sfn|Taylor|page=82}}

===Reunification of China (1928)===
{{Main|Northeast Flag Replacement}}

As the National Revolutionary Army approached Beijing, Zhang Zuolin decided to retreat back to Manchuria, before he was [[Huanggutun Incident|assassinated]] by the Kwantung Army in 1928.<ref>Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, vol. 1, p. 121</ref> His son, [[Zhang Xueliang]], took over as the leader of the Fengtian clique in Manchuria. Later in the same year, Zhang declared his allegiance to the Nationalist government in Nanjing under [[Chiang Kai-shek]], and consequently, China was nominally reunified under one government.{{sfn|Taylor|page=83}}

===1929 Sino-Soviet war===
{{Main|Sino-Soviet conflict (1929)}}

The July–November 1929 conflict over the [[Chinese Eastern Railroad]] (CER) further increased the tensions in the Northeast that led to the [[Mukden Incident]] and eventually the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Soviet [[Red Army]] victory over Xueliang's forces not only reasserted Soviet control over the CER in Manchuria but revealed Chinese military weaknesses that Japanese Kwantung Army officers were quick to note.<ref>Michael M. Walker, ''The 1929 Sino-Soviet War: The War Nobody Knew'' (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017), p. 290.</ref>

The Soviet Red Army performance also stunned the Japanese. Manchuria was central to Japan's East Asia policy. Both the 1921 and 1927 Imperial Eastern Region Conferences reconfirmed Japan's commitment to be the dominant power in the Northeast. The 1929 Red Army victory shook that policy to the core and reopened the Manchurian problem. By 1930, the Kwantung Army realized they faced a Red Army that was only growing stronger. The time to act was drawing near and Japanese plans to conquer the Northeast were accelerated.<ref>Michael M. Walker, ''The 1929 Sino-Soviet War: The War Nobody Knew'' (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017), pp. 290–291.</ref>

===Chinese Communist Party conflict with the Kuomintang===
{{Main|Chinese Civil War#Communist insurgency (1927–1937)}}

In 1930, the [[Central Plains War]] broke out across China, involving regional commanders who had fought in alliance with the Kuomintang during the Northern Expedition, and the Nanjing government under Chiang. The [[Chinese Communist Party]] (CCP) previously fought openly against the Nanjing government after the [[Shanghai massacre of 1927]], and they continued to expand during this protracted civil war. The Kuomintang government focused its efforts on suppressing the Chinese Communists instead of opposing the Japanese, following the policy of "first internal pacification, then external resistance" ({{lang-zh|c=攘外必先安內|links=no}})<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Pan |first=Yihong |title=Not Just a Man's War: Chinese Women's Memories of the War of Resistance Against Japan, 1931-45 |publisher=[[University of British Columbia Press]] |year=2025 |isbn=9780774870368}}</ref>{{Reference page|page=8}} through its [[Encirclement Campaigns|encirclement campaigns]] against the Communists.

After the defeat of the [[Chinese Soviet Republic]] by the Nationalists, the Communists retreated on the [[Long March]] to [[Yan'an Soviet|Yan'an]].<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=34}} The Nationalist government ordered local warlords to continue the campaign against the Communists rather than focus on the Japanese threat.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=34}} 

On 1 August 1935, the Communist Party issued the [[August 1 Declaration|August First Declaration]].<ref name=":0" />{{Reference page|page=10}} It called for the creation of a United Front of all Chinese parties, organizations, and people of all circles, including overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities, to oppose the Japanese.<ref name=":0" />{{Reference page|page=10}}

A December 1936 coup by two Nationalist Generals, the [[Xi'an Incident]], forced Chiang Kai-shek to accept a United Front with the Communists to oppose Japan.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=34}}

==Invasion of Manchuria and Northern China==
{{Further|Japanese invasion of Manchuria}}
[[File:Mukden 1931 japan shenyang.jpg|thumb|Japanese troops entering [[Shenyang]] during the [[Mukden Incident]]]]

The internecine warfare in China provided excellent opportunities for Japan, which saw Manchuria as a limitless supply of raw materials, a market for its manufactured goods (now excluded from the markets of many Western countries as a result of [[Great Depression|Depression]]-era [[tariff]]s), and a protective [[buffer state]] against the Soviet Union in [[Siberia]]. As a result, the Japanese Army was widely prevalent in Manchuria immediately following the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, where Japan gained significant territory in Manchuria. As a result of their strengthened position, by 1915 Japan had negotiated a significant amount of economic privilege in the region by pressuring [[Yuan Shikai]], the president of the Republic of China at the time. With a widened range of economic privileges in Manchuria, Japan began focusing on developing and protecting matters of economic interests. This included railroads, businesses, natural resources, and a general control of the territory. 

With its influence growing, the Japanese Army began to justify its presence by stating that it was simply protecting its own economic interests. However militarists in the Japanese Army began pushing for an expansion of influence, leading to the Japanese Army assassinating the warlord of Manchuria, [[Zhang Zuolin]]. This was done with hopes that it would start a crisis that would allow Japan to expand their power and influence in the region. When this was not as successful as they desired,{{citation needed|date=November 2018}} Japan then decided to invade Manchuria outright after the [[Mukden incident]] in September 1931. Japanese soldiers set off a bomb on the Southern Manchurian Railroad in order to provoke an opportunity to act in "self defense" and invade outright. Japan charged that its rights in Manchuria, which had been established as a result of its victory in 1905 at the end of the [[Russo-Japanese War]], had been systematically violated and there were "more than 120 cases of infringement of rights and interests, interference with business, boycott of Japanese goods, unreasonable taxation, detention of individuals, confiscation of properties, eviction, demand for cessation of business, assault and battery, and the oppression of Korean residents".<ref>[http://ibiblio.org/pha/monos/144/144chap1.html Political Strategy Prior to Outbreak of War Part I] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225142637/http://ibiblio.org/pha/monos/144/144chap1.html |date=25 February 2021 }} Japanese monograph No. 144</ref>

After five months of fighting, Japan established the puppet state of [[Manchukuo]] in 1932, and installed the last Emperor of China, [[Puyi]], as its puppet ruler. Militarily too weak to challenge Japan directly, China appealed to the [[League of Nations]] for help. The League's investigation led to the publication of the [[Lytton Report]], condemning Japan for its incursion into Manchuria, causing Japan to withdraw from the League of Nations. No country took action against Japan beyond tepid censure. From 1931 until summer 1937, the Nationalist Army under Chiang Kai-shek did little to oppose Japanese encroachment into China.<ref name="Crean">{{Cite book |last=Crean |first=Jeffrey |title=The Fear of Chinese Power: an International History |year=2024 |publisher=Bloomsbury |isbn=978-1-350-23394-2 |series=New Approaches to International History series |location=London}}</ref>{{rp|69}}

Incessant fighting followed the Mukden Incident. In 1932, Chinese and Japanese troops fought the [[January 28 Incident|28 January]] battle. This resulted in the demilitarization of [[Shanghai]], which forbade the Chinese to deploy troops in their own city. In Manchukuo there was an [[Pacification of Manchukuo|ongoing campaign]] to pacify the [[Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies]] that arose from widespread outrage over the policy of non-resistance to Japan. On 15 April 1932, the [[Chinese Soviet Republic]] led by the Communists declared war on Japan.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Iriye |first1=Akira |title=The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific |publisher=Routledge |year=1987 |jstor=j.ctv9zckzn.9 }}</ref>

Under [[Chi Shi-ying]] and his protégé [[Lo Ta-yu (Intelligence Officer)|Lo Ta-yu]]'s leadership, the Kuomintang also established the Northeast Anti-Manchukuo and Anti-Japanese Association as well as the September 18th Alliance. These organizations developed an extensive underground intelligence network and coordinated anti-Japanese activities in Manchuria.<ref>{{cite book
 |author=陈秀武
 |editor=东北师范大学 日本研究所; 郭冬梅; 钟放; 陈秀武
 |title=近代中国东北与日本研究（第1辑）
 |date=2018
 |publisher=社会科学文献出版社
 |language=zh-hant
 |isbn=9787520124874
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=amxiEAAAQBAJ&dq=%E6%9D%B1%E5%8C%97%E5%8D%94%E6%9C%83&pg=PT13
}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=秀武 |first1=陳|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=amxiEAAAQBAJ&dq=%E9%BD%8A%E4%B8%96%E8%8B%B1+%E6%9D%B1%E5%8C%97%E6%8A%97%E6%97%A5&pg=PT24 |title=近代東北與日本研究 |date=2018 |publisher=國史館 |isbn= 9787520124874 |pages=1–3 |via=Google Books |language= }}</ref><ref>{{cite book
 |title=東北義勇軍
 |date=1981
 |publisher=國史館
 |language=zh-hant
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W93VAAAAMAAJ&q=%E6%9D%B1%E5%8C%97%E5%8D%94%E6%9C%83+%E9%BD%8A%E4%B8%96%E8%8B%B1
}}</ref>

In 1933, the Japanese [[Defense of the Great Wall|attacked the Great Wall]] region. The [[Tanggu Truce]] established in its aftermath, gave Japan control of [[Rehe Province]], as well as a demilitarized zone between the Great Wall and Beijing-Tianjin region. Japan aimed to create another buffer zone between Manchukuo and the Chinese Nationalist government in Nanjing.

Japan increasingly exploited China's internal conflicts to reduce the strength of its fractious opponents. Even years after the Northern Expedition, the political power of the Nationalist government was limited to just the area of the [[Yangtze River Delta]]. Other sections of China were essentially in the hands of local Chinese warlords. Japan sought various [[Hanjian|Chinese collaborators]] and helped them establish governments friendly to Japan. This policy was called the ''Specialization'' of [[North China]] ({{zhi|c=華北特殊化|p=huáběitèshūhùa}}), more commonly known as the North China Autonomous Movement. The northern provinces affected by this policy were [[Chahar Province|Chahar]], [[Suiyuan]], [[Hebei]], [[Shanxi]], and Shandong.

This Japanese policy was most effective in the area of what is now [[Inner Mongolia]] and Hebei. In 1935, under Japanese pressure, China signed the [[He–Umezu Agreement]], which forbade the KMT to conduct party operations in Hebei. In the same year, the [[Chin–Doihara Agreement]] was signed expelling the KMT from Chahar. Thus, by the end of 1935 the Chinese government had essentially abandoned northern China. In its place, the Japanese-backed [[East Hebei Autonomous Council]] and the [[Hebei–Chahar Political Council]] were established. There in the empty space of Chahar the [[Mengjiang|Mongol military government]] was formed on 12 May 1936. Japan provided all the necessary military and economic aid. Afterwards Chinese volunteer forces continued to resist Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and [[Actions in Inner Mongolia (1933–1936)|Chahar and Suiyuan]].

==1937: Full-scale invasion of China==
{{Main|Marco Polo Bridge incident}}

[[File:Jiangjieshi-declare.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Chiang Kai-shek]] announced the [[Kuomintang]] policy of resistance against Japan at [[Lushan District|Lushan]] on 10 July 1937, three days after the [[Marco Polo Bridge Incident]].]]
On the night of 7 July 1937, Chinese and Japanese troops exchanged fire in the vicinity of the [[Marco Polo Bridge|Marco Polo (or Lugou) Bridge]] about 16&nbsp;km from Beijing.<ref name=":022">{{Cite book |last=Li |first=Xiaobing |title=The Cold War in East Asia |date=2018 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-138-65179-1 |location=Abingdon, Oxon}}</ref>{{Rp|page=29}} The initial confused and sporadic skirmishing soon escalated into a [[Battle of Beiping–Tianjin|full-scale battle]].

Unlike Japan, China was unprepared for [[total war]] and had little military-industrial strength, no [[Armoured warfare|mechanized divisions]], and few [[Armoured fighting vehicle|armoured forces]].<ref>{{cite web |last=L |first=Klemen |date=1999–2000 |title=Chinese Nationalist Armour in World War II |url=https://warfare.gq/dutcheastindies/china_armour.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110321233313/http://www.dutcheastindies.webs.com/china_armour.html |archive-date=21 March 2011 |work=Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942}}</ref>

Within the first year of full-scale war, Japanese forces obtained victories in most major Chinese cities.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=29}}

===Battle of Beiping–Tianjin===
{{Main|Battle of Beiping–Tianjin}}

On 11 July, in accordance with the Goso conference, the [[Imperial Japanese Army General Staff]] authorized the deployment of an [[infantry division]] from the [[Chosen Army of Japan|Chōsen Army]], two combined brigades from the [[Kwantung Army]] and an air regiment composed of 18 squadrons as reinforcements to Northern China. By 20 July, total Japanese military strength in the Beijing-Tianjin area exceeded 180,000 personnel.

The Japanese gave Sung and his troops "free passage" before moving in to pacify resistance in areas surrounding Beijing (then Beiping) and Tianjin. After 24 days of combat, the Chinese 29th Army was forced to withdraw. The Japanese captured Beijing and the [[Taku Forts]] at Tianjin on 29 and 30 July respectively, thus concluding the Beijing-Tianjin campaign. By August 1937, Japan had occupied Beijing and Tianjin.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=29}}

However, the Japanese Army had been given orders not to advance further than the Yongding River. In a sudden volte-face, the Konoe government's foreign minister opened negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek's government in Nanjing and stated: "Japan wants Chinese cooperation, not Chinese land." Nevertheless, negotiations failed to move further. The [[Battle of Shanghai#Ōyama Incident|Ōyama Incident]] on 9 August escalated the skirmishes and battles into full scale warfare.<ref name="Hoyt2001">{{cite book |author=Edwin Palmer Hoyt |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xITp5N5hceEC&pg=PA152 |title=Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict |year=2001 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8154-1118-5 |pages=152–}}</ref>

The 29th Army's resistance (and poor equipment) inspired the 1937 "[[Sword March]]", which—with slightly reworked lyrics—became the National Revolutionary Army's standard [[marching cadence]] and popularized the [[racial epithet]] ''[[guizi]]'' to describe the Japanese invaders.<ref>Lei, Bryant. [http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk/download/pdf/12207607.pdf ''"New Songs of the Battlefield": Songs and Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution'', p.&nbsp;85.] University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh), 2004.</ref>

===Battle of Shanghai===
{{Main|Battle of Shanghai}}

[[File:Bloody Saturday, Shanghai.jpg|thumb|A baby sits in the remains of a Shanghai train station on [[Bloody Saturday (photograph)|'Bloody Saturday']], 1937]]
The [[Imperial General Headquarters]] (GHQ) in Tokyo, content with the gains acquired in northern China following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, initially showed reluctance to escalate the conflict into a full-scale war. Following the shooting of two Japanese officers who were attempting to enter the Hongqiao military airport on 9 August 1937, the Japanese demanded that all Chinese forces withdraw from Shanghai; the Chinese outright refused to meet this demand. In response, both the Chinese and the Japanese marched reinforcements into the Shanghai area. Chiang concentrated his best troops north of Shanghai in an effort to impress the city's large foreign community and increase China's foreign support.<ref name="Crean"/>{{rp|71}}

On 13 August 1937, Kuomintang soldiers attacked [[Imperial Japanese Navy Land Forces|Japanese Marine]] positions in Shanghai, with Japanese army troops and marines in turn crossing into the city with naval gunfire support at [[Zhabei]], leading to the Battle of Shanghai. On 14 August, Chinese forces under the command of [[Zhang Zhizhong]] were ordered to capture or destroy the Japanese strongholds in Shanghai, leading to bitter street fighting. In an attack on the Japanese cruiser ''[[Japanese cruiser Izumo|Izumo]]'', Kuomintang planes accidentally bombed the [[Shanghai International Settlement]], which led to more than 3,000 civilian deaths.<ref name="Wakeman280281">{{Cite book |first=Frederic E. |last=Wakeman | pages=280–281 |title=Policing Shanghai, 1927–1937 |publisher=University of California Press |year=1996 | isbn=0-520-20761-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vT5GrHv4VcMC&q=August%2014%2C%201937%20Shanghai&pg=PA281}}</ref>

In the three days from 14 to 16 August 1937, the [[Imperial Japanese Navy]] (IJN) sent many [[sortie]]s of the then-advanced long-ranged [[G3M]] medium-heavy land-based bombers and assorted [[List of aircraft of the Japanese Navy|carrier-based aircraft]] with the expectation of destroying the [[Republic of China Air Force|Chinese Air Force]]. However, the Imperial Japanese Navy encountered unexpected resistance from the defending Chinese [[Curtiss F11C Goshawk|Curtiss Hawk II]]/[[Curtiss Hawk III|Hawk III]] and [[Boeing P-26 Peashooter|P-26/281 Peashooter]] fighter squadrons; suffering heavy (50%) losses from the defending Chinese pilots (14 August was subsequently commemorated by the KMT as China's ''Air Force Day'').<ref>{{cite web|url=http://air.mnd.gov.tw/English/Publish.aspx?cnid=906&p=13447&Level=2|title=-Brief history of military airplanes|date=19 September 2006|work=mnd.gov.tw|access-date=13 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160826110540/http://air.mnd.gov.tw/English/Publish.aspx?cnid=906&p=13447&Level=2|archive-date=26 August 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/02/13/2003525367|title=War hero's son seeks to establish museum in Taiwan|work=Taipei Times|date=13 February 2012|access-date=13 August 2016|archive-date=24 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210924090122/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/02/13/2003525367|url-status=live}}</ref>

The skies of China had become a testing zone for advanced [[biplane]] and new-generation [[monoplane]] combat-aircraft designs. The introduction of the advanced [[A5M]] "Claude" fighters into the Shanghai-Nanjing theater of operations, beginning on 18 September 1937, helped the Japanese achieve a certain level of [[Air superiority fighter|air superiority]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Januszewski|first=Tadeusz |title=Mitsubishi A5M Claude (Yellow Series) |year=2013 |publisher=Stratus |location=Sandomierz, Poland |isbn=978-83-61421-99-3}}</ref> However the few experienced Chinese veteran pilots, as well as several Chinese-American volunteer fighter pilots, including Maj. [[Art Chin]], Maj. [[John Wong Pan-yang]], and Capt. Chan Kee-Wong, even in their older and slower biplanes, proved more than able to hold their own against the sleek A5Ms in [[dogfight]]s, and it also proved to be a [[battle of attrition]] against the Chinese Air Force. 

At the start of the battle, the local strength of the NRA was around five divisions, or about 70,000 troops, while local Japanese forces comprised about 6,300 marines. On 23 August, the Chinese Air Force attacked Japanese troop landings at Wusongkou in northern Shanghai with Hawk III fighter-attack planes and P-26/281 fighter escorts, and the Japanese intercepted most of the attack with [[A2N]] and [[A4N]] fighters from the aircraft carriers ''[[Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō|Hosho]]'' and ''[[Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō|Ryujo]]'', shooting down several of the Chinese planes while losing a single A4N in the dogfight with Lt. [[John Huang Xinrui|Huang Xinrui]] in his P-26/281; the Japanese Army reinforcements succeeded in landing in northern Shanghai.<ref>{{cite web|title=Martyr Qin Jia-zhu|url=https://air.mnd.gov.tw/EN/PastCurrent/PastCurrent_Detail.aspx?FID=28&CID=176&ID=1327|access-date=2020-11-08|website=air.mnd.gov.tw|archive-date=5 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201105082630/https://air.mnd.gov.tw/EN/PastCurrent/PastCurrent_Detail.aspx?FID=28&CID=176&ID=1327|url-status=live}}</ref> The [[Imperial Japanese Army]] (IJA) ultimately committed over 300,000 troops, along with numerous naval vessels and aircraft, to capture the city. After more than three months of intense fighting, their casualties far exceeded initial expectations.<ref>Fu Jing-hui, An Introduction of Chinese and Foreign History of War, 2003, pp. 109–111</ref> On 26 October, the IJA captured Dachang, a key strong-point within Shanghai, and on 5 November, additional reinforcements from Japan landed in Hangzhou Bay. Finally, on 9 November, the NRA began a general retreat.

Japan did not immediately occupy the Shanghai International Settlement or the [[Shanghai French Concession]], areas which were outside of China's control due to the [[treaty port]] system. Japan moved into these areas after its 1941 declaration of war against the United States and the United Kingdom.<ref name=":02"/>{{rp|11–12}}

===Battle of Nanjing and massacre===
{{Main|Nanjing Massacre}}

[[File:Photo 07 (The "Shame" Album).jpg|thumb|upright|A Chinese POW about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a ''[[shin gunto]]'']]
In November 1937, the Japanese concentrated 220,000 soldiers and began a campaign against Nanjing.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=29}} Building on the hard-won victory in Shanghai, the IJA advanced on and [[Battle of Nanjing|captured the KMT capital city]] of Nanjing (December 1937) and [[Battle of Xinkou|Northern Shanxi]] (September{{snd}}November 1937).

Japanese forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Chinese soldiers defending the city, killing approximately 50,000 of them including 17 Chinese generals.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=29}} Upon the capture of Nanjing, Japanese committed massive war atrocities including mass murder and rape of Chinese civilians after 13 December 1937, which has been referred to as the [[Nanjing Massacre]]. Over the next several weeks, Japanese troops perpetrated numerous mass executions and tens of thousands of rapes. The army looted and burned the surrounding towns and the city, destroying more than a third of the buildings.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia| url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Nanjing-Massacre |title=Nanjing Massacre |date=13 December 2022 |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica}}</ref>

The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been subject to much debate, with estimates ranging from 100,000 to more than 300,000.<ref name="highest death toll estimate">Daqing Yang, "A Sino-Japanese Controversy: The Nanjing Atrocity As History", ''Sino-Japanese Studies'', November 1990, 16.</ref> The numbers agreed upon by most scholars are provided by the [[International Military Tribunal for the Far East]], which estimate at least 200,000 murders and 20,000 rapes.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Askew |first=David |date=2002 |title="The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends" |url=http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180405031715/http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html |access-date=2024-05-20|archive-date=5 April 2018}}</ref>

The Japanese atrocities in Nanjing, especially following the Chinese defense of Shanghai, increased international goodwill for the Chinese people and the Chinese government.<ref name="Crean"/>{{rp|72}}

The Nationalist government re-established itself in Chongqing, which became the wartime seat of government until 1945.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=32}}

==1938==
By January 1938, most conventional Kuomintang forces had either been defeated or no longer offered major resistance to Japanese advances.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|122}}  KMT forces won a few victories in 1938 (the [[Battle of Taierzhuang]] and the [[Battle of Wanjialing]]) but were generally ineffective that year.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=29}} By March 1938, the Japanese controlled almost all of North China.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|pages=29–30}} Communist-led rural resistance to the Japanese remained active, however.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Opper |first=Marc |title=People's Wars in China, Malaya, and Vietnam |year=2020 |publisher=[[University of Michigan Press]] |isbn=978-0-472-90125-8 |location=Ann Arbor |doi=10.3998/mpub.11413902 |hdl=20.500.12657/23824 |s2cid=211359950|url=https://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=search&query=rid:38954 }}</ref>{{rp|122}}

===Battles of Xuzhou and Taierzhuang===
[[File:Taierzhuang.jpg|thumb|Chinese soldiers in [[urban warfare]] in the [[Battle of Taierzhuang]], March–April 1938]]

With many victories achieved, Japanese field generals [[Battle of Xuzhou|escalated the war in Jiangsu]] in an attempt to wipe out the Chinese forces in the area. The Japanese managed to overcome Chinese resistance around Bengbu and the Teng xian, but were fought to a halt at Linyi.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mackinnon |first=Stephen |title=Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China |date=2008 |publisher=University of California Press |pages=32}}</ref>

The Japanese were then decisively defeated at the Battle of Taierzhuang (March–April 1938), where the Chinese used night attacks and [[close-quarters combat]] to overcome Japanese advantages in firepower. The Chinese also severed Japanese supply lines from the rear, forcing the Japanese to retreat in the first Chinese victory of the war.{{sfn|Mitter|2013|pp=149–150}}

The Japanese then attempted to surround and destroy the Chinese armies in the Xuzhou region with an enormous [[pincer movement]]. However the majority of the Chinese forces, some 200,000–300,000 troops in 40 divisions, managed to break out of the encirclement and retreat to defend Wuhan, the Japanese's next target.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harmsen |first=Peter |title=Storm Clouds over the Pacific, 1931–1941 |year=2018 |publisher=Casemate |page=111}}</ref>

===Battle of Wuhan===
[[File:NRAWanjialing1.jpg|thumb|Chinese troops advancing near Wanjialing]]

Following Xuzhou, the IJA changed its strategy and deployed almost all of its existing armies in China to [[Battle of Wuhan|attack the city of Wuhan]], which had become the political, economic and military center of China, in hopes of destroying the fighting strength of the NRA and forcing the KMT government to negotiate for peace.{{sfn|Huang|p=168}} On 6 June, they captured Kaifeng, the capital of Henan, and threatened to take Zhengzhou, the junction of the Pinghan and Longhai railways.

The Japanese forces, numbering some 400,000 men, were faced by over 1 million NRA troops in the Central Yangtze region. Having learned from their defeats at Shanghai and Nanjing, the Chinese had adapted themselves to fight the Japanese and managed to check their forces on many fronts, slowing and sometimes reversing the Japanese advances, as in the case of [[Battle of Wanjialing|Wanjialing]].<ref name="Mackinnon2008" />{{rp|39–41}}

To overcome Chinese resistance, Japanese forces frequently deployed poison gas and committed atrocities against civilians, such as a "mini-Nanjing Massacre" in the city of [[Jiujiang]] upon its capture.<ref name="Mackinnon2008">{{Cite book |last=Mackinnon |first=Stephen |title=Wuhan 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China |year=2008 |publisher=University of California Press}}</ref>{{rp|39}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harmsen |first=Peter |title=Storm Clouds over the Pacific, 1931–1941 |year=2018 |publisher=Casemate |pages=119}}</ref> After four months of intense combat, the Nationalists were forced to abandon Wuhan by October, and its government and armies retreated to Chongqing.<ref name="Crean" />{{rp|72}} Both sides had suffered tremendous casualties in the battle, with the Chinese losing up to 500,000 soldiers killed or wounded,<ref name="Mackinnon2008" />{{rp|42}} and the Japanese up to 200,000.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clodfelter |first=Micheal |title=Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 |year=2017 |publisher=McFarland & Company |edition=4th |page=393}}</ref>

===Communist resistance===
After their victory at Wuhan, Japan advanced deep into Communist territory and redeployed 50,000 troops to the [[Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region]]. Elements of the Eighth Route Army soon attacked the advancing Japanese, inflicting between 3,000 and 5,000 casualties and resulting in a Japanese retreat.<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|pages=122–124}} The Eighth Route Army carried out guerilla operations and established military and political bases.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|pages=34–35}} As the Japanese military came to understand that the Communists avoided conventional attacks and defense, it altered its tactics.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|122}} The Japanese military built more roads to quicken movement between strongpoints and cities, blockaded rivers and roads in an effort to disrupt Communists supply, sought to expand militia from its puppet regime to conserve manpower, and use systematic violence on civilians in the Border Region in an effort to destroy its economy. The Japanese military mandated confiscation of the Eighth Route Army's goods and used this directive as a pretext to confiscate goods, including engaging in grave robbery in the Border Region.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|122–124}}

===Air raid at Chongqing===
With Japanese casualties and costs mounting, the Imperial General Headquarters attempted to break Chinese resistance by ordering the [[Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service]] and [[Imperial Japanese Army Air Service]] to launch the war's first [[Strategic bombing during World War II#Japanese bombing|massive air raids]] on civilian targets. Japanese raiders hit the Kuomintang's newly established [[Bombing of Chongqing|provisional capital of Chongqing]] and most other major cities in unoccupied China, leaving many people either dead, injured, or homeless.

===Yellow River flood===
[[File:1938 Yellow River flood.jpg|thumb|National Revolutionary Army soldiers during the [[1938 Yellow River flood]]]]
{{Excerpt|1938 Yellow River flood|paragraphs=1–2}}

==1939–1943==
[[File:Second Sino-Japanese War WW2.png|thumb|The extent of Japanese occupation in 1940 (in red)]]
By 1939, the Nationalist army had withdrawn to the southwest and northwest of China and the Japanese controlled the coastal cities that had been centres of Nationalist power.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=30}} From 1939 to 1945, China was divided into three regions: Japanese-occupied territories (''Lunxianqu''), the Nationalist-controlled region (''Guotongqu''), and the Communist-controlled regions (''Jiefangqu<u>,</u>'' or liberated areas).<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}}

From the beginning of 1939, the war entered a new phase with the unprecedented defeat of the Japanese at [[Battle of Suixian–Zaoyang]] and [[First Battle of Changsha]]. General [[Ma Biao (general)|Ma Biao]] also led Hui, Salar and Dongxiang cavalry to defeat the Japanese at the [[Battle of Huaiyang]] in the summer of 1939.<ref>{{cite book |last=Yongliang |first=Wang |title=西北回族社会发展机制 |trans-title=Social Development Mechanisms of the Hui Ethnicity in Northwest China |date=1999 |publisher=Ningxia People's Publishing House |page=185}}</ref> Ma Biao had fought against the Japanese in the Boxer Rebellion.

In 1939, Mao Zedong wrote ''The Greatest Crisis under Current Conditions'', calling for more active resistance against Japan and for the strengthening of the Second United Front.<ref name=":22">{{Cite book |last=Wang |first=Xian |title=Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs |date=2025 |publisher=[[University of Michigan Press]] |isbn=978-0-472-05719-1 |series=China Understandings Today series |location=Ann Arbor}}</ref>{{Rp|page=76}}

The Chinese launched their first large-scale [[1939–1940 Winter Offensive|counter-offensive]] against the IJA in December 1939; however, due to its low military-industrial capacity and limited experience in modern warfare, this offensive was defeated. Afterwards Chiang could not risk any more all-out offensive campaigns given the poorly trained, under-equipped, and disorganized state of his armies and opposition to his leadership both within the Kuomintang and in China in general. He had lost a substantial portion of his best trained and equipped troops in the Battle of Shanghai and was at times at the mercy of his generals, who maintained a high degree of autonomy from the central KMT government.

During the offensive, Hui forces in Suiyuan under generals [[Ma Hongbin]] and [[Ma Buqing]] routed the Imperial Japanese Army and their puppet Inner Mongol forces and prevented the planned Japanese advance into northwest China. Ma Hongbin's father [[Ma Fulu]] had fought against Japanese in the [[Boxer Rebellion]].

After 1940, the Japanese encountered tremendous difficulties in administering and garrisoning the seized territories, and tried to solve their occupation problems by implementing a strategy of creating friendly puppet governments favourable to Japanese interests in the territories conquered. This included prominently the [[Wang Jingwei regime|regime]] headed by [[Wang Jingwei]], one of Chiang's rivals in the KMT.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}} However, [[Japanese war crimes|atrocities]] committed by the Imperial Japanese Army, as well as Japanese refusal to delegate any real power, left the puppets very unpopular and largely ineffective. The only success the Japanese had was to recruit a large [[Collaborationist Chinese Army]] to maintain public security in the occupied areas.

===Japanese expansion===
By 1941, Japan held most of the eastern coastal areas of China and Vietnam, but [[guerrilla]] fighting continued in these occupied areas. Japan had suffered high casualties which resulted from unexpectedly stubborn Chinese resistance, and neither side could make any swift progress in the manner of [[Nazi Germany]] in Western Europe.

By 1943, Guangdong had experienced famine. As the situation worsened, New York Chinese compatriots received a letter stating that 600,000 people were killed in [[Siyi]] by starvation.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4hdwAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA117 |title=Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada's Exclusion Era, 1885–1945 |isbn=978-0199780549 |last1=Mar |first1=Lisa Rose |year=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref>

===Second phase: October 1938 – December 1941===
[[File:Chinese soldiers 1939.jpg|thumb|National Revolutionary Army soldiers march to the front in 1939.]]
During this period, the main Chinese objective was to drag out the war for as long as possible in a war of attrition, thereby exhausting Japanese resources while it was building up China's military capacity. American general [[Joseph Stilwell]] called this strategy "winning by outlasting". The NRA adopted the concept of "magnetic warfare" to attract advancing Japanese troops to definite points where they were subjected to ambush, flanking attacks, and encirclements in major engagements. The most prominent example of this tactic was the successful defense of [[Changsha]] in 1939, and again in the [[Battle of Changsha (1941)|1941 battle]], in which heavy casualties were inflicted on the IJA.{{cn|date=July 2025}}

Local Chinese [[Resistance movement|resistance forces]], organized separately by both the CCP and the KMT, continued their resistance in occupied areas to make Japanese administration over the vast land area of China difficult.{{cn|date=July 2025}} In 1940, the [[Eighth Route Army|Chinese Red Army]] launched a [[Hundred Regiments Offensive|major offensive]] in north China, destroying railways and a major coal mine. These constant guerilla and sabotage operations deeply frustrated the Imperial Japanese Army and they led them to employ the [[Three Alls policy]]—kill all, loot all, burn all. It was during this period that the bulk of Japanese war crimes were committed.{{cn|date=July 2025}} In April 1941, Soviet aid to China halted with the [[Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact]]. The CCP formally stated that the pact was "a great victory for Soviet diplomacy" and "was beneficial to liberation throughout China."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hua |first=Gao |author-link=Gao Hua |title=How the Red Sun Rose: The Origin and Development of the Yan'an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945 |title-link=How the Red Sun Rose |date=2018-11-15 |publisher=[[Chinese University of Hong Kong Press]] |isbn=978-962-996-822-9 |pages=233 |language=en}}</ref>

Japan had occupied much of north and coastal China by the end of 1941, but the KMT central government and military had retreated to the western interior to continue their resistance, while the Chinese communists remained in control of base areas in [[Shaanxi]]. From 1941 to 1942, Japan concentrated most of its forces in China in an effort to defeat the CCP bases behind Japan's lines.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}} To decrease guerilla's human and material resources, the Japanese military implemented its Three Alls policy ("Kill all, loot all, burn all").<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}} In response, the CCP forces increased their role in production activities, including farming, raising hogs, and cloth-making.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}}

===Relationship between the Nationalists and the Communists===
[[File:Zhu De with NRA Emblem.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Eighth Route Army]] Commander [[Zhu De]] with a KMT "[[Blue Sky with a White Sun|Blue Sky, White Sun]]" emblem cap]]

After the Mukden Incident in 1931, Chinese public opinion was strongly critical of Manchuria's leader, the "young marshal" Zhang Xueliang, for his non-resistance to the Japanese invasion, even though the Kuomintang central government was also responsible for this policy, giving Zhang an order to improvise while not offering support. After losing Manchuria to the Japanese, Zhang and his [[Fengtian clique|Northeast Army]] were given the duty of suppressing the Red Army in Shaanxi after their [[Long March]]. This resulted in great casualties for his Northeast Army, which received no support in manpower or weaponry from Chiang Kai-shek.

In the [[Xi'an Incident]] that took place on 12 December 1936, Zhang Xueliang kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek in [[Xi'an]], hoping to force an end to KMT–CCP conflict. To secure the release of Chiang, the KMT agreed to a temporary ceasefire with the Communists. On 24 December, the two parties agreed to a [[Second United Front (China)|United Front]] against Japan; this had salutary effects for the beleaguered Communists, who agreed to form the [[New Fourth Army]] and the [[8th Route Army]] under the nominal control of the NRA. In addition, [[Shaan-Gan-Ning]] and Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border regions were created, under the control of the CCP. In Shaan-Gan-Ning, Communists in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Base Area fostered [[History of opium in China|opium production]], taxed it, and engaged in its trade—including selling to Japanese-occupied and KMT-controlled provinces.<ref name=":03">{{Cite book |last=Chun |first=Yung-fa |author-link=Chen Yung-fa |title=New Perspectives on the Chinese Revolution |date=1995 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=9781315702124 |editor-last=Saich |editor-first=Tony |location=New York |chapter=The Blooming Poppy under the Red Sun: The Yan'an Way and the Opium Trade |doi=10.4324/9781315702124 |oclc=904437646 |editor-last2=van de Ven |editor-first2=Hans |editor-link2=Hans van de Ven}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Hevia |first=James Louis |year=2003 |title=Opium, Empire, and Modern History |url=http://muse.jhu.edu/content/crossref/journals/china_review_international/v010/10.2hevia.pdf |journal=China Review International |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=307–326 |doi=10.1353/cri.2004.0076 |s2cid=143635262 |issn=1527-9367}}</ref> The Red Army fought alongside KMT forces during the [[Battle of Taiyuan]], and the high point of their cooperation came in 1938 during the [[Battle of Wuhan]].

The formation of a united front added to the legality of the CCP, but what kind of support the central government would provide to the communists were not settled. When compromise with the CCP failed to incentivize the Soviet Union to engage in an open conflict against Japan, the KMT withheld further support for the Communists. To strengthen their legitimacy, Communist forces actively engaged the Japanese early on. These operations weakened Japanese forces in Shanxi and other areas in the North. Mao Zedong was distrustful of Chiang Kai-shek, however, and shifted strategy to guerrilla warfare in order to preserve the CCP's military strength.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Nobu |first1=Iwatani |title=How the War with Japan Saved the Chinese Communist Party |url=https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00722/ |website=Nippon Communications Foundation |date=27 July 2021}}</ref>

Despite Japan's steady territorial gains in northern China, the coastal regions, and the rich [[Yangtze River]] Valley in central China, the distrust between the two antagonists was scarcely veiled. The uneasy alliance began to break down by late 1938, partially due to the Communists' aggressive efforts to expand their military strength by absorbing Chinese guerrilla forces behind Japanese lines. Chinese militia who refused to switch their allegiance were often labelled "collaborators" and attacked by CCP forces. For example, the Red Army led by [[He Long]] attacked and wiped out a brigade of Chinese militia led by Zhang Yin-wu in Hebei in June 1939.{{sfn|Huang|p=259}} Starting in 1940, open conflict between Nationalists and Communists became more frequent in the occupied areas outside of Japanese control, culminating in the [[New Fourth Army Incident]] in January 1941.

Afterwards, the Second United Front completely broke down and Chinese Communists leader [[Mao Zedong]] outlined the preliminary plan for the CCP's eventual seizure of power from Chiang Kai-shek. Mao himself is quoted outlining the "721" policy, saying "We are fighting 70 percent for self development, 20 percent for compromise, and 10 percent against Japan".{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}} Mao began his final push for consolidation of CCP power under his authority, and his teachings became the central tenets of the CCP doctrine that came to be formalized as [[Mao Zedong Thought]]. The Communists also began to focus most of their energy on building up their sphere of influence wherever opportunities were presented, mainly through rural mass organizations, administrative, land and tax reform measures favouring poor peasants; while the Nationalists attempted to neutralize the spread of Communist influence by military blockade of areas controlled by CCP and fighting the Japanese at the same time.<ref name=CRISIS-TIME-MAGAZINE>{{cite magazine|title=Crisis|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801570-4,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071120121411/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801570-4,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=20 November 2007|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|date=13 November 1944}}</ref>

===Entrance of the Western Allies===
[[File:Chiang Kai Shek and wife with Lieutenant General Stilwell.jpg|thumb|Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife [[Soong Mei-ling]] with Lieutenant General [[Joseph Stilwell]] in 1942, [[British Burma]]]]
[[File:Madame Chiang Kai Shek of China Addressed the House of Representatives on 18 February 1943.mp3|thumb|The 18 February 1943 address by Soong Mei-ling before both houses of the United States Congress.]]
[[File:United China Relief1.jpg|thumb|A United States poster from the United China Relief organization advocating aid to China]]

Japan had expected to extract economic benefits of its invasions of China and elsewhere, including in the form of fuel and raw material resources.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=30}} As Japanese aggression continued, however, the United States responded with trade embargoes on various goods, including oil and petroleum (beginning December 1939) and scrap iron and munitions (beginning July 1940).<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=30}} The United States demanded that Japan withdraw from China and also refused to recognize Japan's occupations of the Indochinese countries.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=30}} In spring 1941, trade negotiations between the United States and Japan failed.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=30}} In July 1941, the United States froze Japanese financial assets and obtained Dutch and British agreements to also cut those countries' oil exports to Japan.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=30}} This in turn prompted the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=30}}

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war against Japan, and within days China joined [[Allies of World War II|the Allies]] in formal declaration of war against Japan, Germany and Italy.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}} As the Western Allies entered the war against Japan, the Sino-Japanese War would become part of a greater conflict, the [[Pacific War|Pacific theatre]] of World War II. Japan's military action against the United States also restrained its capacity to conduct further offensive operations in China.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=30}}

After the Lend-Lease Act was passed in 1941, American financial and military aid began to trickle in.<ref>Tai-Chun Kuo, "A Strong Diplomat in a Weak Polity: TV Soong and wartime US–China relations, 1940–1943." ''Journal of Contemporary China'' 18.59 (2009): 219–231.</ref> [[Claire Lee Chennault]] commanded the 1st American Volunteer Group (nicknamed the [[Flying Tigers]]), with American pilots flying American warplanes which were painted with the Chinese flag to attack the Japanese. He headed both the volunteer group and the uniformed U.S. Army Air Forces units that replaced it in 1942.<ref>Daniel Ford, ''Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941–1942'' (2007).</ref> However, it was the Soviets that provided the greatest material help for China from 1937 into 1941, with fighter aircraft for the Nationalist Chinese Air Force and artillery and armour for the Chinese Army through the [[Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact|Sino-Soviet Treaty]]; [[Operation Zet]] also provided for a group of Soviet volunteer combat aviators to join the Chinese Air Force in the fight against the Japanese occupation from late 1937 through 1939. 

The [[ABCD line|United States embargoed Japan in 1941]] depriving it of shipments of oil and various other resources necessary to continue the war in China. This pressure, which was intended to disparage a continuation of the war and bring Japan into negotiation, resulted in the [[Attack on Pearl Harbor]] and Japan's drive south to procure from the resource-rich European colonies in Southeast Asia by force the resources which the United States had denied to them.

Almost immediately, Chinese troops achieved another decisive victory in the [[Battle of Changsha (1942)|Battle of Changsha]], which earned the Chinese government much prestige from the Western Allies. China was one of the "Big Four" Allied Powers during the war.<ref name= "Richard"/> President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and China as the world's "[[Four Policemen]]"; his primary reason for elevating China to such a status was the belief that after the war it would serve as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Westad |first=Odd |title=Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 |year=2003 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-8047-4484-3 |page=[https://archive.org/details/decisiveencounte00west/page/305 305] |url=https://archive.org/details/decisiveencounte00west |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Knowledge of Japanese naval movements in the Pacific was provided to the American Navy by the [[Sino-American Cooperative Organization]] (SACO) which was run by the Chinese intelligence head [[Dai Li]].<ref name="Wakeman2003">{{cite book|author=Frederic E. Wakeman|title=Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jYYYQYK6FAYC&pg=PA309|year=2003|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-92876-3|pages=309–|access-date=29 July 2016|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012012438/https://books.google.com/books?id=jYYYQYK6FAYC&pg=PA309|url-status=live}}</ref> Philippine and Japanese ocean weather was affected by weather originating near northern China.<ref name="Kush2012">{{cite book|author=Linda Kush|title=The Rice Paddy Navy: U.S. Sailors Undercover in China|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2azvCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT206|year= 2012|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1-78200-312-0|pages=206–|access-date=29 July 2016|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012012459/https://books.google.com/books?id=2azvCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT206|url-status=live}}</ref> The base of SACO was located in Yangjiashan.<ref name="Wakeman2003 2">{{cite book|author=Frederic E. Wakeman|title=Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jYYYQYK6FAYC&pg=PA497|year=2003|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-92876-3|pages=497–|access-date=29 July 2016|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012012542/https://books.google.com/books?id=jYYYQYK6FAYC&pg=PA497|url-status=live}}</ref>

Chiang Kai-shek continued to receive supplies from the United States. However, in contrast to the [[Pacific Route|Arctic supply route]] to the Soviet Union which stayed open through most of the war, sea routes to China and the [[Yunnan–Vietnam Railway]] had been closed since 1940. Therefore, between the [[Japanese conquest of Burma|closing of the Burma Road]] in 1942 and its re-opening as the [[Ledo Road]] in 1945, foreign aid was largely limited to what could be flown in over "[[The Hump]]". In Burma, on 16 April 1942, 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by the Japanese 33rd Division during the [[Battle of Yenangyaung]] and rescued by the Chinese 38th Division.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Slim |first=William |title=Defeat into Victory |year=1956 |publisher=Cassell |location=London |isbn=0-304-29114-5}}</ref> After the [[Doolittle Raid]], the Imperial Japanese Army conducted a massive sweep through [[Zhejiang]] and [[Jiangxi]], now known as the [[Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign]], with the goal of finding the surviving American airmen, applying retribution on the Chinese who aided them and destroying air bases. The operation started 15 May 1942, with 40 infantry battalions and 15–16 artillery battalions but was repelled by Chinese forces in September.<ref>{{Cite book |first=R. Keith |last=Schoppa |title=In a Sea of Bitterness, Refugees during the Sino-Japanese War|publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-674-05988-7 |page=28}}</ref> During this campaign, the Imperial Japanese Army left behind a trail of devastation and also spread [[cholera]], [[typhoid]], [[Plague (disease)|plague]] and [[dysentery]] pathogens. Chinese estimates allege that as many as 250,000 civilians, the vast majority of whom were destitute Tanka boat people and other pariah ethnicities unable to flee, may have died of disease.<ref>Yuki Tanaka, ''Hidden Horrors'', Westviewpres, 1996, p. 138</ref> It caused more than 16&nbsp;million civilians to evacuate far away deep inward China. 90% of Ningbo's population had already fled before battle started.<ref name="Mackinnon2008" />{{rp|49}}

Most of China's industry had already been captured or destroyed by Japan, and the Soviet Union refused to allow the United States to supply China through the [[Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic|Kazakhstan]] into [[Xinjiang]] as the Xinjiang warlord Sheng Shicai had turned anti-Soviet in 1942 with Chiang's approval. For these reasons, the Chinese government never had the supplies and equipment needed to mount major counter-offensives. Despite the severe shortage of matériel, in 1943, the Chinese were successful in repelling major Japanese offensives [[Battle of West Hubei|in Hubei]] and [[Battle of Changde|Changde]].

Chiang was named Allied commander-in-chief in the China theater in 1942. American general Joseph Stilwell served for a time as Chiang's chief of staff, while simultaneously commanding American forces in the [[China-Burma-India Theater]]. For many reasons, relations between Stilwell and Chiang soon broke down. Many historians (such as [[Barbara W. Tuchman]]) have suggested it was largely due to the corruption and inefficiency of the Kuomintang government, while others (such as [[Ray Huang]] and [[Hans van de Ven]]) have depicted it as a more complicated situation. Stilwell had a strong desire to assume total control of Chinese troops and pursue an aggressive strategy, while Chiang preferred a patient and less expensive strategy of out-waiting the Japanese. Chiang continued to maintain a defensive posture despite Allied pleas to actively break the Japanese blockade, because China had already suffered tens of millions of war casualties and believed that Japan would eventually capitulate in the face of America's overwhelming industrial output. For these reasons the other Allies gradually began to lose confidence in the Chinese ability to conduct offensive operations from the Asian mainland, and instead concentrated their efforts against the Japanese in the [[Pacific Ocean Areas]] and [[South West Pacific theatre of World War II|South West Pacific Area]], employing an [[island hopping]] strategy.<ref>Hans Van de Ven, "Stilwell in the Stocks: The Chinese Nationalists and the Allied Powers in the Second World War", ''Asian Affairs'' 34.3 (November 2003): 243–259.</ref>

[[File:Cairo conference.jpg|thumb|Chiang Kai-shek, [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], and [[Winston Churchill]] at the 1943 [[Cairo Conference]]]]

Long-standing differences in national interest and political stance among China, the United States, and the United Kingdom remained in place. British Prime Minister [[Winston Churchill]] was reluctant to devote British troops, many of whom had been routed by the Japanese in earlier campaigns, to the reopening of the [[Burma Road]]; Stilwell, on the other hand, believed that reopening the road was vital, as all China's mainland ports were under Japanese control. The Allies' "[[Europe first]]" policy did not sit well with Chiang, while the later British insistence that China send more and more troops to Indochina for use in the [[Burma Campaign]] was seen by Chiang as an attempt to use Chinese manpower to defend British colonial possessions. Chiang also believed that China should divert its crack army divisions from Burma to eastern China to defend the airbases of the American bombers that he hoped would defeat Japan through bombing, a strategy that American general Claire Lee Chennault supported but which Stilwell strongly opposed. In addition, Chiang voiced his support of the [[Indian independence movement]] in a 1942 meeting with [[Mohandas Gandhi]], which further soured the relationship between China and the United Kingdom.{{sfn|Huang|pp=299–300}}
[[File:American soldier, Republic of China soldier and British soldier united together with their national flags, World War II poster, October 1943 (cropped).jpg|thumb|1943 propaganda painting with American, Chinese and British soldiers]]
American and Canadian-born Chinese were recruited to act as covert operatives in Japanese-occupied China. Employing their racial background as a disguise, their mandate was to blend in with local citizens and wage a campaign of sabotage. Activities focused on destruction of Japanese transportation of supplies (signaling bomber destruction of railroads, bridges).{{Sfn|MacLaren|pages=200–220}} Chinese forces [[Battle of Northern Burma and Western Yunnan|advanced to northern Burma]] in late 1943, besieged Japanese troops in [[Myitkyina]], and [[Battle of Mount Song|captured Mount Song]].<ref>{{Cite book|year=2012|title=The Second World War|location=London|publisher=[[Weidenfeld & Nicolson]]|isbn=978-0-297-84497-6|ref=CITEREFBeevor2012}}</ref> The British and Commonwealth forces had their operation in [[Mission 204]] which attempted to provide assistance to the Chinese Nationalist Army.{{sfn|Stevens|p=70}} The first phase in 1942 under command of [[Special Operations Executive|SOE]] achieved very little, but lessons were learned and a second more successful phase, commenced in February 1943 under British Military command, was conducted before the Japanese [[Operation Ichi-Go]] offensive in 1944 compelled evacuation.{{sfn|Stevens|p=73}}

== 1944-1945 and Operation Ichi-Go ==
In 1944, the Communists launched counteroffensives from the liberated areas against Japanese forces.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=53}}

Japan's 1944 [[Operation Ichi-Go]] was the largest military campaign of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The campaign mobilized 500,000 Japanese troops, 100,000 horses, 1,500 artillery pieces, and 800 tanks.<ref name="Coble2023">{{Cite book |last=Coble |first=Parks M. |author-link=Parks M. Coble |title=The Collapse of Nationalist China: How Chiang Kai-shek Lost China's Civil War |year=2023 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-009-29761-5}}</ref>{{rp|19}} The 750,000 casualty figure for Nationalist Chinese forces are not all dead and captured, Cox included in the 750,000 casualties that China incurred in Ichigo soldiers who simply "melted away" and others who were rendered combat ineffective besides killed and captured soldiers.<ref name="Cox, 1980 pp. 2">[https://web.archive.org/web/20190407201533/http://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a272727.pdf Cox, 1980 pp. 2] Retrieved 9 March 2016</ref>

In late November 1944, the Japanese advance slowed approximately 300 miles from Chongqing as it experienced shortages of trained soldiers and materiel. Although Operation Ichi-Go achieved its goals of seizing United States air bases and establishing a potential railway corridor from Manchukuo to Hanoi, it did so too late to impact the result of the broader war. American bombers in Chengdu were moved to the [[Mariana Islands]] where, along with bombers from bases in Saipan and Tinian, they could still bomb the Japanese home islands.<ref name="Coble2023" />{{rp|21–22}}

After Operation Ichigo, Chiang Kai-shek started a plan to withdraw Chinese troops from the Burma theatre against Japan in Southeast Asia for a counter offensive called "White Tower" and "Iceman" against Japanese soldiers in China in 1945.{{sfn|Hsiung|Levine|1992|pp=162–166}}

The poor performance of Chiang Kai-shek's forces in opposing the Japanese advance during Operation Ichigo became widely viewed as demonstrating Chiang's incompetence.<ref name=":02" />{{rp|3}} It irreparably damaged the Roosevelt administration's view of Chiang and the KMT.<ref name="Crean" />{{rp|75}} The campaign further weakened the Nationalist economy and government revenues.<ref name=":02" />{{rp|22–24}} Because of the Nationalists' increasing inability to fund the military, Nationalist authorities overlooked military corruption and smuggling. The Nationalist army increasingly turned to raiding villages to [[press-gang]] peasants into service and force marching them to assigned units. Approximately 10% of these peasants died before reaching their units.<ref name=":02" />{{rp|24–25}}

By the end of 1944, Chinese troops under the command of [[Sun Li-jen]] attacking from India, and those under [[Wei Lihuang]] attacking from [[Yunnan]], joined forces in [[Mong-Yu]], successfully driving the Japanese out of North Burma and securing the Ledo Road, China's vital supply artery.{{sfn|Huang|p=420}} In Spring 1945 the Chinese launched offensives that retook [[Battle of West Hunan|Hunan]] and [[Second Guangxi Campaign|Guangxi]]. With the Chinese army progressing well in training and equipment, Wedemeyer planned to launch Operation Carbonado in summer 1945 to retake Guangdong, thus obtaining a coastal port, and from there drive northwards toward Shanghai. However, the [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]] and [[Soviet invasion of Manchuria]] hastened Japanese surrender and these plans were not put into action.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/chinoff/chinoff.htm |title=China Offensive |date=3 October 2003 |website=Center of Military History |publisher=United states Army |access-date=14 November 2014 |archive-date=11 November 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141111214346/http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/chinoff/chinoff.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref>

==Chinese industrial base and the CIC==
{{Main|Chinese Industrial Cooperatives|History of the cooperative movement in China|Gung ho}}




The Second Sino-Japanese War had quickly harmed China's economy, with one of the earliest attacks being the Battle of Shanghai in 1937. With Shanghai, being a major industrial and foreign relations port for the Chinese and now under Japanese control, the Chinese economy industry took a big hit.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Barnett |first=Robert W. |date=28 February 1940 |title=China's Industrial Cooperatives on Trial |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3022292?seq=1 |journal=Far Eastern Survey |volume=9 |issue=5 |pages=51–56 |doi=10.2307/3022292 |jstor=3022292 |via=JSTOR}}</ref> In an effort to rectify this, Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (CIC) were created in 1937, under the "Gung Ho" Movement, before becoming formalized in 1938. The creation of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives allowed the Chinese people to establish smaller industry centers in small towns across China, allowing for economic and industrial production away from battle or possible Japanese invasion. In addition to supporting the economy, more immediate efforts were placed on supporting the Chinese military in producing whatever materials were needed for the war. Chinese refugees and those displaced by the war were hired by CICs to help production.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Clegg |first=Jenny |title=George Hogg and Gung Ho The Chinese Industrial Co-operative Movement from the 1930s |url=https://www.harpenden-history.org.uk/harpenden-history/people-2/adventurers/george_hogg_his_life_in_china/george_hogg_and_gung_ho}}</ref> The CICs relied on foreign aid and contributions, which drew mixed reactions.  Overall, the CIC program failed as they had a goal of creating 30,000 cooperatives, but only succeded in making approximately 2,000 cooperatives instead.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Clegg |first=Jenny |date=2012 |title=Mass- and Elite-Based Strategies for Cooperative Development in Wartime Nationalist China: Western Views on the 'Gung Ho' Industrial Cooperative Experience |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23615461?seq=1 |journal=European Journal of East Asian Studies |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=305-327 |via=JSTOR}}</ref> The name "Gung Ho" comes from the Americanization of the Chinese name for Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. The full name, "工業合作社" (''gōng yè'' ''hé zuò shè)'' was often shortened to the term "工合" (''gōng'' ''hé''), which was mistaken by U.S. Marine [[Evans Carlson|Evans Fordyce Carlson]] to mean "work together". Carlson then went on to use this believed motto as his slogan throughout the war, generating that phrase "Gung Ho" that has come to be in the English language.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kung |first=Jess |date=18 October 2019 |title=The Long, Strange Journey of 'Gung-Ho' |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/10/18/406693323/the-long-strange-journey-of-gung-ho#:~:text=Gung%2Dho%20describes%20enthusiasm%20%E2%80%94%20often,a%20century%2C%20to%201930s%20China. |website=NPR}}</ref>{{Expand section|date=March 2025}}

==Foreign aid==
{{Further|Japanese in the Chinese resistance to the Empire of Japan}}

Before the start of full-scale warfare of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Germany had since the time of the [[Weimar Republic]], provided much equipment and training to crack units of the National Revolutionary Army of China, including some aerial-combat training with the ''[[Luftwaffe]]'' to some pilots of the pre-Nationalist Air Force of China.<ref name=ChanGongLittle2015>{{cite web|last1=Chan |last2=Gong |last3=Little |first1=Andy |first2=John |first3=Michael|date=2015-10-07|title=World War 2 Flying Ace Arthur Chin's Amazing True Story|url=https://disciplesofflight.com/world-war-2-flying-ace-arthur-chin/|access-date=2021-01-20|website=|archive-date=26 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190326113109/https://disciplesofflight.com/world-war-2-flying-ace-arthur-chin/|url-status=live}}</ref> A number of foreign powers, including the Americans, Italians and Japanese, provided training and equipment to different air force units of pre-war China. With the outbreak of full-scale war between China and the Empire of Japan, the Soviet Union became the primary supporter for China's ''war of resistance'' through the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact from 1937 to 1941. When the Imperial Japanese invaded [[French Indochina]], the United States enacted the [[Oil embargo|oil and steel embargo]] against Japan and froze all Japanese assets in 1941,<ref>{{cite web|title=HyperWar: US Army in WWII: Strategy and Command: The First Two Years|url=http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Strategy/Strategy-5.html|access-date=2020-11-13|website=www.ibiblio.org|quote=By the fall of 1941 relations between the United States and Japan had reached a critical stage... the Japanese, most of whom were unwilling to pay the American price for peace... were convinced that acceptance of American peace terms would only lead to further demands and ultimately leave Japan dependent on the United States and Great Britain.|archive-date=25 May 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130525064812/http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Strategy/Strategy-5.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|date=2007-10-13|title=Inventory of Conflict and Environment (ICE), Template|url=http://american.edu/TED/ice/japan-oil.htm|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013230714/http://american.edu/TED/ice/japan-oil.htm|archive-date=13 October 2007|access-date=2020-11-13|quote=The US, the biggest oil supplier for Japan at the time, imposed the oil embargo on Japan in July, 1941, and it helped the Japanese to make up their minds to fight against the Americans. Thus, in a way, the attack on Pearl Harbor was not a surprise one at all; it was a necessary result of the conflict and negotiation.}}</ref> and with it came the [[Lend-Lease Act]] of which China became a beneficiary on 6 May 1941; from there, China's main diplomatic, financial and military support came from the U.S., particularly following the attack on Pearl Harbor''.''

===Overseas Chinese===
Over 3,200 overseas Chinese drivers and motor vehicle mechanics embarked to wartime China to support military and logistics supply lines, especially through Indo-China, which became of absolute tantamount importance when the Japanese cut-off all ocean-access to China's interior with the capture of [[Nanning]] after the Battle of South Guangxi. Overseas Chinese communities in the U.S. raised money and nurtured talent in response to Imperial Japan's aggressions in China, which helped to fund an entire squadron of Boeing P-26 fighter planes purchased for the looming war situation between China and the Empire of Japan; over a dozen Chinese-American aviators, including [[John Huang Xinrui|John "Buffalo" Huang]], [[Arthur Chin]], [[Hazel Ying Lee]], [[Jurong airfield|Chan Kee-Wong]] et al., formed the original contingent of foreign volunteer aviators to join the Chinese air forces (some provincial or warlord air forces, but ultimately all integrating into the centralized Chinese Air Force; often called the ''Nationalist Air Force of China'') in the "patriotic call to duty for the motherland" to fight against the Imperial Japanese invasion.<ref>{{cite web|title=Before the Flying Tigers|url=https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0699before/|access-date=2020-11-08|website=Air Force Magazine|language=en-US|archive-date=25 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201125171645/https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0699before/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Major 'Buffalo' Wong Sun-Shui|url=http://www.century-of-flight.freeola.com/Aviation%20history/WW2/aces/Wong%20Sun-Shui.htm|access-date=2020-11-08|website=www.century-of-flight.freeola.com|archive-date=5 September 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080905180041/http://www.century-of-flight.freeola.com/Aviation%20history/WW2/aces/Wong%20Sun-Shui.htm|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|date=2016-11-10|title=Sky's the Limit|url=https://1859oregonmagazine.com/think-oregon/art-culture/hazel-lee/|access-date=2020-11-08|website=1859 Oregon's Magazine|language=en-US|archive-date=30 January 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180130091648/https://1859oregonmagazine.com/think-oregon/art-culture/hazel-lee/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Remembering Hazel Lee, the first Chinese-American female military pilot|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/remembering-hazel-lee-first-chinese-american-female-military-pilot-n745851|access-date=2020-11-08|website=NBC News|date=25 May 2017 |archive-date=11 February 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180211113655/https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/remembering-hazel-lee-first-chinese-american-female-military-pilot-n745851|url-status=live}}</ref> Several of the original Chinese-American volunteer pilots were sent to [[Lechfeld Air Base|Lagerlechfeld Air Base]] in Germany for aerial-gunnery training by the Chinese Air Force in 1936.<ref name=ChanGongLittle2015/>

===Korea===
The exiled [[Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea]] (KPG) based in [[Chongqing]] allied with Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Army against the Japanese. The KPG established the [[Korean Liberation Army]] (KLA) to fight against the Japanese in China.<ref>{{cite web | title=&#91;Photo story&#93; How Korea and China fought together against Japanese colonial control | url=https://www.thinkchina.sg/history/photo-story-how-korea-and-china-fought-together-against-japanese-colonial-control }}</ref>

===Germany===
{{Main|China–Germany relations (1912–1949)}}

[[File:Kung and hitler.jpg|thumb|[[H. H. Kung]] and [[Adolf Hitler]] in Berlin]]

Prior to the war, Germany and China were in close economic and military cooperation, with Germany helping China modernize its industry and military in exchange for raw materials. Germany sent military advisers such as [[Alexander von Falkenhausen]] to China to help the KMT government reform its armed forces.{{sfnp|Mitter|2013|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bqc_YkuyaCIC&pg=PA65 65]}} [[List of German-trained divisions of the National Revolutionary Army|Some divisions]] began training to German standards and were to form a relatively small but well trained Chinese Central Army. By the mid-1930s about 80,000 soldiers had received German-style training.{{sfnp|Mitter|2013|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bqc_YkuyaCIC&pg=PA66 66]}} After the KMT lost Nanjing and retreated to Wuhan, Hitler's government decided to withdraw its support of China in 1938 in favour of an alliance with Japan as its main anti-Communist partner in East Asia.{{sfnp|Mitter|2013|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bqc_YkuyaCIC&pg=PA165 165]}}

===Soviet Union===
After Germany and Japan signed the anti-communist [[Anti-Comintern Pact]], the Soviet Union hoped to keep China fighting, in order to deter a [[Kantokuen|Japanese invasion]] of Siberia and save itself from a [[two-front war]]. In September 1937, they signed the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact and approved Operation Zet, the formation of a secret [[Soviet Volunteer Group|Soviet volunteer air force]], in which Soviet technicians upgraded and ran some of China's transportation systems. [[Bomber]]s, [[Fighter aircraft|fighters]], supplies and advisors arrived, headed by [[Aleksandr Cherepanov]]. Prior to the Western Allies, the Soviets provided the most foreign aid to China: some $250&nbsp;million in credits for munitions and other supplies. The Soviet Union defeated Japan in the [[Battles of Khalkhin Gol]] in May&nbsp;– September 1939, leaving the Japanese reluctant to fight the Soviets again.<ref>Douglas Varner, ''To the Banks of the Halha: The Nomohan Incident and the Northern Limits of the Japanese Empire'' (2008)</ref> In April 1941, Soviet aid to China ended with the [[Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact]] and the beginning of the [[Great Patriotic War]]. This pact enabled the Soviet Union to avoid fighting against Germany and Japan at the same time. In August 1945, the Soviet Union annulled the neutrality pact with Japan and invaded Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, the Kuril Islands, and northern Korea. The Soviets also continued to support the Chinese Communist Party. In total, 3,665 Soviet advisors and pilots served in China,{{sfn|Taylor|page=156}} and 227 of them died fighting there.<ref>[http://www.soldat.ru/doc/casualties/book/chapter4_4.html] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100313141742/http://www.soldat.ru/doc/casualties/book/chapter4_4.html|date=13 March 2010}}</ref>

The Soviet Union provided financial aid to both the Communists and the Nationalists.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=34}}

=== United States ===
{{further|American Volunteer Group|Flying Tigers|China Air Task Force}}
[[File:ClaireChennault.jpeg|thumb|[[Flying Tigers]] Commander [[Claire Lee Chennault]]]]

The United States generally avoided taking sides between Japan and China until 1940, providing virtually no aid to China in this period. For instance, the 1934 Silver Purchase Act signed by President Roosevelt caused chaos in China's economy which helped the Japanese war effort. The 1933 Wheat and Cotton Loan mainly benefited American producers, while aiding to a smaller extent both Chinese and Japanese alike. This policy was due to US fear of breaking off profitable trade ties with Japan, in addition to US officials and businesses perception of China as a potential source of massive profit for the US by absorbing surplus American products, as William Appleman Williams states.<ref>{{cite book |first=William D. |last=Pederson |title=A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt |date=2011 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing |isbn=978-1444395174 |pages=591–597, 601}}</ref>

From December 1937, events such as the [[Panay incident|Japanese attack on USS ''Panay'']] and the [[Nanjing Massacre]] swung public opinion in the West sharply against Japan and increased their fear of Japanese expansion, which prompted the United States, the United Kingdom, and [[French Third Republic|France]] to provide loan assistance for war supply contracts to [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|China]]. Australia also prevented a Japanese government-owned company from taking over an iron mine in Australia, and banned [[iron ore]] exports in 1938.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.info.dfat.gov.au/info/historical/HistDocs.nsf/(LookupVolNoNumber)/3~221 |title=Memorandum by Mr J. McEwen, Minister for External Affairs 10 May 1940 |publisher=Info.dfat.gov.au |access-date=2010-12-02 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110221003912/http://www.info.dfat.gov.au/info/historical/HistDocs.nsf/%28LookupVolNoNumber%29/3~221 |archive-date=21 February 2011 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> However, in July 1939, negotiations between Japanese Foreign Minister Arita Khatira and the British Ambassador in Tokyo, [[Robert Craigie (diplomat)|Robert Craigie]], led to an agreement by which the United Kingdom recognized Japanese conquests in China. At the same time, the US government extended a trade agreement with Japan for six months, then fully restored it. Under the agreement, Japan purchased trucks for the Kwantung Army,<ref>US Congress. Investigation of Concentracion of Economic Power. Hearings before the Temporary National Economic Committee. 76th Congress, 2nd Session, Pt. 21. Washington, 1940, p. 11241</ref> machine tools for aircraft factories, [[strategic material]]s (steel and scrap iron up to 16 October 1940, petrol and petroleum products up to 26 June 1941),<ref>Д. Г. Наджафов. Нейтралитет США. 1935–1941. М., "Наука", 1990. стр.157</ref> and various other much-needed supplies.

In a hearing before the United States Congress House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, 19 April 1939, the acting chairman Sol Bloom and other Congressmen interviewed Maxwell S. Stewart, a former Foreign Policy Association research staff and economist who charged that America's Neutrality Act and its "neutrality policy" was a massive farce which only benefited Japan and that Japan did not have the capability nor could ever have invaded China without the massive amount of raw material America exported to Japan. America exported far more raw material to Japan than to China in the years 1937–1940.<ref>{{cite book |author1=United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs |title=Hearings |date=1939 |page=266 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E9IfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA266}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author1=United States. Congress. House |title=Hearings |date=1939 |page=266 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-JMa8xpP5tYC&pg=PA266}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author1=United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs |title=American Neutrality Policy: Hearings Before the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Seventy-Sixth Congress, First Session, on Apr. 11–13, 17–21, 24–28, May 2, 1939 |date=1939 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |page=266 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tcxEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA266}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author1=United States. Congress. House. Foreign AFfairs |title=American Neutrality Policy: Hearings ... on Present Neutrality Law (public Res. No. 27)... April 11 – May 2, 1939 |date=1939 |pages=263–302 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eEB5-sXYBVcC&pg=PA266}}</ref> According to the United States Congress, the U.S.'s third largest export destination was Japan until 1940 when France overtook it due to France being at war too. Japan's military machine acquired war materials, automotive equipment, steel, scrap iron, copper, oil, that it wanted from the United States in 1937–1940 and was allowed to purchase aerial bombs, aircraft equipment, and aircraft from America up to the summer of 1938. A 1934 [[U.S. State Department]] memo even noted how Japan's business dealings with [[Standard Oil of New Jersey]] company, under the leadership of [[Walter Teagle]], made United States oil the "major portion of the petroleum and petroleum products now imported into Japan."<ref name=teaglejapan>{{cite web|url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1934v03/d649|title=Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Hornbeck) of a Conversation With the President of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Walter C. Teagle)|author=Office of the Historian|publisher=U.S State Department|date=October 24, 1934|accessdate=January 18, 2025}}</ref> War essentials exports from the United States to Japan increased by 124% along with a general increase of 41% of all American exports from 1936 to 1937 when Japan invaded China. Japan's war economy was fueled by exports to the United States at over twice the rate immediately preceding the war.<ref>{{cite book |author1=United States. Congress |title=Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress, Volume 113, Part 1 |date=1967 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |page=474 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G-9N8WlYKK4C&pg=PA473 |access-date=31 May 2017 |archive-date=12 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012013420/https://books.google.com/books?id=G-9N8WlYKK4C&pg=PA473 |url-status=live }}</ref> According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Japan corresponded to the following share of American exports.

[[File:Flying Tigers blood chit from ROC National Government, provided courtesy of Robert Baldwin.jpg|thumb|A "[[blood chit]]" issued to American Volunteer Group pilots requesting all Chinese to offer rescue and protection]]

Japan invaded and occupied the northern part of [[French Indochina]] in September 1940 to prevent China from receiving the 10,000 tons of materials delivered monthly by the Allies via the [[Haiphong–Yunnan Fou Railway]] line.

On 22 June 1941, [[Germany attacked the Soviet Union]]. In spite of non-aggression pacts or trade connections, Hitler's assault threw the world into a frenzy of re-aligning political outlooks and strategic prospects.

On 21 July, Japan occupied the southern part of French Indochina (southern Vietnam and Cambodia), contravening a 1940 [[gentlemen's agreement]] not to move into southern French Indochina. From bases in Cambodia and southern Vietnam, Japanese planes could attack Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. As the Japanese occupation of northern French Indochina in 1940 had already cut off supplies from the West to China, the move into southern French Indochina was viewed as a direct threat to British and Dutch colonies. Many principal figures in the Japanese government and military (particularly the navy) were against the move, as they foresaw that it would invite retaliation from the West.

{{anchor|Oil embargo (Sino-Japanese War)}}
On 24 July 1941, Roosevelt requested Japan withdraw all its forces from Indochina. Two days later the US and the UK began an oil embargo; two days after that the Netherlands joined them. This was a decisive moment in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The loss of oil imports made it impossible for Japan to continue operations in China on a long-term basis. It set the stage for Japan to launch a series of military attacks against the Allies, including the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

In mid-1941, the United States government financed the creation of the [[American Volunteer Group]]s (AVG), of which one the "Flying Tigers" reached China, to replace the withdrawn Soviet volunteers and aircraft. The Flying Tigers did not enter actual combat until after the United States had declared war on Japan. Led by Chennault, their early combat success of 300 kills against a loss of 12 of their newly introduced [[Curtiss P-40 Warhawk]] fighters heavily armed with six [[M2 Browning|0.50-inch caliber machine guns]] and very fast diving speeds earned them wide recognition at a time when the Chinese Air Force and Allies in the Pacific and SE Asia were suffering heavy losses, and soon afterwards their "boom and zoom" high-speed hit-and-run air combat tactics would be adopted by the [[United States Army Air Forces]].<ref>{{cite news|url = https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/06/16/ace-served-flying-tigers-china/28837427/|title = Ace served with Flying Tigers in China|website = [[USA Today]]|access-date = 26 May 2017|archive-date = 12 December 2019|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20191212231029/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/06/16/ace-served-flying-tigers-china/28837427/|url-status = live}}</ref>

Disagreements existed both between the United States and the Nationalists, and within the United States military, about the form of aid.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}} Chennault contended that aid should be in the form of building on the success of the Flying Tigers and go to the US Fourteenth Air Force in China.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}} Lieutenant General [[Joseph Stilwell]], who was in charge of training Nationalist divisions equipped by the United States, became increasingly frustrated by the Nationalists' refusal to use them to fight the Japanese in Burma or in southeastern China.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}}

The Sino-American Cooperative Organization<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.drnh.gov.tw/ImagesPost/365fe047-7f22-47fb-a84e-d4d5f94cbe43/3fca19ba-644a-4958-b81b-9f7ff743a1d6_ALLFILES.pdf |title=軍統局對美國戰略局的認識與 合作開展 |access-date=24 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150625193541/http://www.drnh.gov.tw/ImagesPost/365fe047-7f22-47fb-a84e-d4d5f94cbe43/3fca19ba-644a-4958-b81b-9f7ff743a1d6_ALLFILES.pdf |archive-date=25 June 2015 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|date=2015-06-24|title=館戴笠與忠義救國軍|url=http://www.drnh.gov.tw/ImagesPost/365fe047-7f22-47fb-a84e-d4d5f94cbe43/19036c97-3e88-415c-9c4e-d728b91c910c_ALLFILES.pdf|access-date=2020-11-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150624183008/http://www.drnh.gov.tw/ImagesPost/365fe047-7f22-47fb-a84e-d4d5f94cbe43/19036c97-3e88-415c-9c4e-d728b91c910c_ALLFILES.pdf|archive-date=24 June 2015}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bergin|first=Bob|date=March 2009|title=Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol53no1/pdfs/U-%20Bergin-Spymaster.pdf|journal=Studies in Intelligence|volume=53|pages=75–78|access-date=24 June 2015|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304055154/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol53no1/pdfs/U-%20Bergin-Spymaster.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> was an organization created by the SACO Treaty signed by the Republic of China and the United States of America in 1942 that established a mutual intelligence gathering entity in China between the respective nations against Japan. It operated in China jointly along with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), America's first intelligence agency and forerunner of the CIA while also serving as joint training program between the two nations. Among all the wartime missions that Americans set up in China, SACO was the only one that adopted a policy of "total immersion" with the Chinese. The "Rice Paddy Navy" or "What-the-Hell Gang" operated in the China-Burma-India theater, advising and training, forecasting weather and scouting landing areas for USN fleet and Gen Claire Chennault's 14th AF, rescuing downed American flyers, and intercepting Japanese radio traffic. An underlying mission objective during the last year of war was the development and preparation of the China coast for Allied penetration and occupation. [[Fujian]] was scouted as a potential staging area and springboard for the future military landing of the [[Allies of World War&nbsp;II]] in Japan.

=== United Kingdom ===
{{further|Mission 204|British Army Aid Group}}
After the Tanggu Truce of 1933, Chiang Kai-Shek and the British government would have more friendly relations but were uneasy due to British foreign concessions there. During the Second Sino-Japanese War the British government would initially have an impartial viewpoint toward the conflict urging both to reach an agreement and prevent war. British public opinion would swing in favor of the Chinese after [[Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen]]'s car which had Union Jacks on it was attacked by Japanese aircraft with Hugessen being temporarily paralyzed with outrage against the attack from the public and government. The British public were largely supportive of the Chinese and many relief efforts were untaken to help China. Britain at this time was beginning the process of rearmament and the sale of military surplus was banned but there was never an embargo on private companies shipping arms. A number of unassembled [[Gloster Gladiator]] fighters were imported to China via Hong Kong for the Chinese Air Force. Between July 1937 and November 1938 on average 60,000 tons of munitions were shipped from Britain to China via Hong Kong. Attempts by the United Kingdom and the United States to do a joint intervention were unsuccessful as both countries had rocky relations in the interwar era.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Perry |first=J. K. J. |date=7 September 2011 |title=Powerless and Frustrated: Britain's Relationship With China During the Opening Years of the Second Sino–Japanese War, 1937–1939 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09592296.2011.599641 |journal=Diplomacy & Statecraft |volume=22 |issue=3 |pages=408–430 |doi=10.1080/09592296.2011.599641 |s2cid=153517917 |access-date=23 October 2023 |via=Taylor & Francis Online|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

In February 1941 a Sino-British agreement was forged whereby British troops would assist the Chinese "Surprise Troops" units of guerrillas already operating in China, and China would assist Britain in Burma.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kirby|first=Major General Woodburn, S|title=The War against Japan, Vol 2: India's Most Dangerous Hour|location=London|publisher=Her Majesty's Stationery Office|year=1958}}</ref>
[[File:Mission204China.jpg|thumb|British and Australian troops from 'Mission 204' march to the front in [[Jiangxi province]] in June 1942]]
When [[Battle of Hong Kong|Hong Kong was overrun]] in December 1941, the [[British Army Aid Group]] (B.A.A.G.) was set up and headquartered in [[Guilin]], [[Guangxi]]. Its aim was to assist prisoners of war and internees to escape from Japanese  camps. This led to the formation of the [[Hong Kong Volunteer Company]] which later fought in Burma.<ref name="NSW_2012">{{cite web |title=The Hong Kong Volunteer Company|url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/531286c0e4b04bcb37e6c5c5/t/53214071e4b010ef1a5b9dd8/1394688113290/HK+Vol+&+ex+PoW+Assn+NSW.+OP9+The+Hong+Kong+Volunteer+Company.pdf |publisher=Hong Kong Volunteer & Ex.PoW Association of NSW |access-date=23 December 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211223171645/https://static1.squarespace.com/static/531286c0e4b04bcb37e6c5c5/t/53214071e4b010ef1a5b9dd8/1394688113290/HK+Vol+&+ex+PoW+Assn+NSW.+OP9+The+Hong+Kong+Volunteer+Company.pdf | archive-date=23 December 2021 |url-status=live }}</ref> B.A.A.G. also sent agents to gather intelligence – military, political and economic in Southern China, as well as giving medical and humanitarian assistance to Chinese civilians and military personnel.<ref name="IWM">{{cite web |url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30076590 |title=BADGE, UNIT, BRITISH, BRITISH ARMY AID GROUP (BAAG) |date= |website=www.iwm.org.uk |publisher=Imperial War Museum }}</ref>

A British-Australian commando operation, [[Mission 204]] (''Tulip Force''), was initialized to provide training to Chinese guerrilla troops. The mission conducted two operations, mostly in the provinces of Yunnan and Jiangxi.

The first operation commenced in February 1942  from Burma on a long journey to the Chinese front. Due to issues with supporting the Chinese and gradual disease and supply issues, the first phase achieved very little and the unit was withdrawn in September.<ref>{{cite book| last1=Whitehead |first1= John|last2= Bennett|first2=George |title= Escape to Fight on: With 204 Military Mission in China |publisher= Robert Hale|pages=132, 174–78 |date=1990 |isbn=9780709041313}}</ref>

Another phase was set up with lessons learned from the first. Commencing in February 1943 this time valid assistance was given to the Chinese 'Surprise Troops' in various actions against the Japanese. These involved ambushes, attacks on airfields, blockhouses, and supply depots. The unit operated successfully before withdrawal in November 1944.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stevens |first1=Keith |title=A token operation: 204 military mission to China, 1941–1945 |journal=Asian Affairs |date=March 2005 |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=66–74 |doi=10.1080/03068370500039151 |s2cid=161326427 }}</ref>

Commandos and members of [[Special Operations Executive|SOE]] who had formed [[Force 136]], worked with the [[Free Thai Movement]] who also operated in China, mostly while on their way into [[Thailand in World War II|Thailand]].<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2008-featured-story-archive/free-thai-movement.html| title = A Look Back&nbsp;... "Free Thai" Movement is Born| date = 30 April 2013| website = cia.gov| publisher = [[Central Intelligence Agency]]| access-date = 20 June 2016| archive-date = 13 August 2016| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160813081130/https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2008-featured-story-archive/free-thai-movement.html| url-status = dead}}</ref>

After the Japanese blocked the [[Burma Road]] in April 1942, and before the [[Ledo Road]] was finished in early 1945, the majority of US and British supplies to the Chinese had to be delivered via airlift over the eastern end of the [[Himalayas]] known as "[[The Hump]]". Flying over the Himalayas was extremely dangerous, but the airlift continued daily to August 1945, at great cost in men and aircraft.

==French Indochina==
{{See also|Japanese invasion of French Indochina|Japanese coup d'état in French Indochina}}
[[File:French retreat to China.jpg|thumb|[[Troupes coloniales|French colonial troops]] retreating to the Chinese border after the Japanese coup d'état in March 1945]]

The Chinese Kuomintang also supported the Vietnamese [[Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng]] (VNQDD) in its battle against French and Japanese imperialism. In [[Guangxi]], Chinese military leaders were organizing Vietnamese nationalists against the Japanese. The VNQDD had been active in Guangxi and some of their members had joined the KMT army.<ref name="William J. Duiker 1976 272">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HKRuAAAAMAAJ&q=Chang+Fa-Kuei+vnqdd|title=The rise of nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941|author=William J. Duiker|year=1976|publisher=Cornell University Press|page=272|isbn=0-8014-0951-9}}</ref> Under the umbrella of KMT activities, a broad alliance of nationalists emerged. With Ho at the forefront, the [[Viet Minh|Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi]] (Vietnamese Independence League, usually known as the Viet Minh) was formed and based in the town of [[Jingxi, Guangxi|Jingxi]].<ref name="William J. Duiker 1976 272"/> The pro-VNQDD nationalist Ho Ngoc Lam, a KMT army officer and former disciple of [[Phan Bội Châu]],{{citation needed|date=May 2024}} was named as the deputy of [[Phạm Văn Đồng]], later to be Ho's Prime Minister. The front was later broadened and renamed the Viet Nam Giai Phong Dong Minh (Vietnam Liberation League).<ref name="William J. Duiker 1976 272"/>

The Viet Nam Revolutionary League was a union of various Vietnamese nationalist groups, run by the pro Chinese VNQDD. Chinese KMT General [[Zhang Fakui]] created the league to further Chinese influence in Indochina, against the French and Japanese. Its stated goal was for unity with China under the [[Three Principles of the People]], created by KMT founder Dr. Sun and opposition to Japanese and French Imperialists.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/endlesswarvietna0000harr|url-access=registration|quote=Chang Fa-Kuei vnqdd.|title=The endless war: Vietnam's struggle for independence|author=James P. Harrison|year=1989|publisher=Columbia University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/endlesswarvietna0000harr/page/81 81]|isbn=0-231-06909-X|access-date=2010-11-30}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uEDfAAAAMAAJ&q=Chang+Fa-Kuei+vnqdd|title=The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: History of the Indochina incident, 1940–1954|author=United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Historical Division|year=1982|publisher=Michael Glazier|page=56|isbn=9780894532870}}</ref> The Revolutionary League was controlled by Nguyen Hai Than, who was born in China and could not speak Vietnamese{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}. General Zhang shrewdly blocked the Communists of Vietnam, and [[Ho Chi Minh]] from entering the league, as Zhang's main goal was Chinese influence in Indochina.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9RorGHF0fGIC&pg=PA106|title=The last emperors of Vietnam: from Tự Đức to Bảo Đại|author=Oscar Chapuis|year=2000|publisher=Greenwood |page=106|isbn=0-313-31170-6}}</ref> The KMT utilized these Vietnamese nationalists during World War{{nbsp}}II against Japanese forces.<ref name="William J. Duiker 1976 272"/> [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], through General Stilwell, privately made it clear that they preferred that the French not reacquire French Indochina (modern day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) after the war was over. Roosevelt offered Chiang Kai-shek control of all of Indochina. It was said that Chiang Kai-shek replied: "Under no circumstances!"<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v5YlBtzklvQC&pg=PA235|title=The march of folly: from Troy to Vietnam|author=Barbara Wertheim Tuchman|year=1985|publisher=Random House, Inc.|page=235|isbn=0-345-30823-9}}</ref>

After the war, 200,000 Chinese troops under General [[Lu Han (general)|Lu Han]] were sent by Chiang Kai-shek to northern Indochina (north of the 16th parallel) to accept the surrender of Japanese occupying forces there, and remained in Indochina until 1946, when the French returned.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/americaswarinvie0000addi |url-access=registration |title=America's war in Vietnam: a short narrative history|author=Larry H. Addington|year=2000|publisher=Indiana University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/americaswarinvie0000addi/page/30 30]|isbn=0-253-21360-6}}</ref> The Chinese used the VNQDD, the Vietnamese branch of the Chinese Kuomintang, to increase their influence in French Indochina and to put pressure on their opponents.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o1t8-EjWyrgC&pg=PA119|title=Britain in Vietnam: prelude to disaster, 1945-6|author=Peter Neville|year=2007|publisher=Psychology Press|page=119|isbn=978-0-415-35848-4}}</ref> Chiang Kai-shek threatened the French with war in response to maneuvering by the French and Ho Chi Minh's forces against each other, forcing them to come to a peace agreement. In February 1946, he also forced the French to surrender all of their concessions in China and to renounce their extraterritorial privileges in exchange for the Chinese withdrawing from northern Indochina and allowing French troops to reoccupy the region. Following France's agreement to these demands, the withdrawal of Chinese troops began in March 1946.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pVNaoUu7veUC&pg=PA21|title=The tragedy of the Vietnam War: a South Vietnamese officer's analysis|author=Van Nguyen Duong|year=2008|publisher=McFarland|page=21|isbn=978-0-7864-3285-1|access-date=18 October 2015|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012013925/https://books.google.com/books?id=pVNaoUu7veUC&pg=PA21|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1I4HOcmE4XQC&pg=PA41|title=Vietnam 1946: how the war began|author=Stein Tønnesson|year=2010|publisher=University of California Press|page=41|isbn=978-0-520-25602-6|access-date=18 October 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yQGqQ3LmExwC&pg=PA63|title=The Vietnam War as history: edited by Elizabeth Jane Errington and B.J.C. McKercher|author=Elizabeth Jane Errington|year=1990|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|page=63|isbn=0-275-93560-4}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html|title=The Vietnam War Seeds of Conflict 1945–1960|publisher=The History Place|year=1999|access-date=2010-12-28|archive-date=17 December 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081217062228/http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Central Asian rebellions==
In 1937, then pro-Soviet General Sheng Shicai [[Xinjiang War (1937)|invaded Dunganistan]] accompanied by Soviet troops to defeat General [[Ma Hushan]] of the [[36th Division (National Revolutionary Army)|KMT 36th Division]]. General Ma expected help from Nanjing, but did not receive it. The Nationalist government was forced to deny these maneuvers as "Japanese propaganda", as it needed continued military supplies from the Soviets.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rsLQdBUgyMUC|title=Modern China's Ethnic Frontiers: A Journey to the West|author=Hsiao-ting Lin|year=2010|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-415-58264-3|page=58|access-date=2010-06-28|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012013926/https://books.google.com/books?id=rsLQdBUgyMUC|url-status=live}}</ref>

As the war went on, Nationalist General Ma Buqing was in virtual control of the [[Gansu]] corridor.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y3oeAAAAMAAJ|title=Asia, Volume 40|year=1940|publisher=Asia Magazine|access-date=2010-06-28|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012013926/https://books.google.com/books?id=y3oeAAAAMAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> Ma had earlier fought against the Japanese, but because the Soviet threat was great, Chiang in July 1942 directed him to move 30,000 of his troops to the Tsaidam marsh in the [[Qaidam Basin]] of [[Qinghai]].<ref>{{citation|title=War, Leadership and Ethnopolitics: Chiang Kai-shek and China's frontiers, 1941–1945 |publisher=Informaworld.com }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/31657/Full_Text.pdf |title=Nationalists, Muslim Warlords, and the "Great Northwestern Development" in Pre-Communist China |author=Hsiao-ting Lin |access-date=2010-12-02 |publisher=Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program |date=February 2007 |volume=5 |number=1 |journal=The China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly |pages=115–135 |archive-date=29 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190329212604/https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/31657/Full_Text.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> Chiang further named Ma as Reclamation Commissioner, to threaten Sheng's southern flank in Xinjiang, which bordered Tsaidam.

The [[Ili Rebellion]] broke out in Xinjiang when the Kuomintang Hui Officer Liu Bin-Di was killed while fighting Turkic Uyghur rebels in November 1944. The Soviet Union supported the Turkic rebels against the Kuomintang, and Kuomintang forces fought back.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4J0uAAAAIAAJ|title=Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, Volumes 4–5|author=Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs|year=1982|publisher=King Abdulaziz University|page=299|access-date=2010-06-28|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012013926/https://books.google.com/books?id=4J0uAAAAIAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Ethnic minorities==
{{Main|Chinese Muslims in the Second Sino-Japanese War}}

[[File:Ma Jia Jun.jpg|thumb|Chinese Muslim cavalry]]

Japan attempted to reach out to Chinese ethnic minorities in order to rally them to their side against the [[Han Chinese]], but only succeeded with certain [[Manchu]], [[Mongol]], [[Uyghurs|Uyghur]], and [[Tibetan people|Tibetan]] elements.

The Japanese attempt to get the Muslim [[Hui people]] on their side failed, as many Chinese generals such as [[Bai Chongxi]], Ma Hongbin, [[Ma Hongkui]], and [[Ma Bufang]] were Hui. The Japanese attempted to approach Ma Bufang but were unsuccessful in making any agreement with him.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WltwAAAAMAAJ&q=ma+bufang|title=China's inner Asian frontier: photographs of the Wulsin expedition to northwest China in 1923 : from the archives of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, and the National Geographic Society|author1=Frederick Roelker Wulsin |author2=Joseph Fletcher |editor=Mary Ellen Alonso |year=1979|publisher=The Museum : distributed by Harvard University Press|page=50|isbn=0-674-11968-1|access-date=2010-06-28|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012013926/https://books.google.com/books?id=WltwAAAAMAAJ&q=ma+bufang|url-status=live}}</ref> Ma Bufang ended up supporting the anti-Japanese Imam [[Hu Songshan]], who prayed for the destruction of the Japanese.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MJzB6wrz6Q4C&q=uxiang|title=Intellectuals in the modern Islamic world: transmission, transformation, communication|author1=Stéphane A. Dudoignon|author2=Hisao Komatsu|author3=Yasushi Kosugi|year=2006|publisher=Taylor & Francis|page=261|isbn=0-415-36835-9|access-date=2010-06-28|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014428/https://books.google.com/books?id=MJzB6wrz6Q4C&q=uxiang|url-status=live}}</ref> Ma became chairman (governor) of Qinghai in 1938 and commanded a group army. He was appointed because of his anti-Japanese inclinations,<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fOkvAQAAIAAJ|title=China Political Reports 1911–1960: 1942–1945|author=Robert L. Jarman|year=2001|publisher=Archive Editions|isbn=1-85207-930-4|page=311|access-date=2010-06-28|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014427/https://books.google.com/books?id=fOkvAQAAIAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> and was such an obstruction to Japanese agents trying to contact the Tibetans that he was called an "adversary" by a Japanese agent.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wDqlbKQhFIQC&pg=PA56|title=Japanese agent in Tibet: my ten years of travel in disguise|author1=Hisao Kimura|author2=Scott Berry|year=1990|publisher=Serindia Publications, Inc.|isbn=0-906026-24-5|page=232|access-date=2010-06-28|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014428/https://books.google.com/books?id=wDqlbKQhFIQC&pg=PA56|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Hui Muslims===
Hui cemeteries were destroyed for military reasons.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lei |first=Wan |date=February 2010 |title=The Chinese Islamic 'Goodwill Mission to the Middle East' During the Anti-Japanese War |url=https://www.academia.edu/4427135 |journal=Dîvân Di̇si̇pli̇nlerarasi Çalişmalar Dergi̇si̇ |volume=cilt 15 |issue=sayı 29 |pages=139–141 |access-date=19 June 2014 |archive-date=18 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140318035752/http://www.academia.edu/4427135/The_Chinese_Islamic_Goodwill_Mission_to_the_Middle_East_-_Japonyaya_Karsi_Savasta_Cinli_Muslumanlarin_Orta_Dogu_iyi_Niyet_Heyeti_-_Wan_LEI |url-status=live }}</ref> Many Hui fought in the war against the Japanese such as Bai Chongxi, Ma Hongbin, Ma Hongkui, Ma Bufang, [[Ma Zhanshan]], Ma Biao, [[Ma Zhongying]], Ma Buqing and Ma Hushan. Qinghai Tibetans served in the Qinghai army against the Japanese.<ref>{{cite book|title=China at War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O9EMAQAAMAAJ&q=unique+1937+aboriginal|year=1940|publisher=China Information Publishing Company|page=16|access-date=20 October 2020|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014429/https://books.google.com/books?id=O9EMAQAAMAAJ&q=unique+1937+aboriginal|url-status=live}}</ref> The Qinghai Tibetans view the Tibetans of Central Tibet (Tibet proper, ruled by the Dalai Lamas from Lhasa) as distinct and different from themselves, and even take pride in the fact that they were not ruled by Lhasa ever since the collapse of the [[Tibetan Empire]].<ref>{{cite journal |last= Goodman |first= David S. G. |year= 2004 |title= Qinghai and the Emergence of the West: Nationalities, Communal Interaction and National Integration |url= http://qinghaiecotourism.com/zh/assets/Emergence%25202004.pdf |journal= The China Quarterly |publisher= Cambridge University Press for the School of Oriental and African Studies. University of London, UK. |issn= 0305-7410 |page= 385 |access-date= 13 July 2014 |archive-date= 2 April 2015 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150402131412/http://qinghaiecotourism.com/zh/assets/Emergence%25202004.pdf |url-status= live }}</ref>

Xining was subjected to aerial bombardment by Japanese warplanes in 1941, causing all ethnicities in Qinghai to unite against the Japanese. General [[Han Youwen]] directed the defense of the city of Xining during air raids by Japanese planes. Han survived an aerial bombardment by Japanese planes in Xining while he was being directed via telephone by Ma Bufang, who hid in an air-raid shelter in a military barracks. The bombing resulted in Han being buried in rubble, though he was later rescued.

John Scott reported in 1934 that there was both strong anti-Japanese feeling and anti-Bolshevik among the Muslims of Gansu and he mentioned the Muslim generals Ma Fuxiang, Ma Qi, Ma Anliang and Ma Bufang who was chairman of Qinghai province when he stayed in Xining.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scott |first=John |author-link= |date=17 October 1934 |title=Journal Of The Royal Central Asian Society – Vol.21; Pt. 1- 4 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.4291/page/n25/mode/2up?view=theater |location= |publisher= |pages=25, 26 |isbn=|quote=We spent a day resting at Hsining. This is a walled city lying just within the old Tibetan border, and is the capital of the new Province of Ching Hai and the seat of the Provincial Civil Government. The Chairman of the Provincial Council, or Shihehang, is Ma Pu Fang, a young Moslem in the early thirties, a strong and somewhat ruthless character as befits a scion of the family which has in recent years produced such outstanding men as Ma An Liang, Ma Ch'i, and Ma Fu Hsiang. He has kept the Province in fair order, since he assumed control a year or two ago; though his relations with the Military Governor, his uncle Ma Shun Cheng, are at the moment none too cordial and trouble threatens. Further, there is a certain movement for independence among these Moslems, and a tendency to break away from Nanking and join up with their fellow-Moslems further west. The latter is much under the influence of Russia, which for years has tried to extend its influence into Kansu, but with very little success, for the Kansu Moslems are a sturdy independent people and make poor material for Bolshevik propaganda. We saw no signs of any Japanese whatever, and strong anti-Japanese feeling was very apparent.|chapter=A SHORT JOURNEY THROUGH NORTHWESTERN KANSU AND THE TIBETAN BORDER COUNTRY }}</ref>

==Conclusion in 1945 and aftermath==

===End of the Pacific War and the surrender of Japanese troops in China===
{{Main|Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|Soviet invasion of Manchuria|Japanese Instrument of Surrender}}





During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese had consistent tactical successes but failed to achieve strategic results.<ref name="Crean" />{{Rp|page=|pages=70}} Although it seized the majority of China's industrial capacity, occupied most major cities, and rarely lost a battle, Japan's occupation of China was costly.<ref name="Crean" />{{Rp|page=70}} Japan had approximately 50,000 military fatalities each year and 200,000 wounded per year.<ref name="Crean" />{{Rp|page=70}}[[File:3 September 1945 - Chungking Victory Parade.jpg|thumb|WWII victory parade at Chongqing on 3 September 1945]]

In less than two weeks the [[Kwantung Army]], which was the primary Japanese fighting force,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/glantz3/glantz3.asp |title=Leavenworth Papers No. 7 (August Storm: The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria) |access-date=2013-07-15 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080302130751/http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/glantz3/glantz3.asp |archive-date=2 March 2008 }}</ref><ref>Robert A. Pape. Why Japan Surrendered. ''International Security'', Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 154–201</ref> consisting of over a million men but lacking in adequate armour, artillery, or air support, had been destroyed by the Soviets. Japanese Emperor [[Hirohito]] officially [[Surrender of Japan|capitulated]] to the Allies on 15 August 1945. The official surrender was signed aboard the battleship {{USS|Missouri|BB-63|6}} on 2 September 1945, in a ceremony where several Allied commanders including Chinese general [[Hsu Yung-chang]] were present.

After the Allied victory in the Pacific, General [[Douglas MacArthur]] ordered all Japanese forces within China (excluding [[Manchuria]]), Taiwan and French Indochina north of 16° north latitude to surrender to Chiang Kai-shek, and the Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on 9 September 1945, at 9:00.<ref name="surrender">[http://www.taiwandocuments.org/surrender02.htm Act of Surrender, 9 September 1945] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230402122255/http://www.taiwandocuments.org/surrender02.htm |date=2 April 2023 }} (page visited on 3 September 2015).</ref> The ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month was chosen in echo of the [[Armistice of 11 November 1918]] (on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) and because "nine" (九 ''jiǔ'') is a [[Numbers in Chinese culture#Nine|homophone of the word for "long lasting" (久)]] in Chinese (to suggest that the peace won would last forever).<ref>Hans Van De Ven, "A call to not lead humanity into another war", ''[[China Daily]]'', 31 August 2015.</ref>

Chiang relied on American help in transporting Nationalist troops to regain control of formerly Japanese-occupied areas.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=3}} Non-Chinese generally viewed the behavior of these troops as undercutting Nationalist legitimacy, and these troops engaged in corruption and looting, leading to widespread views of a "botched liberation".<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=3}}

The Nationalist government seized Japanese-held businesses at the time of the Japanese surrender.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=92}} The Nationalist government made little effort to return these businesses to their original Chinese owners.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|pages=92–93}} A mechanism existed through which Chinese and foreign owners could petition for the return of their former property.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=92}} In practice, the Nationalist government and its officials retained a great deal of the seized property and embezzling property, particularly from warehouses, was common.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=93}} Nationalist officials sometimes extorted money from individuals in liberated territories under threat of labeling them as Japanese collaborators.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=93}}

Chiang's focus on his communist opponents prompted him to leave Japanese troops or troops of the Japanese puppet regimes to remain on duty in occupied areas so as to avoid their surrender to Communist forces.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=3}}

===Post-war struggle and resumption of the civil war===
{{Main|Chinese Civil War}}

[[File:重慶會談 蔣介石與毛澤東.jpg|thumb|Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong in 1945]]

In 1945, China emerged from the war a victor, but economically weak and on the verge of all-out civil war. The economy was sapped by the military demands of a long costly war and internal strife, by spiraling inflation, and by corruption in the Nationalist government that included profiteering, speculation and hoarding.

The poor performance of Nationalist forces opposing the Ichi-go campaign was largely viewed as reflecting poorly on Chiang's competence.<ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last=Coble |first=Parks M. |title=The Collapse of Nationalist China: How Chiang Kai-shek Lost China's Civil War |date=2023 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-009-29761-5 |location=Cambridge New York, NY |author-link=Parks M. Coble}}</ref>{{Rp|page=3}} Chiang blamed the failure on the United States, particularly Stilwell, who had used Chinese forces in the Burma Campaign and in Chiang's view, left China insufficiently defended.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=3}}

As part of the [[Yalta Conference]], which allowed a Soviet sphere of influence in Manchuria, the Soviets dismantled and removed more than half of the industrial equipment left there by the Japanese before handing over Manchuria to China. Large swathes of the prime farming areas had been ravaged by the fighting and there was starvation and famine in the wake of the war. Many towns and cities were destroyed, and millions were rendered homeless by floods.

The problems of rehabilitation and reconstruction after the ravages of a protracted war were staggering, and the war left the Nationalists severely weakened, and their policies left them unpopular. Meanwhile, the war strengthened the Communists both in popularity and as a viable fighting force. At Yan'an and elsewhere in the communist controlled areas, Mao Zedong was able to adapt [[Marxism–Leninism]] to Chinese conditions. He taught party cadres to lead the masses by living and working with them, eating their food, and thinking their thoughts.

In Japanese-occupied areas, the Communists had established military and political bases from which it carried out guerilla warfare.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}} The Communists built popular support in these areas, returning land to poor peasants, reducing peasant's rent, and arming the people.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=35}} By Spring 1945, there were 19 Communist-governed areas in China in which 95 million people lived.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=36}} In Fall 1945, the Communist armies had 1.27 million men and were supported by 2.68 million militia members.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=36}}

Mao also began to execute his plan to establish a new China by rapidly moving his forces from Yan'an and elsewhere to Manchuria. This opportunity was available to the Communists because although Nationalist representatives were not invited to Yalta, they had been consulted and had agreed to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in the belief that the Soviet Union would cooperate only with the Nationalist government after the war.

However, the Soviet occupation of Manchuria was long enough to allow the Communist forces to move in en masse and arm themselves with the military hardware surrendered by the Imperial Japanese Army, quickly establish control in the countryside and move into position to encircle the Nationalist government army in major cities of northeast China. Following that, the Chinese Civil War broke out between the Nationalists and Communists, which concluded with the Communist victory in [[mainland China]] and the retreat of the Nationalists to Taiwan in 1949.

===Aftermath===
[[File:AntijapaneseWarMemorialMuseum.jpg|thumb|China War of Resistance Against Japan Memorial Museum on the site where the [[Marco Polo Bridge Incident]] took place]]

The Nationalists suffered higher casualties because they were the main combatants opposing the Japanese in each of the 22 major battles (involving more than 100,000 troops on both sides) between China and Japan. The Communist forces, by contrast, usually avoided pitched battles with the Japanese, in which their guerrilla tactics were less effective, and generally limited their combat to guerrilla actions (the [[Hundred Regiments Offensive]] and the [[Battle of Pingxingguan]] are notable exceptions).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lovell |first=Julia |title=Maoism: A Global History |date=2019-09-03 |publisher=[[Doubleday (publisher)|Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group]] |isbn=978-0-525-65605-0 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=kx1-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT41 31] |language=en |oclc=1078879585 |quote=Though it is also worth pointing out that, in practice, Mao's recipe for guerrilla manoeuvres played a limited role in Chinese revolutionary wars during the 1930s and '40s. Nationalist armies carried most of the resistance to the Japanese during the Second World War, and Chinese Communist victory in the final years of the civil war up to 1949 was won through field battles that the Soviets taught the CCP how to fight. |author-link=Julia Lovell}}</ref> The Nationalists committed their strongest divisions in early battle against the Japanese (including the 36th, 87th, 88th divisions, the crack divisions of Chiang's Central Army) to defend Shanghai and continued to deploy most of their forces to fight the Japanese even as the Communists changed their strategy to engage mainly in a political offensive against the Japanese while declaring that the CCP should "save and preserve our strength and wait for favourable timing" by the end of 1941.<ref>Yang Kuisong, "The Formation and Implementation of the Chinese Communists' Guerrilla Warfare Strategy in the Enemy's Rear during the Sino-Japanese War", paper presented at Harvard University Conference on Wartime China, Maui, January 2004, pp. 32–36</ref>

==Legacy==

===China-Japan relations===
Today, the war is a major point of contention and resentment between China and Japan. The war remains a major roadblock for [[Sino-Japanese relations]]. Issues regarding the current historical outlook on the war exist. For example, the Japanese government has been accused of [[historical revisionism]] by allowing the approval of a few [[Japanese textbook controversy|school textbooks]] omitting or glossing over Japan's militant past, although the most recent controversial book, the ''New History Textbook'' was used by only 0.039% of junior high schools in Japan<ref>Sven Saaler: Politics, Memory and Public Opinion: The History Textbook Controversy and Japanese Society. Munich: 2005</ref> and despite the efforts of the Japanese nationalist textbook reformers, by the late 1990s the most common Japanese schoolbooks contained references to, for instance, the Nanjing Massacre, [[Unit 731]], and the [[comfort women]] of World War{{nbsp}}II, all historical issues which have faced challenges from ultranationalists in the past.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/stories/s841387.htm|title=Foreign Correspondent – 22/04/2003: Japan – Unit 731|publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation|access-date=13 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160803172812/http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/stories/s841387.htm|archive-date=3 August 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 2005, a history textbook prepared by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform which had been approved by the government in 2001, sparked huge outcry and protests in China and Korea. It referred to the Nanjing Massacre and other atrocities such as the [[Manila massacre]] as an "incident", glossed over the issue of comfort women, and made only brief references to the death of Chinese soldiers and civilians in Nanjing.<ref>{{cite web |last=Oi |first=Mariko |date=14 March 2013 |title=What Japanese history lessons leave out |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21226068 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180616083041/https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21226068 |archive-date=16 June 2018 |access-date=21 June 2018 |publisher=BBC}}</ref> A copy of the 2005 version of a junior high school textbook titled ''New History Textbook'' found that there is no mention of the "Nanjing Massacre" or the "Nanjing Incident". Indeed, the only one sentence that referred to this event was: "they [the Japanese troops] occupied that city in December".<ref>{{cite web |last=Wang |first=Zheng |date=23 April 2014 |title=History Education: The Source of Conflict Between China and Japan |url=https://thediplomat.com/2014/04/history-education-the-source-of-conflict-between-china-and-japan/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171111205550/https://thediplomat.com/2014/04/history-education-the-source-of-conflict-between-china-and-japan/ |archive-date=11 November 2017 |access-date=11 November 2017 |website=The Diplomat}}</ref>

===Taiwan===
{{Main|Political status of Taiwan}}

[[File:Taiwan Strait.png|thumb|upright|The [[Taiwan Strait]] and the island of [[Taiwan]]]]

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, [[Japanese colonial period in Taiwan|Taiwan was a Japanese colony]] that was used as a strategic base for military operations against China and Southeast Asia. Native Han Chinese inhabitants on the island were given the option of moving back to the mainland, although few did, and some put up an [[Taiwanese resistance to Japanese colonialism|armed resistance against the Japanese]]. This formed the backbone of the nascent [[Taiwanese independence movement]]. In the period before the war in the Pacific widened, Japan came to regard Taiwan as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" and an important stepping stone  in its military expansion.

There were [[indigenous Taiwanese]] who worked in Japan's defense and war-related industries in Taiwan that abetted Japan's war efforts. Many Taiwanese served in the Japanese military, including units that fought in China, resulting in the combat deaths of nearly 30,000. The future President, [[Lee Teng-hui]] (aa Kuomintang member) was one of those conscripted.<ref>{{cite web | title=Obituary &#124; Lee Teng-hui, controversial figure and Taiwan's 'father of democracy' | date=30 July 2020 | url=https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3095139/lee-teng-hui-controversial-figure-hailed-taiwans-father }}</ref>

After the surrender, Taiwan and the [[Penghu]] islands were put under the administrative control of the Republic of China (ROC) government in 1945 by the [[United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]].<ref name="unhcr.org">[http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,TWN,,4954ce6323,0.html World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples&nbsp;– Taiwan : Overview] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728144641/http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country%2C%2C%2C%2CTWN%2C%2C4954ce6323%2C0.html|date=28 July 2011}} United Nations High Commission for Refugees</ref> The ROC proclaimed Taiwan [[Retrocession Day]] on 25 October 1945. However, due to the unresolved Chinese Civil War, neither the newly established People's Republic of China in mainland China nor the Nationalist ROC that retreated to Taiwan was invited to sign the [[Treaty of San Francisco]], as neither had shown full and complete legal capacity to enter into an international legally binding agreement.<ref name="aao.sinica.edu.tw">{{cite web |url=http://aao.sinica.edu.tw/download/publication_e/Year2007/human12.pdf |title=Disputes over Taiwan Sovereignty and the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty Since World War II |access-date=2009-08-25 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090326201339/http://aao.sinica.edu.tw/download/publication_e/Year2007/human12.pdf |archive-date=26 March 2009 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> Since China was not present, the Japanese only formally renounced the territorial sovereignty of Taiwan and Penghu islands without specifying to which country Japan relinquished the sovereignty, and the treaty was signed in 1951 and came into force in 1952.

In 1952, the [[Treaty of Taipei]] was signed separately between the ROC and Japan that basically followed the same guideline of the Treaty of San Francisco, not specifying which country has sovereignty over Taiwan. However, Article 10 of the treaty states that the [[Taiwanese people]] and the juridical person should be the people and the juridical person of the ROC.<ref name="unhcr.org"/> Both the PRC and ROC governments base their claims to Taiwan on the [[Japanese Instrument of Surrender]] which specifically accepted the [[Potsdam Declaration]] which refers to the [[1943 Cairo Declaration|Cairo Declaration]]. Disputes over the precise de jure sovereign of Taiwan persist to the present. On a de facto basis, sovereignty over Taiwan has been and continues to be exercised by the ROC. Japan's position has been to avoid commenting on Taiwan's status, maintaining that Japan renounced all claims to sovereignty over its former colonial possessions after World War{{nbsp}}II, including Taiwan.<ref>[http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstStory/index.php?storyid=453676]{{Dead link|date=August 2018|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}} FOCUS: Taiwan–Japan ties back on shaky ground as Taipei snubs Tokyo envoy</ref>

Traditionally, the [[Republic of China]] government has held celebrations marking the [[Victory Day]] on 9 September (now known as [[Armed Forces Day]]) and Taiwan's Retrocession Day on 25 October. However, after the [[Democratic Progressive Party]] (DPP) won the [[2000 Republic of China presidential election|presidential election]] in 2000, these national holidays commemorating the war have been cancelled as the [[Taiwan Independence|pro-independent]] DPP does not see the relevancy of celebrating events that happened in mainland China.

Meanwhile, many KMT supporters, particularly veterans who retreated with the government in 1949, still have an emotional interest in the war. For example, in celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of war in 2005, the cultural bureau of KMT stronghold [[Taipei]] held a series of talks in the [[Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall]] regarding the war and post-war developments, while the KMT held its own exhibit in the KMT headquarters. Whereas the KMT won the [[2008 Republic of China presidential election|presidential election]] in 2008, the ROC government resumed commemorating the war.

===Japanese women left in China===
{{Main|Japanese people in China}}

Several thousand Japanese who were sent as colonizers to Manchukuo and Inner Mongolia were left behind in China. The majority of these were women, and they married mostly Chinese men and became known as "stranded war wives" (zanryu fujin).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://japanfocus.org/-Rowena-Ward/2374/article.html|title=Left Behind: Japan's Wartime Defeat and the Stranded Women of Manchukuo|work=The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus|date=March 2007 |access-date=13 August 2016|archive-date=12 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160112110754/http://japanfocus.org/-Rowena-Ward/2374/article.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=fDCsD-1zitUC&pg=PA59 Mackerras 2003] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014429/https://books.google.com/books?id=fDCsD-1zitUC&pg=PA59 |date=12 October 2022 }}, p. 59.</ref>

The Japanese government claims that these women had willingly chosen to stay in China, believing that women thirteen years of age and older were capable of making the decision to stay or leave China.  Due to this, many women faced legal and cultural concerns about returning to Japan, such as less employment opportunities, less governmental aid and discrimination.<ref name=":3" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Zhang |first=Longlong |date=23 February 2022 |title=Immigration and settlement of the children of Japanese war orphans left behind in China: Policy development, family strategy and life course |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-asian-studies/article/immigration-and-settlement-of-the-children-of-japanese-war-orphans-left-behind-in-china-policy-development-family-strategy-and-life-course/83FAAEAF4BF47092CAD93286BBFB008E |journal=International Journal of Asian Studies |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=531-553 |via=Cambridge University Press}}</ref><ref>Ward, Rowena (2006). Japanese government policy and the reality of the lives of the zanryu fujin. University of Wollongong. Journal contribution. <nowiki>https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uow.27713820.v1</nowiki></ref>  Many of these women had gotten married and started families with Chinese men, which produced children ineligible to enter Japan due to their lack of Japanese citizenship.  Additionally, Japan created repatriation legislation determined by both based on age (if they were minors) and if the individual willfully stayed in China or was forcibly separated from Japan.  Other factors such as poor Sino-Japanese relations as well as poorer communication to rural areas, where many of these women lived, also prevented many Japanese women from returning to Japan.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Ward |first=Rowena |date=March 1, 2007 |title=Left Behind: Japan's Wartime Defeat and the Stranded Women of Manchukuo |url=https://apjjf.org/rowena-ward/2374/article#:~:text=By%20Rowena%20Ward,they%20married%2C%20played%20a%20part. |journal=The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus |volume=5 |issue=3}}</ref>

===Korean women left in China===
{{Main|Koreans in China}}

In China some Korean comfort women stayed behind instead of going back to their native land.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=auqCyUi5Dq0C&pg=PA59 Tanaka 2002] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014429/https://books.google.com/books?id=auqCyUi5Dq0C&pg=PA59 |date=12 October 2022 }}, p. 59.</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&pg=PA59 Tanaka 2003] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014429/https://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&pg=PA59 |date=12 October 2022 }}, p. 59.</ref> Most Korean comfort women who were left behind in China married Chinese men.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=To5OA8ZOEdYC&pg=PA90 Teunis 2007] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014429/https://books.google.com/books?id=To5OA8ZOEdYC&pg=PA90 |date=12 October 2022 }}, p. 90.</ref>

Korean women and young girls brought to China during the Second Sino-Japanese War were brought by the Japanese as comfort women.  These women were used as a sexual outlet by Japanese soldiers.  Since the early 1930s, the Japanese brought more than two hundred thousand women, mostly Korean women, to China; however some estimates reach up to five hundrend thousand women.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Dudden |first=Alexis |date=September 16, 2022 |title=A Guide to Understanding the History of the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue To help Seoul and Tokyo mend ties, U.S. policymakers first need to learn the nuances of an important ‘memory battle.’ |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220916190537/https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/09/guide-understanding-history-comfort-women-issue |website=United States Institute of Peace}}</ref>  Many of the women became pregnant and gave birth to children.  Some women recall being raped by Japanese soldiers more than fifty times a day.<ref>In the Name of the Emperor. Directed by Christine Choy. Filmakers Library, 1997. <nowiki>https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/in-the-name-of-the-emperor</nowiki>.</ref> While some of these Korean women also stayed in China and married Chinese men and started families, many were killed by the Japanese towards the end of the war.  Those who returned to Korea faced social barring and stigmatism, making it difficult for these women to move on from their horrific pasts, and some knowing of the shame they would face stayed in China.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Museum of Social Justice |date=2024 |title="Comfort Women" Then and Now: Who They Were and Why We Should Remember Them |url=https://www.museumofsocialjustice.org/comfort-women-then-and-now-who-they-were-and-why-we-should-remember-them.html#:~:text=Near%20the%20end%20of%20the,shame%20and%20never%20returned%20home. |website=Museum of Social Justice}}</ref>

===Commemorations===
Three major museums in China commemorate China's War of Resistance, including the [[Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mitter |first=Rana |title=China's good war: how World War II is shaping a new nationalism |date=2020 |publisher=The Belknap Press of [[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-98426-4 |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |pages=111 |oclc=1141442704}}</ref> China also holds parades, memorials and other annual events, often held on September 3rd, to commemorate the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. These events reflect on events of the war, such as the Nanjing Massacre, while creating a collective sense of national unity and remembrance.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Broomby |first=Jan Camenzind |date=2 September 2025 |title=Battle for history: China's WWII anniversary rekindles legacy debate |url=https://www.npr.org/2025/09/02/nx-s1-5522234/china-80th-anniversary-wwii-battle-legacy#:~:text=Female%20soldiers%20from%20the%20People's,War%20of%20Resistance%20against%20Japan.%22 |website=NPR}}</ref>
[[File:2018 Haiden (Yasukuni Shrine).jpg|thumb|Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto shrine dedicated to honoring the Japanese killed in war.  It was established in 1869 by Emperor Meiji and remains a popular site for the Japanese and tourists.]]
Japan holds a national memorial on August 15th, which features statements from government officials and many Japanese visit the [[Yasukuni Shrine]], which continues to be a controversial point in Japanese relations with China and South Korea.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Higurashi |first=Yoshinobu |date=November 25, 2013 |title=Yasukuni and the Enshrinement of War Criminals |url=https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a02404/}}</ref> Museums such as the Yushukan Museum in Tokyo, which has an exhibit dedicated to the Second Sino-Japanese War containing artifacts of military elites, and memorial museums for Hiroshima and Nagasaki all allow the Japanese to remember the events of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. <ref>{{Cite journal |last=Breen |first=John |date=June 10, 2005 |title=Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory |journal=Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus |volume=3 |issue=6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Yushukan Museum |title=Exhibition Room Guide, Exhibition Room 10 |url=https://www.yasukuni.or.jp/yusyukan/#sec03}}</ref>

The days during which each country holds its respective commemorations relate to events surrounding the end of World War II.  China observes September 3rd as that day, marking when Japan officially surrendered in Tokyo.  Japan observes August 15th as it is the day when Emperor Hirohito declared Japan's surrender.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Moritsugu |first=Ken |date=August 14, 2025 |title=Japan and China Commemorate World War II Anniversary on Different Dates |url=https://apnews.com/article/japan-china-world-war-anniversary-80-years-83b0bddf72a6de4700375cb7586f921d |website=AP News}}</ref> 

==Casualties==
[[File:Casualties of a mass panic - Chungking, China.jpg|thumb|upright|Casualties of a mass panic during a June 1941 Japanese [[bombing of Chongqing]]. More than 5,000 civilians died during the first two days of air raids in 1939.<ref>[[Herbert Bix]], ''[[Hirohito and the making of modern Japan]]'', 2001, p. 364</ref>]]
The conflict lasted eight years, two months, and two days (from 7 July 1937 to 9 September 1945). The total number of casualties that resulted from this war (and subsequently theater) equaled more than half the total number of casualties that later resulted from the entire Pacific War.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-ww2/sino-japanese-war |title=Sino-Japanese War |publisher=History.co.uk |access-date=27 November 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151124021032/http://www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-ww2/sino-japanese-war |archive-date=24 November 2015 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Chinese===
* Duncan Anderson, Head of the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy, UK, writing for BBC states that the total number of Chinese who died was at 20&nbsp;million.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml |title=Nuclear Power: The End of the War Against Japan |publisher=BBC |access-date=2010-12-02 |archive-date=28 November 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151128194317/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml |url-status=live }}</ref>
* Based on data released by the Nationalists and Communists from 1945 to 1947, the total losses for Chinese military personnel and civilians in the Second Sino-Japanese War amounted to 22,782,959 casualties (9,530,317 dead, 9,905,880 wounded or crippled, 540,562 missing, and 2,806,200 captured).<ref name="抗日战争时期中国人口损失问题研究">{{cite book |date=2012 |title=抗日战争时期中国人口损失问题研究（1937-1945）|trans-title=A Study on China's Population Loss During the Resistance War against Japan（1937-1945）|author=Bian Xiuyue |publisher=Hualing Publishing House}}</ref>{{rp|p=397-400}}
* Dr. Bian Xiuyue, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, put total losses of the Chinese population from 1931 to 1945 at 20,620,939 dead (excluding the [[Chinese famine of 1942–1943|Henan Famine]]) and estimated the number of wounded at 20,692,246 for a total of 41,313,185 dead or wounded. Of the aforementioned figure, Nationalist and Communist military personnel and conscripts accounted for 27.61%, forced laborers and civilians from China (including Manchukuo) accounted for 69.21%, collaborationist Chinese military personnel accounted for 2.44%, overseas Chinese accounted for 0.61%, and Taiwanese military personnel in the Japanese Army accounted for 0.13%. If the 5.35 million Chinese who went missing or were captured by the Japanese Army and the 3 million civilians who died from famine in Henan Province are included, the total number of Chinese losses amounted to between 45 and 48 million dead, wounded, missing, and captured.<ref name="抗日战争时期中国人口损失问题研究"/>{{rp|p=438-440}}
* The official [[PRC]] statistics for China's civilian and military casualties in the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945 are over 35&nbsp;million casualties including over 20&nbsp;million dead. Military casualties amounted to over 3.8&nbsp;million out of the over 35&nbsp;million figure.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Huanzhang |first1=Luo |last2=Pei |first2=Gao |title=中国抗战军事史 |trans-title=Military History of China's War of Resistance |date=1995 |publisher=[[Beijing Publishing House]] |page=696}}</ref>
* The official account of the war published in Taiwan reported that the Nationalist Chinese Army lost 3,238,000 men (1,797,000 wounded, 1,320,000 killed, and 120,000 missing) and 5,787,352 civilians casualties putting the total number of casualties at 9,025,352. The [[Kuomintang|Nationalists]] fought in 22 major engagements, most of which involved more than 100,000 troops on both sides, 1,171 minor engagements most of which involved more than 50,000 troops on both sides, and 38,931 skirmishes.<ref name=Hsu>Hsu Long-hsuen "History of the Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945)" Taipei 1972</ref> The Chinese reported their yearly total battle casualties as 367,362 for 1937, 735,017 for 1938, 346,543 for 1939, and 299,483 for 1941.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clodfelter |first=Micheal |title=Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 |date=2015 |publisher=McFarland & Company |edition=4th |pages=393}}</ref> Additionally, the Ministry of Military Affairs recorded a total of 10,322,934 losses from illnesses, reorganizations, and desertions.<ref name="軍政部">[https://ahonline.drnh.gov.tw/index.php?act=Display/image/5258413I-c9E-=#8cF 國史館檔案史料文物查詢系統, 抗戰期間陸軍動員人數統計表, 典藏號: 008-010701-00015-046]</ref>
* The postwar investigation of Chinese losses by the Nationalist Government recorded a total of 3,407,931 military combat casualties (1,371,374 killed, 1,738,324 wounded, and 298,233 missing) and 422,479 military deaths from illnesses. Additionally, there were 2,313 casualties (1,042 killed and 1,271 wounded) from the Air Defense Service and 9,134,569 civilian casualties (4,397,504 dead and 4,737,065 wounded).{{efn|Does not include civilian casualties in Communist-controlled lands}} Yearly casualties for the army are 881,349 in 1937, 517,121 in 1938, 413,853 in 1939, 153,983 in 1940, 258,530 in 1941, 126,557 in 1942, 67,903 in 1943, 322,625 in 1944, and 649,503 in 1945.{{efn|The losses recorded in 1937 included losses in the [[Mukden Incident]], [[January 28 Incident]], and [[Defense of the Great Wall]]. The losses recorded in 1945 included losses in guerilla fighting from 1937 until 1945}}<ref>[https://ahonline.drnh.gov.tw/index.php?act=Display/image/5258400jNZKRN2#03J 國史館檔案史料文物查詢系統, 民國二十六年七月至三十四年八月止抗戰軍事損失統計表(陸軍部門), 典藏號: 008-010701-00015-052]</ref><ref>[https://ahonline.drnh.gov.tw/index.php?act=Display/image/5056428gRuu=_S 國史館檔案史料文物查詢系統, 中日戰爭損失統計(三), 典藏號: 020-010116-0004]</ref>
* The Ministry of Military Affairs recorded the losses of wounded and sick soldiers in hospital directly administrated by the Nationalist Government at 443,398 losses for wounded soldiers (45,710 dead, 123,017 crippled, and 274,671 deserted) and 937,559 losses for sick soldiers (422,479 dead, 191,644 crippled, and 323,436 deserted), for a total of 1,380,957 losses (468,189 dead, 314,661 crippled, and 598,107 deserted).<ref name="何應欽"/>{{rp|430}}
* An academic study published in the United States in 1959 estimates military casualties: 1.5&nbsp;million killed in battle, 750,000 missing in action, 1.5&nbsp;million deaths due to disease and 3&nbsp;million wounded; civilian casualties: due to military activity, killed 1,073,496 and 237,319 wounded; 335,934 killed and 426,249 wounded in Japanese air attacks.<ref>Ho Ping-ti. Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.</ref> This estimate is based on the National Central Research Institute's study of China's losses in six years from 7 July 1937 until 6 July 1943.<ref>國史館檔案史料文物查詢系統, 二十六至三十二年中國對日戰事損失之估計(國立中央研究所社會科學研究所韓啟桐編), 典藏號: 020-010116-0001 [https://ahonline.drnh.gov.tw/index.php?act=Display/image/5376374P9FeQI3#r1e6]</ref><ref>{{cite book |date=1946 |last=Qitong |first=Han |title=中國對日戰事損失之估計 (1937–1943) |publisher=中華書局| pages=15–23}}</ref>
* According to historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, at least 2.7&nbsp;million civilians died during the "kill all, loot all, burn all" operation ([[Three Alls Policy]], or ''sanko sakusen'') implemented in May 1942 in north China by general [[Yasuji Okamura]] and authorized on 3 December 1941, by Imperial Headquarter Order number 575.<ref>* {{cite book|last=Himeta|first=Mitsuyoshi|trans-title=Concerning the Three Alls Strategy/Three Alls Policy By the Japanese Forces|title=日本軍による「三光政策・三光作戦をめぐって|publisher=Iwanami Bukkuretto|year=1995|isbn=978-4-00-003317-6|page=43}}</ref>
* The property loss suffered by the Chinese was valued at 383&nbsp;billion US&nbsp;dollars according to the currency exchange rate in July 1937, roughly 50 times the [[gross domestic product]] of Japan at that time (US$7.7&nbsp;billion).<ref>[[Ho Ying-chin]], Who Actually Fought the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945? 1978</ref>
* In addition, the war created 95&nbsp;million [[refugee]]s.<ref>{{Cite book|title=War, nation, memory : international perspectives on World War II in school history textbooks|last1=Crawford|first1=Keith A.|last2=Foster|first2=Stuart J.|publisher=Information Age|year=2007|isbn=9781607526599|location=Charlotte, NC|page=90|oclc=294758908}}</ref>
* [[Rudolph Rummel]] gave a figure of 3,949,000 people in China murdered directly by the Japanese army while giving a figure of 10,216,000 total dead in the war with the additional millions of deaths due to indirect causes like starvation, disease and disruption but not direct killing by Japan.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rummel |first1=Rudolph |title=China's Bloody Century Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 |date=1991 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781315081328 |page=348 |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315081328 |doi=10.4324/9781315081328 |access-date=29 April 2020 |archive-date=3 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180603094240/https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315081328 |url-status=live }}</ref> China suffered from famines during the war caused by drought affected both China and [[British Raj|India]], [[Chinese famine of 1942–43]] in [[Henan]] that led to starvation deaths of 2 to 3&nbsp;million people, Guangdong famine caused more than 3&nbsp;million people to flee or die, and the [[Bengal Famine of 1943|1943–1945 Indian famine in Bengal]] that killed about 3 million Indians in [[Bengal]] and parts of Southern India.<ref>{{cite web|date=2008-11-18|title=The Bengali Famine|url=https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/in-the-media/churchill-in-the-news/bengali-famine/|access-date=2020-11-08|website=The International Churchill Society|archive-date=30 December 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141230160807/http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/in-the-media/churchill-in-the-news/575-the-bengali-famine|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Japanese===
The Japanese recorded around 1.1 to 1.9{{nbsp}}million military casualties during all of World War{{nbsp}}II (which includes those killed, wounded, and missing). The official death toll of Japanese men killed in China, according to the Japan Defense Ministry, was 480,000. Based on the investigation of the Japanese ''[[Yomiuri Shimbun]]'', the military death toll of Japan in China is about 700,000 since 1937 (excluding the deaths in Manchuria).<ref name="Yomiuri Shimbun"/>

Another source from Hilary Conroy claims that a total of 447,000 Japanese soldiers died or went missing in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Of the 1,130,000 Imperial Japanese Army soldiers who died during World War{{nbsp}}II, 39 percent died in China.<ref name="Coox p. 308"/>

Then in ''[[War Without Mercy]]'', [[John W. Dower]] claims that a total of 396,000 Japanese soldiers died in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Of this number, the Imperial Japanese Army lost 388,605 soldiers, and the Imperial Japanese Navy lost 8,000 soldiers. Another 54,000 soldiers also died after the war had ended, mostly from illness and starvation.<ref name="Coox p. 308">{{cite book| editor-last1=Coox | editor-first1=Alvin | editor-link1=Alvin Coox | editor-first2=Hilary | editor-last2=Conroy | title=China and Japan: A Search for Balance since World War I | page=308 }}</ref> Of the 1,740,955 Japanese soldiers who died during World War{{nbsp}}II, 22 percent died in China.<ref name="Ref-1">Dower, John "War Without Mercy", pp. 297.</ref>

Japanese statistics, however, lack complete estimates for the wounded. From 1937 to 1941, 185,647 Japanese soldiers were killed in China and 520,000 were wounded. Disease also incurred critical losses on Japanese forces. From 1937 to 1941, 430,000 Japanese soldiers were recorded as being sick. In North China alone, 18,000 soldiers were evacuated back to Japan for illnesses in 1938, 23,000 in 1939, and 15,000 in 1940.<ref name="Ref-1"/>{{efn|This number does not include the casualties of the large numbers of Chinese collaborator government troops fighting on the Japanese side.|group=efn}} From 1941 to 1945: 202,958 dead; another 54,000 dead after war's end. Chinese forces also report that by May 1945, 22,293 Japanese soldiers were captured as prisoners. Many more Japanese soldiers surrendered when the war ended.<ref name="Coox p. 308"/><ref name="Ref-1"/>

Contemporary studies from the Beijing Central Compilation and Translation Press state that the Japanese suffered a total of 2,227,200 casualties, including 1,055,000 dead and 1,172,341 injured. This Chinese publication analyzes statistics provided by Japanese publications and claims these numbers were largely based on Japanese publications.<ref name="Press">Liu Feng, (2007). "血祭太阳旗: 百万侵华日军亡命实录". Central Compilation and Translation Press. {{ISBN|978-7-80109-030-0}}. ''Note'': This Chinese publication analyses statistics provided by Japanese publications.</ref>

Both Nationalist and Communist Chinese sources report that their respective forces were responsible for the deaths of over 1.7&nbsp;million Japanese soldiers.{{Sfn|Hsu|page=565}} Nationalist War Minister [[He Yingqin]] himself contested the Communists' claims, finding it impossible for a force of "untrained, undisciplined, poorly equipped" guerrillas of Communist forces to have killed so many enemy soldiers.<ref>{{cite book| editor-last1=Coox | editor-first1=Alvin | editor-link1=Alvin Coox | editor-first2=Hilary | editor-last2=Conroy | title=China and Japan: A Search for Balance since World War I | page=296 }}</ref>

The Nationalist Chinese authorities ridiculed Japanese estimates of Chinese casualties. In 1940, the National Herald stated that the Japanese exaggerated Chinese casualties, while deliberately concealing the true number of Japanese casualties, releasing false figures that made them appear much lower. The article reports on the casualty situation of the war up to 1940.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6Rknr9XSMggC|title=China monthly review, Volume 95|year=1940|publisher=Millard Publishing Co.|page=187|access-date=2010-06-28}}</ref>

===Use of chemical and biological weapons===
Despite Article 23 of the [[Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907]], article V of the Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Washington_Treaty_in_Relation_to_the_Use_of_Submarines_and_Noxious_Gases_in_Warfare |title=Washington Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare&nbsp;— World War I Document Archive |publisher=Wwi.lib.byu.edu |access-date=2010-12-02 |archive-date=4 October 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091004221650/http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Washington_Treaty_in_Relation_to_the_Use_of_Submarines_and_Noxious_Gases_in_Warfare |url-status=live }}</ref> article 171 of the [[Treaty of Versailles]] and a resolution adopted by the League of Nations on 14 May 1938, condemning the use of poison gas by the Empire of Japan, the Imperial Japanese Army frequently used chemical weapons during the war.

According to Walter E. Grunden, history professor at [[Bowling Green State University]], Japan permitted the use of chemical weapons in China because the Japanese concluded that Chinese forces did not possess the capacity to retaliate in kind.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Grunden |first1=W.E. |editor1-last=Friedrich |editor1-first=B. |editor2-last=Hoffmann |editor2-first=D. |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6_14 |editor3-last=Renn |editor3-first=J. |editor4-last=Schmaltz |editor4-first=F. |editor5-last=Wolf |editor5-first=M. |title=One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences |date=2017 |publisher=Springer, Cham |isbn=978-3-319-51663-9 |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6_14 |chapter=No Retaliation in Kind: Japanese Chemical Warfare Policy in World War II |pages=259–271 |s2cid=158528688 |access-date=28 October 2022 |archive-date=16 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221016161215/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6_14 |url-status=live }}</ref> The Japanese incorporated gas warfare into many aspects of their army, which includes special gas troops, infantry, artillery, engineers and air force; the Japanese were aware of basic gas tactics of other armies, and deployed multifarious gas warfare tactics in China.<ref>{{cite book|author=United States. War Department. Military Intelligence Division|issue=24 of Special series, United States War Dept|date=1944|title=Enemy Tactics in Chemical Warfare|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gq1BAAAAIAAJ&dq=japanese+gas+hand+to+hand+combat&pg=PA69|publisher=War Department|pages=69–86|access-date=28 October 2022|archive-date=2 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230402122509/https://books.google.com/books?id=gq1BAAAAIAAJ&dq=japanese+gas+hand+to+hand+combat&pg=PA69|url-status=live}}</ref> The Japanese were very dependent on gas weapons when they were engaged in chemical warfare.<ref>{{cite book|author=United States. War Department. Military Intelligence Division|issue=24 of Special series, United States War Dept|date=1944|title=Enemy Tactics in Chemical Warfare|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gq1BAAAAIAAJ&dq=japanese+gas+hand+to+hand+combat&pg=PA69|publisher=War Department|pages=69|access-date=28 October 2022|archive-date=2 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230402122509/https://books.google.com/books?id=gq1BAAAAIAAJ&dq=japanese+gas+hand+to+hand+combat&pg=PA69|url-status=live}}</ref>

Japan used poison gas at Hankow during the Battle of Wuhan to break fierce Chinese resistance after conventional Japanese assaults were repelled by Chinese defenders. Rana Mitter writes, {{blockquote|Under General Xue Yue, some 100,000 Chinese troops pushed back Japanese forces at Huangmei. At the fortress of Tianjiazhen, thousands of men fought until the end of September, with Japanese victory assured only with the use of poison gas.{{Sfn|Mitter|2013|p=166}}}}

According to [[Freda Utley]], during the battle at Hankow, in areas where Japanese artillery or gunboats on the river could not reach Chinese defenders on hilltops, Japanese infantrymen had to fight Chinese troops on the hills.<ref name="fredautley1">{{cite book |last=Utley |first=Freda |date=1939 |title=China at War |url=http://www.fredautley.com/pdffiles/book19.pdf |location=London |publisher=Faber and Faber |pages=110–112, 170 |access-date=28 October 2022 |archive-date=28 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221028055717/https://fredautley.com/pdffiles/book19.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> She noted that the Japanese were inferior at hand-to-hand combat against the Chinese, and resorted to deploying poison gas to defeat the Chinese troops.<ref name="fredautley1"/> She was told by General [[Li Zongren]] that the Japanese consistently used [[tear gas]] and [[mustard gas]] against Chinese troops.<ref name="fredautley1"/> Li also added that his forces could not withstand large scale deployments of Japanese poison gas.<ref name="fredautley1"/> Since Chinese troops did not have gas-masks, the poison gases provided enough time for Japanese troops to bayonet debilitated Chinese soldiers.<ref name="fredautley1"/>

During the battle in Yichang of October 1941, Japanese troops used chemical munitions in their artillery and mortar fire, and warplanes dropped gas bombs all over the area; since the Chinese troops were poorly equipped and without gas-masks, they were severely gassed, burned and killed.<ref>{{cite book|author=United States. War Department. Military Intelligence Division|issue=24 of Special series, United States War Dept|date=1944|title=Enemy Tactics in Chemical Warfare|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gq1BAAAAIAAJ&dq=japanese+gas+hand+to+hand+combat&pg=PA82|pages=82–83|access-date=28 October 2022|archive-date=2 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230402122514/https://books.google.com/books?id=gq1BAAAAIAAJ&dq=japanese+gas+hand+to+hand+combat&pg=PA82|url-status=live}}</ref>

According to historians [[Yoshiaki Yoshimi]] and Seiya Matsuno, the chemical weapons were authorized by specific orders given by Hirohito himself, transmitted by the Imperial General Headquarters. For example, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938.<ref>Y. Yoshimi and S. Matsuno, ''Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryō II (Materials on poison gas warfare), Kaisetsu, Hōkan 2, Jugonen Sensō Gokuhi Shiryōshu'', 1997, pp. 27–29</ref> They were also used during the invasion of Changde. Those orders were transmitted either by [[Prince Kan'in Kotohito]] or General [[Hajime Sugiyama]].<ref>Yoshimi and Matsuno, ''idem'', [[Herbert Bix]], Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 2001, pp. 360–364</ref> Gases manufactured in [[Okunoshima]] were used more than 2,000 times against Chinese soldiers and civilians in the war in China in the 1930s and 1940s<ref>{{cite web | first=Nicholas D. | last=Kristof | title=Okunoshima Journal; A Museum to Remind Japanese of Their Own Guilt | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/12/world/okunoshima-journal-a-museum-to-remind-japanese-of-their-own-guilt.html | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190508142011/https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/12/world/okunoshima-journal-a-museum-to-remind-japanese-of-their-own-guilt.html|archivedate=8 May 2019 | newspaper=The New York Times | date=12 August 1995|accessdate=17 March 2024}}</ref>

[[Bacteriological weapons]] provided by [[Shirō Ishii]]'s units were also profusely used. For example, in 1940, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force bombed [[Ningbo]] with [[flea]]s carrying the [[bubonic plague]].<ref>''Japan triggered bubonic plague outbreak, doctor claims'', [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-triggered-bubonic-plague-outbreak-doctor-claims-704147.html] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110912142325/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-triggered-bubonic-plague-outbreak-doctor-claims-704147.html|date=12 September 2011}}, Prince [[Tsuneyoshi Takeda]] and [[Prince Mikasa]] received a special screening by [[Shirō Ishii]] of a film showing imperial planes loading germ bombs for bubonic dissemination over Ningbo in 1940. (Daniel Barenblatt, ''A Plague upon Humanity'', 2004, p. 32.) All these weapons were experimented with on humans before being used in the field.</ref> During the [[Khabarovsk War Crime Trials]] the accused, such as Major General Kiyashi Kawashima, testified that, in 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on [[Changde]]. These attacks caused epidemic plague outbreaks.<ref>Daniel Barenblatt, ''A Plague upon Humanity'', 2004, pages 220–221.</ref> In the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign, of the 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with the disease, about 1,700 Japanese troops died when the biological weapons rebounded on their own forces.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Implementation of Legally Binding Measures to Strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Held in Budapest, Hungary, 2001|editor1-first=Marie Isabelle|editor1-last=Chevrier|editor2-first=Krzysztof|editor2-last=Chomiczewski|editor3-first=Henri|editor3-last=Garrigue|volume=150 of NATO science series: Mathematics, physics, and chemistry|edition=illustrated|year=2004|publisher=Springer|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lILltXBTo8oC&pg=PA19|page=19|isbn=1-4020-2097-X|access-date=10 March 2014|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014429/https://books.google.com/books?id=lILltXBTo8oC&pg=PA19|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Weapons of Mass Destruction|editor1-first=Eric A.|editor1-last=Croddy|editor2-first=James J.|editor2-last=Wirtz|others=Jeffrey A. Larsen, Managing Editor|year=2005|publisher=ABC-CLIO|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZzlNgS70OHAC&pg=PA171|page=171|isbn=1-85109-490-3|access-date=10 March 2014|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014931/https://books.google.com/books?id=ZzlNgS70OHAC&pg=PA171|url-status=live}}</ref> According to statistics from the Nationalist government, the Japanese army from July 1937 until September 1945 used poison gas 1,973 times. Based on available data, a total of 103,069 Chinese soldiers and civilians died from biological and chemical weapons.<ref>國史館檔案史料文物查詢系統, 八年血債: 七七事變前日寇對我之逼迫、日軍侵華戰爭中暴行(毒虐、屠害、炸擄、縱火)、我軍官兵傷亡及財產損失概況、領袖對日以德報怨、日背信忘義, 典藏號: 002-110500-00009-008 [https://ahonline.drnh.gov.tw/index.php?act=Display/image/5620671x=zm26c#eOs3]</ref>

Japan gave its own soldiers [[methamphetamines]] in the form of [[Philopon]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Morgans |first1=Julian |title=A Brief History of Meth |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/from-kamikaze-pilots-to-footy-players-heres-a-short-history-of-ice/ |work=VICE News |date=22 October 2015 |access-date=29 April 2020 |archive-date=6 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806162920/https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/4wb78m/from-kamikaze-pilots-to-footy-players-heres-a-short-history-of-ice |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Use of suicide attacks===
[[File:Chinese infantry soldier preparing a suicide vest of Model 24 hand grenades at the Battle of Taierzhuang against Japanese Tanks.jpg|thumb|Chinese suicide bomber putting on an explosive vest made out of Model 24 hand grenades to use in an attack on Japanese tanks at the [[Battle of Taierzhuang]]]]
Chinese armies deployed "dare to die corps" ({{lang-zh|s=敢死队 |t=敢死隊 |p=gǎnsǐduì |w= |first=t}}) or "suicide squads" against the Japanese.<ref>{{cite book|title=Modern China: the fall and rise of a great power, 1850 to the present|first=Jonathan|last=Fenby|year=2008|publisher=Ecco|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8VIUAQAAIAAJ&q=dare+to+die+corps+swords|page=284|isbn=978-0-06-166116-7|access-date=24 April 2014|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014932/https://books.google.com/books?id=8VIUAQAAIAAJ&q=dare+to+die+corps+swords|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Suicide bombing]] was also used against the Japanese. A Chinese soldier detonated a grenade vest and killed 20 Japanese at [[Defense of Sihang Warehouse#29 October|Sihang Warehouse]]. Chinese troops [[Explosive belt|strapped explosives, such as grenade packs or dynamite to their bodies]] and threw themselves under Japanese tanks to blow them up.<ref>{{Cite thesis|last=Schaedler |first=Luc |title=Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet: Literary, Historical, and Oral Sources for a Documentary Film |degree=PhD |url=http://www.zora.uzh.ch/17710/3/Angry_Monk_Dissertation.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140719204815/http://www.zora.uzh.ch/17710/3/Angry_Monk_Dissertation.pdf |archive-date=19 July 2014 |date=Autumn 2007 |page=518 |publisher=University of Zurich |access-date=24 April 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref> This tactic was used during the Battle of Shanghai, where a Chinese suicide bomber stopped a Japanese tank column by exploding himself beneath the lead tank,<ref>{{cite book|title=Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze|first=Peter|last=Harmsen|edition=illustrated|year=2013|publisher=Casemate|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jpPUAgAAQBAJ&q=shanghai+grenade+tanks+japanese&pg=PT127|page=112|isbn=978-1-61200-167-8|access-date=24 April 2014|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014932/https://books.google.com/books?id=jpPUAgAAQBAJ&q=shanghai+grenade+tanks+japanese&pg=PT127|url-status=live}}</ref> and at the Battle of Taierzhuang, where dynamite and grenades were strapped on by Chinese troops who rushed at Japanese tanks and blew themselves up.<ref>{{cite journal|date=Summer 2001 |title=Chinese Tank Forces and Battles before 1949 |url=http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/Stories/emagazine-3/tanks/Chinese_Tank_Forces_and_Battles_before_1945_ed.htm |journal=TANKS! E-Magazine |issue=#4 |access-date=2 August 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121007212422/http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/Stories/emagazine-3/tanks/Chinese_Tank_Forces_and_Battles_before_1945_ed.htm |archive-date=7 October 2012 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=China Condensed: 5000 Years of History & Culture|first=Siew Chey|last=Ong|edition=illustrated|year=2005|publisher=Marshall Cavendish|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bt7q8hfiZ4gC&q=taierzhuang+suicide+bombers&pg=PA94|page=94|isbn=981-261-067-7|access-date=24 April 2014|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014932/https://books.google.com/books?id=bt7q8hfiZ4gC&q=taierzhuang+suicide+bombers&pg=PA94|url-status=live}}</ref> During one incident at Taierzhuang, Chinese suicide bombers destroyed four Japanese tanks with grenade bundles.{{citation needed|date=November 2019}}

==Combatants==
{{Main|Combatants of the Second Sino-Japanese War}}

==See also==
{{Portal bar|Japan|China|History}}
* [[Aviation Martyrs' Cemetery]]
* [[Japan during World War II]]
* [[Japanese war crimes]]
* [[List of military engagements of the Second Sino-Japanese War]]
* [[Mao Zedong thanking Japan controversy]]
* [[Events preceding World War II in Asia#Noteworthy events|Timeline of events leading to World War II in Asia]]
* [[Timeline of events preceding World War II]]
* [[War crimes in World War II#Crimes perpetrated by Japan]]
* [[Women in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War]]

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==References==

===Citations===
{{reflist}}

===Bibliography===
{{refbegin|40em}}
* Bayly, C. A., and T. N. Harper. ''Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945''. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. xxxiii, 555p. {{ISBN|0-674-01748-X}}.
* Bayly, C. A., T. N. Harper. ''Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia''. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. xxx, 674p. {{ISBN|978-0-674-02153-2}}.
* [https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000063 Benesch, Oleg. "Castles and the Militarisation of Urban Society in Imperial Japan", ''Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'', Vol. 28 (Dec. 2018), pp. 107–134.]
* Buss, Claude A. ''War And Diplomacy in Eastern Asia'' (1941) 570pp [https://archive.org/details/waranddiplomacyi017840mbp/page/n595 online free]
* {{cite book |title = The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941 |author-link = William Duiker |first = William |last = Duiker |year = 1976 |publisher = [[Cornell University Press]] |location = Ithaca, New York |isbn = 0-8014-0951-9 |url-access = registration |url = https://archive.org/details/riseofnationalis0000duik }}
* [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_military_history/v070/70.1gordon.html Gordon, David M. "The China–Japan War, 1931–1945" ''Journal of Military History'' (January 2006). v. 70#1, pp, 137–82.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200314211033/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/191940 |date=14 March 2020 }} Historiographical overview of major books from the 1970s through 2006
* Guo Rugui, editor-in-chief Huang Yuzhang,中国抗日战争正面战场作战记 China's Anti-Japanese War Combat Operations (Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2005) {{ISBN|7-214-03034-9}}. On line in Chinese: [https://web.archive.org/web/20031129080955/http://warmuseum.ca/cwm/newspapers/operations/china_e.html 中国抗战正向战场作战记]
* {{cite book |last1=Hastings|first1=Max|title=Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45|date=2009|publisher=Vintage Books|isbn=978-0-307-27536-3}}
* {{cite book |last1=Förster|first1=Stig<!--was small caps-->|last2=Gessler|first2=Myriam|year=2005|chapter=The Ultimate Horror: Reflections on Total War and Genocide|title=''In Roger Chickering, Stig Förster and Bernd Greiner,&nbsp;eds.,'' A World at Total War: Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1937–1945 ''(pp.&nbsp;53–68)''|location=Cambridge|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|isbn=978-0-521-83432-2}}
* {{citation|editor1-last= Hsiung |editor1-first = James Chieh |editor2-first= Steven I. |editor2-last = Levine |title = China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937–1945 |place = Armonk, NY |publisher = M.E. Sharpe |year = 1992 |isbn = 0-87332-708-X}}. [https://books.google.com/books?id=LY4YDQAAQBAJ&q=China%27s+bitter+victory Reprinted] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210307234918/https://www.google.com/books/edition/China_s_Bitter_Victory_War_with_Japan_19/LY4YDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=China%27s%20bitter%20victory&printsec=frontcover |date=7 March 2021 }}: Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2015. Chapters on military, economic, diplomatic aspects of the war.
* {{cite book|last=Huang|first=Ray|title=從大歷史的角度讀蔣介石日記 (Reading Chiang Kai-shek's Diary from a Macro History Perspective)|publisher=China Times Publishing Company|date=31 January 1994|isbn=957-13-0962-1|ref={{sfnRef|Huang}}}}
* Annalee Jacoby and Theodore H. White, ''[[Thunder out of China]]'', New York: William Sloane Associates, 1946. Critical account of Chiang's government by ''Time'' magazine reporters.
* {{cite book|last=Jowett|first=Phillip|year=2005|title=Rays of the Rising Sun: Japan's Asian Allies 1931–45 Volume 1: China and Manchukuo|publisher=Helion and Company Ltd|isbn=1-874622-21-3|ref={{sfnRef|Jowett}}}} – Book about the Chinese and Mongolians who fought for the Japanese during the war.
* {{cite book|last=Hsu|first=Long-hsuen|author2=Chang Ming-kai|year=1972|title=History of the Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945)|publisher=Chung Wu Publishers|id=ASIN B00005W210|ref={{sfnRef|Hsu}}}}
* Lary, Diana and Stephen R. Mackinnon, eds. ''The Scars of War: The Impact of Warfare on Modern China''. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2001. 210p. {{ISBN|0-7748-0840-3}}.
* {{cite journal |last1=Laureau|first1=Patrick|title=Des Français en Chine (2ème partie)|journal=Avions: Toute l'aéronautique et son histoire |date=June 1993 |issue=4 |pages=32–38 |trans-title=The French in China|language=French |issn=1243-8650}}
* MacKinnon, Stephen R., Diana Lary and Ezra F. Vogel, eds. ''China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945''. Stanford University Press, 2007. xviii, 380p. {{ISBN|978-0-8047-5509-2}}.
* {{cite book|last=MacLaren|first=Roy|authorlink=|year=1981|chapter=|title=Canadians Behind Enemy Lines 1939–1945|publisher=UBC Press|location=|isbn=0-7748-1100-5|ref={{sfnRef|MacLaren}}}} - Book about the Chinese from Canada as well as Americans who fought against Japan in the Second World War.
* Macri, Franco David. ''Clash of Empires in South China: The Allied Nations' Proxy War with Japan, 1935–1941'' (2015) [https://muse.jhu.edu/book/40548 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171003225025/https://muse.jhu.edu/book/40548|date=3 October 2017}}
* {{cite book|last=Mitter|first=Rana|author-link=Rana Mitter|title=Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Bqc_YkuyaCIC|year=2013|publisher=HMH|isbn=978-0-547-84056-7|access-date=27 January 2020|archive-date=12 October 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014934/https://books.google.com/books?id=Bqc_YkuyaCIC|url-status=live}}
* Peattie, Mark. Edward Drea, and Hans van de Ven, eds. ''The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945'' (Stanford University Press, 2011); 614 pages
* Quigley, Harold S. ''Far Eastern War 1937 1941'' (1942) [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.157359 online free]
* Steiner, Zara. "Thunder from the East: The Sino-Japanese Conflict and the European Powers, 1933=1938": in Steiner, ''The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933–1939'' (2011) pp 474–551.
* {{cite journal |last1=Stevens |first1=Keith |title=A token operation: 204 military mission to China, 1941–1945 |journal=Asian Affairs |date=March 2005 |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=66–74 |doi=10.1080/03068370500039151 |s2cid=161326427 |ref = {{sfnRef|Stevens}}}}
* {{cite book|last=Taylor|first=Jay|year=2009|title=The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the struggle for modern China|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|isbn=978-0-674-03338-2|ref={{sfnRef|Taylor}}|url=https://archive.org/details/generalissimochi00tayl}}
* Van de Ven, Hans, Diana Lary, Stephen MacKinnon, eds. ''Negotiating China's Destiny in World War II'' (Stanford University Press, 2014) 336 pp. [https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=42871 online review] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150626130559/https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=42871|date=26 June 2015}}
* {{cite book |last = van de Ven |first = Hans |year = 2017 |title = China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China, 1937–1952 |publisher = Profile Books |location = London |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=a9PMmgEACAAJ |isbn = 9781781251942 |access-date = 3 January 2020 |archive-date = 12 October 2022 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20221012014934/https://books.google.com/books?id=a9PMmgEACAAJ |url-status = live }}
* {{cite book|last=Wilson|first=Dick|year=1982|title=When Tigers Fight: The story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945|publisher=Viking Press|location=New York|isbn=0-670-76003-X|ref={{sfnRef|Wilson}}|url=https://archive.org/details/whentigersfights00wils}}
* {{cite journal|last =Zarrow|first=Peter|title=The War of Resistance, 1937–45|journal=China in War and Revolution 1895–1949|location=London|publisher=Routledge|date=2005|ref={{sfnRef|Zarrow}}}}
* {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OKLiAAAAMAAJ|title=China at war, Volume 1, Issue 3|year=1938|publisher=China Information Committee|page=66|access-date=21 March 2012}} Issue 40 of China, a collection of pamphlets. Original from Pennsylvania State University. Digitized 15 September 2009
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{Wikivoyage|World War II in China}}
{{Commons category}}
* ''[https://bdoc.enpchina.eu/ Biographical Dictionary of Occupied China]''
* [[s:Chinese declaration of war against Japan, 9 December 1941|Full text of the Chinese declaration of war against Japan on Wikisource]]
* "CBI Theater of Operations" – [http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/CBI/index.html IBIBLIO World War II: China Burma India] Links to selected documents, photos, maps, and books.
* {{cite web|url=http://warmuseum.ca/cwm/newspapers/operations/china_e.html |title=World War II Newspaper Archives&nbsp;– War in China, 1937–1945 |access-date=2004-08-19 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031129080955/http://warmuseum.ca/cwm/newspapers/operations/china_e.html |archive-date=29 November 2003 |df=mdy }}
* [http://www.warbirdforum.com/avg.htm Annals of the Flying Tigers]
* [https://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/china/ Perry–Castañeda Library Map Collection], China 1:250,000, Series L500, U.S. Army Map Service, 1954– . Topographic Maps of China during the Second World War.
* [https://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/manchuria/ Perry–Castañeda Library Map Collection] Manchuria 1:250,000, Series L542, U.S. Army Map Service, 1950– . Topographic Maps of Manchuria during the Second World War.
* {{cite web|url=http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/sino-japanese/index.htm |title=Joint Study of the Sino-Japanese War, Harvard University |access-date=2007-07-07 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010713042417/http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/sino-japanese/index.htm |archive-date=13 July 2001 |df=mdy }} Multi-year project seeks to expand research by promoting cooperation among scholars and institutions in China, Japan, the United States, and other nations. Includes extensive bibliographies.
* [http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/archives/photogallery11/page1.htm Photographs of the war from a Presbyterian mission near Canton]
* [http://www.microworks.net/pacific/road_to_war/route_south.htm "The Route South"]

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