China could first be effectively united, and this
became Chiang Kai-shek’s priority. He was there-
fore glad of a truce, which the Japanese were
ready to conclude with the Nationalist govern-
ment in May 1933. Chiang Kai-shek concen-
trated his forces against the communist strong-
hold in the south, to crush peasant uprisings
and the Red Army. He almost succeeded in the
autumn of 1934. But the Red Army broke
through the encircling Nationalist armies and set
out on the epic Long March, a military manoeu-
vre without parallel in the annals of history. The
Red Army and the communist political and
administrative cadres, about 50,000 people in all,
sought safety from the pursuing Nationalist forces
by walking a long circuitous route to the last sur-
viving communist base in the north-west of
China. They had to fight all the way. The distance
that this army covered, through mountains and
swamps, in heat and freezing cold, was almost
6,000 miles. The Long March took just over a
year to accomplish and of the 80,000 who had
set out possibly only 9,000 reached Yan’an in
Shaanxi in October 1935, though others joined
on the way. In this province Mao Zedong then
rebuilt the Communist movement from an initial
nucleus of 20,000 to the eventual millions that
drove Chiang Kai-shek’s armies from the main-
land in 1949.
The Kwantung army meanwhile was not idle.
It was rapidly expanded from 10,000 officers and
men in 1931 to 164,000 in 1935 and by 1941 it
had reached a strength of 700,000. These figures
alone provide a graphic illustration of the escala-
tion of Japan’s military effort in China. Chiang
Kai-shek did not declare war on the Japanese; nor
did the Tangku truce in May 1933 between the
Nationalist Chinese and the Japanese stop the
Kwantung army. By the end of 1935 large regions
of northern China and Inner Mongolia were
occupied. This brought the Japanese army into
contact with the Soviet Union along hundreds of
miles of new frontier. The Kwantung army
regarded Soviet Russia as the real menace to
Japan’s aspirations in eastern Asia: Russia alone
could put a modern army of millions into the field
of battle on land. The Japanese disregarded the
Chinese as a serious military force. But just
because there were no real obstacles to expansion
in China, it was difficult for the army general staff
to decide where to stop. They argued that the war
in China should be limited so that the army could
concentrate on the Soviet Union. Other officers
wanted first to expand in China. It was the latter
who won out in July 1937 when a clash of local
Chinese and Japanese troops on the Marco Polo
Bridge outside Peking became the Japanese
excuse for launching full-scale war.Chiang Kai-shek had used the years from 1933 to
1937 to consolidate the power of the Kuomintang
in the rest of China with some success. But the
Western image of republican Chinese democracy
was removed from reality. Chiang’s regime was
totalitarian, with its own gangs and terror police
and an army held together by fear and harsh disci-
pline. Supported by intellectuals as the only rally-
ing point for anti-Japanese resistance, and by big
business and the landlords as the bulwark against
communism, Chiang ruled the country through
harshness and corruption. The peasantry were the
principal and most numerous victims. Chiang
prided himself on having copied techniques of
government from Mussolini and Hitler. German
military advisers were attached to his army. He
also cultivated American friendship by his attitude
to business and his welcome to American educa-
tors and missionaries. The achievements of the
Kuomintang in modernising China during a
decade of reforms from 1928 to 1937 also should
not be overlooked. Industry grew, communica-
tions improved, new agricultural techniques raised
produce, education was extended. The cities ben-
efited the most. Tens of millions of peasants, how-
ever, remained sunk in abject poverty. Further
progress in modernising and unifying China was
terminated by the all-out war launched by Japan in
1937.
The educated elite, in particular, displayed a
sense of national pride in the face of internal con-
flicts and foreign aggression. Trade boycotts were
organised against the Japanese and students
demonstrated. Groups argued that the Kuomin-
tang and the communists should form a new
united front to fight the Japanese. Chiang Kai-
shek’s priority, however, was to follow Mao to