Changsha fell on the 18th. According to an announcement by the Military Commission: “Our forces have accomplished their mission of annihilating the enemy and are now executing a strategic withdrawal in accordance with the prearranged plan.” Be that as it may, less than a month after Luoyang, yet another provincial capital has been captured. The gravity of the situation is unprecedented in the seven years of the War of Resistance. The Japanese offensive into Hunan began at the end of last month. From May 11 to 17, the enemy crossed the Xinjiang River at Yueyang and advanced southward; within ten days they had reached the outskirts of Changsha. Ignoring the city walls for the time being, the invaders pursued the retreating Nationalist troops, successively occupying the towns of Pingjiang, Liuyang, Ningxiang, Xiangtan, Zhuzhou, Liling, and Xiangxiang, before launching an attack on Changsha itself on the 17th, which was taken on the very next day.  As far as the main front is concerned, this Hunan campaign differs from previous operations since the fall of Wuhan. In past engagements, the Japanese employed what they termed a “piston” tactic—striking briefly and then withdrawing. This Hunan campaign, like the Henan campaign before it, aims to destroy our field armies, seize vital transportation routes, and ultimately force the Chinese government to surrender. Therefore, China’s conduct of the war on the main front must no longer be confined to the defensive posture adopted over the past five and a half years since the fall of Wuhan, merely parrying the enemy’s “piston” thrusts in the hope that they will eventually exhaust themselves. This time, the enemy seeks to block off the bottle of resistance altogether. With such a dead-end strategy deployed, we need a policy, a plan, and the courage to break through and open a new avenue forward. We must abandon both the military policy of mere defense and the fetishization of weaponry, and we must also overhaul the political regime of autocracy and anti-democratic rhetoric. In short, a fundamental change of course is imperative; otherwise, the consequences will be dire.

But what is the state of affairs within the Chinese government and among the Kuomintang leadership? Their military and political policies remain unchanged. When confronted with military setbacks, they attribute them to a lack of modern equipment. Government spokesman Zhang Pingqun declared at a press conference for foreign journalists: “We shall certainly relocate our operations and await greater assistance from our allies in men and arms…” These officials invariably cry out for more modern weapons and aircraft whenever the enemy strikes anywhere, and whenever defeat ensues, they blame it all on the Allies’ failure to supply China with sufficient advanced armaments. Yet the campaigns in Henan and Hunan have refuted this line of argument more eloquently than words could ever do. In Henan, our forces numbered some 400,000, facing fewer than 70,000 enemy troops (some accounts put the figure as low as 40,000). Tang Enbo’s units were better equipped than any so-called “miscellaneous” formations, yet it was precisely those inferiorly armed “miscellaneous” corps—under Liu Maon, Sun Weiru, and Ma Fawu—that put up determined resistance. By contrast, the several army groups commanded by Tang Enbo collapsed without a fight, suffering losses exceeding 100,000 men. Was the problem really one of weaponry, or did deeper factors come into play? Tang Enbo was fundamentally at odds with the people of Henan. As the locals put it, “Henan suffers four calamities: floods, droughts, locust plagues, and Tang Enbo.” They even likened him to a swarm of locusts. Within Tang’s own ranks, there was a complete disconnect between officers and men: the soldiers were conscripted by force, routinely beaten and berated, perpetually hungry and exhausted, deathly pale, and utterly demoralized; at the first sign of combat, they simply scattered, devoid of any fighting spirit. What good would modern weapons do for such an army?

Turning to the enemy’s advanced weaponry, we note that while a third tank division was deployed in Henan, no such formation saw action in Hunan. The terrain there consists of interlaced paddy fields and overlapping mountain ranges, with lakes and rivers crisscrossing northern Hunan, rendering armored vehicles largely ineffective. Reports from the Central News Agency never mentioned any significant activity by enemy tanks or armored units. Meanwhile, our Sixth and Ninth War Zones boasted troops long regarded as elite, well-equipped, and highly trained. Both sides possessed artillery and machine guns; the enemy occasionally enjoyed air support, while we benefited from the full backing of the Fourteenth Air Force of the Allied forces. Under the vigorous intervention of Allied aircraft, the Japanese had no meaningful air superiority whatsoever. In terms of weaponry, the two sides were evenly matched. Moreover, our numerical advantage was overwhelming. And let us not forget the patriotic and combative traditions of the people of Hunan—as in Henan, if properly mobilized and empowered, their potential would be limitless. Nevertheless, our government and the Kuomintang leadership refuse to take these steps, declining to capitalize on every favorable circumstance to strengthen the war effort and instead persisting in blaming the lack of modern arms. If this obsession with weaponry continues, the situation on the main front can only deteriorate further.

It is deeply distressing that the bulk of the Kuomintang army, particularly the Central Army, has virtually lost its will to fight—a dire consequence of the defensive and anti-democratic policies that the Kuomintang leadership has steadfastly pursued over the past five and a half years. Today, our Military Commission still advocates a “wearing-down” strategy, which only serves to further erode morale. Anyone with eyes to see can plainly observe that, whether in Henan or Hunan, our forces either collapse without a fight or disintegrate at the first contact; there is no question of wearing down the enemy—only of wearing ourselves down. The Kuomintang leadership’s “wearing-down” strategy seems intended to trade space for time. In the early stages of the war, there might have been some justification for such a tactic, but the circumstances have now changed completely. While our vast territory does indeed constitute one of the advantages of our resistance, it nonetheless has its limits. If we continue to record daily territorial losses of a hundred li, as in the Henan and Hunan campaigns, the time we can buy by sacrificing land will be exceedingly limited. The real question is: what use is time to the Kuomintang, anyway? Since the beginning of the war, the Kuomintang has wagered our precious national territory—and the people who dwell upon it—on gaining time. Counting from the fall of Wuhan alone, the front has already been locked in a stalemate for five and a half years. What, pray tell, has been achieved during all that time? Nothing worthwhile, while a host of harmful measures have been implemented. And now you seek to exchange more time—what, exactly, do you intend to accomplish with it? Whether it be the fixation on weaponry or the strategy of attrition, it all amounts to empty rhetoric. The current crisis cannot be brushed aside by such evasions. At its root lies nothing less than the Kuomintang leadership’s erroneous policies—policies that, as we have repeatedly pointed out, amount to a stance of “defensive passivity and detached spectatorship: meet aggression with feeble resistance, stand idly by when the enemy retreats, and devote all your energy to suppressing the populace, oppressing democracy, and opposing the Communist Party.” This self-defeating approach has been stubbornly maintained across all Kuomintang party, government, and military institutions for half a decade and a half.

Now, as the enemy, desperate to stave off defeat, has abandoned its piston tactics in favor of a strategy of total blockade and launched a powerful new offensive against the Chinese front, the various Kuomintang organs find themselves utterly paralyzed. Unless there is a radical overhaul of Kuomintang policy, the outlook remains grim: the war will continue to falter, our field armies will suffer further losses, the Pinghan and Yuehan railways will be severed by the enemy, the provinces of Su, Wan, Zhe, Min, Yue, and Gan will be cut off, the rear-area bases of resistance will shrink dramatically, sources of manpower and funding will become increasingly scarce, our international standing will decline further, and a host of crises will intensify. The time has come for the Kuomintang leadership to reconsider its fundamental policies. The Chinese people have every right to urge them to act swiftly—to turn back the tide and begin anew with the people. At present, the crisis resides squarely within the Kuomintang’s stewardship of the main front; all other conditions are favorable: the Allies have landed in Western Europe, completing the encirclement of Hitler from three directions, and Germany’s defeat is imminent. In the Far East, the Allies have not only broken through the Japanese outer defenses in the Pacific but have also seized Saipan in the Mariana Islands, penetrating deep into the inner defensive perimeter. Meanwhile, in China, the guerrilla forces operating behind enemy lines—the North China, Central China, and South China base areas—comprising 470,000 New Fourth Army soldiers and 1 million militia members, are holding firm, rendering the enemy helpless and actively assisting the main front by tying down the majority of enemy forces. Furthermore, the Chinese Communist Party consistently advocates unity and sincerely seeks to improve relations with the Kuomintang. Given these propitious circumstances, everything is in place except for a decisive shift in Kuomintang policy. We hope the Kuomintang will make that change—and quickly. How should it proceed? By replacing passive resistance with active resistance, swapping a sole reliance on weaponry for a combination of arms and the people, shifting from policies of repression to ones of empowerment, from stifling democracy to fostering democratic governance, from opposition to the Communists to efforts to strengthen cooperation between the two parties, and from dependence on external assistance in the war against Japan to a strategy of self-reliance complemented by allied support. Only in this way can we truly learn from the Henan and Hunan campaigns, repel the enemy’s renewed assault, overcome the myriad crises stemming solely from the Kuomintang’s misguided policies, and maintain hope for a coordinated Allied counteroffensive. Liberation Daily (Editorial), June 24, 1944: The Crisis Following the Fall of Changsha