CRISIS ARISING FROM THE FALL OF CHANGSHA

24 June 1944

[Text] Changsha fell on 18 June. The Military Affairs Commission announced:
"After fulfilling the mission of eliminating the enemy, our troops made a
strategic deployment according to a predetermined plan." Nevertheless,
following the fall of Lo-yang, another provincial capital has fallen in
less than a month. The seriousness of the situation is unprecedented in the
7 years of war of resistance.

The Japanese bandits' attack in Hunan started at the end of last month. On
27 May the enemy crossed the Hsin-chiang River from Yueh-yang and advanced
southward. In 10 days it reached the suburbs of Changsha. The enemy
bandits temporarily bypassed the city itself and continued to pursue the
Chinese troops retreating southward. The enemy took Ping-chiang, Liu-yang,
Ning-hsiang, Hsiang-tan, Chu-chou, Li-ling and Hsiang-hsiang. On the
17th the enemy attacked Changsha, and the city fell the next day. As far
as the battlefront is concerned, this Hunan campaign is different from the
various other campaigns since the fall of Wuhan. The Japanese call these
campaigns "piston" warfare, which means that they attack a place from their
base in the morning and return to their base at night, or that they fall
back after each attack. Like the Honan campaign, the purpose of the Hunan
campaign is to eliminate our field army, seize lines of communication,
and thereby force the Chinese Government to surrender. Therefore, against
frontal attacks we can no longer use the same defense tactic which has
been used in the last 5 1/2 years since the fall of Wuhan in dealing with
"piston" warfare, in the hope that the "piston" will pull back by itself.
This time the enemy's purpose is to let the "piston" stop at the end of
the cylinder without pulling it back. The piston has stopped dead, and
we must have a policy, a plan and the courage to fight our way out.
calls for abandoning the defensive policy as well as the theory of sole
reliance on weaponry. In politics we must change the dictatorial policy
and antidemocracy theories. In brief, we must make fundamental changes;
otherwise we are in danger.
This

What is the mentality of the Chinese Government and Kuomintang rulers?
Their military and political policies remain unchanged. In regard to military defeat, they say that it was due to lack of modern equipment.
ment spokesman Chang P'ing-ch'un [1728 1627 5028] said at a press conference with foreign correspondents: "We decided to leave the battleground
Govern-

to wait for the Allies to give us more aid in manpower and weapons..." These
people shout aloud for new weapons and airplanes as soon as the enemy starts
an attack. When we are routed by the enemy, these people put the responsibility on our Allies for not giving China enough new weapons. However, the
Honan and Hunan campaigns speak eloquently against this argument. In Honan
we deployed 400,000 troops against less than 70,000 enemy troops (or only
40,000 enemy troops, according to another estimate). The equipment of
Tang En-po's [3282 1869 0130] army far surpasses that of the so-called "nondescript" units. However, it was the so-called "nondescript" units with
inferior weapons (units of Liu Mou-en [0491 5399 1869], Sun Wei-ju [1327
1983 1172] and Ma Fa-wu [7456 3127 0063] that firmly resisted the enemy.
The collective army corps under the command of Tang En-po collapsed without
a fight. The losses were estimated at 200,000 men. What was the reason?
Weapons or something else? Tang En-po is fundamentally opposed to the
people of Honan. The people of Honan say: "Honan has four disasters:
flood, drought, locusts and Tang." They classify Tang in the same category
as locusts. Inside Tang En-po's units, officers and men are isolated from
each other. The troops consist of people rounded up by force. On ordinary
days they are berated and beaten, exhausted by hunger and fatigue and pale
in complexion. In the face of battle they just desert and run, having no
will to fight. Let us ask: What is the use of modern weapons in the hands
of these troops?

As for the enemy's modern equipment, it used its Third Armored Division in
Honan, but it did not use any armored division in Hunan. Hunan is crisscrossed by wet paddy fields and mountains, and Hupeh has many lakes and
streams where armored vehicles cannot be used effectively. CENTRAL NEWS
AGENCY reports have never mentioned any activities of enemy tanks or
armored units, but it is well known that our troops in the 6th and 9th war
zones are equipped with superior weapons. The enemy had artillery pieces
and machineguns. Our troops also had artillery pieces and machineguns.
The enemy troops were occasionally supported by airplanes. Our troops
were fully supported by the 14th Air Force of our Allies. Because of the
forceful activities of Allied airplanes, the enemy bandits did not have
any control in the air to speak of. In weaponry there was not much difference between the enemy and us. In numerical strength we had absolute
superiority. In addition, the people of Hunan are traditionally brave
and patriotic. Just as in Honan, if we had implemented the correct policy
of mobilizing the people and relying upon the people, our strength would
have been immeasurably greater. But our government and the Kuomintang
rulers are unwilling to do so and unwilling to use all favorable conditions
to strengthen ourselves in the war. Instead, they put all the blame on
lack of modern weapons. If this kind of "weapons only" theory is followed
constantly, China's battlefronts will only continue to deteriorate.

The saddest thing is that most of the Kuomintang troops, especially the
central government troops, lost their will to fight. This is the evil
result of the defensive policy and the antidemocracy policy maintained
by the Kuomintang rulers over a long period of 5 1/2 years. Now that our

Military Affairs Commission is promoting "attrition" as a strategy, it will
cause even further deterioration of morale. Anybody with eyes can see that
in Honan or Hunan it was our troops which were routed without a fight, or
routed as soon as they were attacked. There was no attrition of the enemy
to speak of. Instead, we ourselves are suffering from attrition.

This "attrition" strategy of the Kuomintang rulers seems to say that we
shall trade territory for time. In a certain sense, this strategy had some
validity at the beginning of the war of resistance. The situation is entirely different now. Although our vast territory is one of the favorable conditions in the war of resistance, it is still limited. If we lose territory
as fast as we did in the Honan and Hunan campaigns, the time we may gain by
trading all our remaining territories cannot be too long. The fundamental
question is: What is the use of time to the Kuomintang? Since the war of
resistance, the time gained by using our precious national territory and the
people in the territory as gambling stakes has been pretty long. Since the
fall of Wuhan, is it true that the front for which the Kuomintang is responsible has been in a stalemate situation for 5 1/2 years? Let me ask: How
was this time used? Is it not true that they did not do a single good thing
and did a lot of bad things? Now they want to trade more territory for more
time. The people will ask: What are you going to do with the time?

Every theory, be it the theory of sole reliance on weapons or the theory of
attrition, is empty words. The present crisis can never be dismissed with
these excuses. In a word, the real trouble is the wrong policy of the
Kuomintang rulers. This policy, as we have repeatedly said before, is "a
policy of merely coping with the enemy attack or watching the war as a
bystander, or a policy of putting on some show of resistance when the enemy
comes and putting the hands back into the pockets when the enemy is gone,
while concentrating all efforts on watching the people, oppressing democracy
and opposing the Communist Party." This policy has persisted for a long,
long period of 5 1/2 years and has been followed by all Kuomintang party,
government and military organizations. Now the enemy, in order to save
itself from death, has changed its moving piston tactics to dead piston
tactics. As soon as the enemy makes a relatively strong attack, the party,
government and military organizations of the Kuomintang are put in a helpless position. If there is no fundamental change in the Kuomintang policy,
future dangers can be foreseen. Battles will continue to be lost. Field
armies will suffer more losses. The Peiping-Hankow and Canton-Hankow Rail-ways will be entirely controlled by the enemy. Kiangsu, Anhwei, Chekiang,
Fukien, Kwangtung and Kiangsi provinces will be cut off by the enemy.
bases of the war of resistance in unoccupied China will shrink. The
sources of soldiers will become more and more limited. Our international
position will be lower. All kinds of crises will become acute.
The

It is time for the Kuomintang rulers to think about their basic policy.
The Chinese people have the right to urge them to make a drastic change
and start anew with the people.

The present crisis lies entirely on the battlefront for which the Kuomintang
is responsible. The situation in other places is quite favorable. The
Allied forces have landed in Western Europe. Deployment for a three-pronged
attack on Hitler from the east, west and south has already been effected.
The demise of the German bandits is imminent. In the Far East, the Allied
forces have not only broken the outer defense line of the Japanese bandits
in the Pacific, but have also advanced to Saipan Island in the Marianas
on their inner defense line. In China, the 470,000 men of the 8th Route
Army and the New 4th Army and the 2 million militiamen stand firm as a
bulwark in their fight against the enemy and have put the enemy in a helpless
position in the three big battlegrounds behind the enemy lines in North
China, Central China and South China. They are coordinating their efforts
with the war effort in the frontal battlegrounds, tying down the majority
of the enemy force. The CCP has always insisted on unity, sincerely hoping
for a better Kuomintang-CCP relationship. Under these favorable conditions,
everything is ready except for a change in the policy of the Kuomintang.
We hope that the Kuomintang will make a change soon. How should change be
made? By changing passive resistance to active resistance. By changing
the policy of solely depending upon weaponry to associating weapons with
people. By changing the practice of watching and controlling the people to
relying on the people. By changing suppression of people to implementation
of democracy. By changing opposition to the Communist Party to strengthening
Kuomintang-CCP unity. By changing reliance on external force to fight
Japan to coordinating our efforts with those of our Allies and by using
mainly our own hands. Only thus can we learn a lesson from the Honan and
Hunan campaigns, defeat the enemy's new attacks, overcome various crises
precipitated by the wrong policy of the Kuomintang, and hope to coordinate
our efforts with those of the Allies in the counterattack.

° CHIEH-FANG JIH-PAO (Editorial), 24 June 1944.