China’s war with Japan — Examined through the lens of Mao’s ‘On Protracted War’ and Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’
This essay examines ‘The Battle of the Hundred Regiments’, a series of skirmishes during the second Sino Japanese War between the forces of the Chinese Communist Party and the Imperial Japanese Army in northern China between August — December 1940, through the lens of Mao Zedong’s ‘On Protracted War’ and Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’.
Lyman van Slyke’s study of the event, ‘The Battle of the Hundred Regiments: Problems of Coordination and Control during the Sino-Japanese War’ is used as the source material for the details of the conflict, which are then examined in the context of remarks on strategy for the anti-Japanese war made by Mao Zedong two years previous to the battle, with reference to teachings from the ancient military philosopher, Sun Tzu.
Phase One
‘All warfare is based on deception’
‘Take advantage of the enemy’s unpreparedness […] if [the enemy] does not know where I intend to give battle he must prepare in a great many places’. (Tzu, 1963)
Although Mao’s 1938 treatise focuses on the life and death struggle of the anti-Japanese War, around the time of these lectures the Communist guerrilla groups in the north were thought of by the Japanese as ‘of negligible military value’ and were ‘largely ignored’ by the invaders. (Gordon, 2006) This changed in mid-late 1940, as the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-Shek began to step up their criticism of the Communists over what they perceived to be very little actual fighting on their side against the Japanese invasion in China. (Mitter, 2013)
Around the time of the Hundred Regiments Campaign, the Japanese ‘were altogether too complacent in [their] outlook’, believing that observed troop movements were part of the CCP/Nationalist battle rather than a threat to their position in northern China. (van Slyke, 1996) Mao had already stated that the ‘vast geography’ of interior China would be a key advantage in conducting mobile warfare and one of the core tenets of the war would be to ‘fight a decisive engagement in every campaign or battle in which we are sure of victory’. (Tse-Tung, 2001)
The Hundred Regiments Battle can be seen as taking advantage of Japanese mistakes, such as their divided forces. This three stage operation involved sabotage work of railways and Japanese communications and transport infrastructure, which were lightly defended (‘only three regiments (at 5,000 men each) were assigned to the rail line and to the strongpoints flanking it. As a result, most installations were manned by fewer than twenty-five Japanese soldiers’.
In contrast, the Communists deployed more around one hundred regiments, although the term regiment was ‘used very loosely and included training detachments, local forces and militia’. By employing large divisions against isolated Japanese units, ‘the element of surprise was everywhere achieved’ (van Slyke, 1996)
Mao had previously spoken about the how the ‘people are the foundation of victory’ and on ‘Political Mobilisation’, the importance of instilling a sense that every person counted: ‘it is necessary for every soldier and civilian to see why the war must be fought and how it concerns him’ (Tse-Tung, 2001)
Noncombatants were often employed ‘in a wide range of support activities’. Political mobilization of ordinary people could often be a difficult task, without which the destruction wrought on Japanese infrastructure could not have been achieved. This was illustrated by the fact that ‘Soldiers disliked being assigned to railway wrecking [..] it seemed unmilitary […]’ but that ‘correct “political work” usually sufficed to change their views’. The vast majority of the destruction of ‘940+ li’ of rail lines and ‘3,000+ li’ of roads was undertaken by ‘the masses (dazhong),’ i.e., peasants living near the rail lines’ (van Slyke, 1996)
The hubris that Mao feared, whereby one of his commanders might become a ‘blundering hothead’ (Tse-Tung, 2001), and that Sun Tzu warned against ‘no general should fight a battle simply out of pique’ (Tzu, 1963), came to pass as ‘with these victories […] Peng Dehuai and most of the regional commanders caught a case of [..] “brain fever”. They believed they could fundamentally transform the military and political situation in Sahnaxi and Hebei’ (van Slyke, 1996)
Phase Two
‘When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal’ (Tzu, 1963)
The success of the first phase depended on the sudden surprise attacks on small, isolated Japanese units with overwhelming numerical superiority. The shift from this mobile warfare to a ‘period of consolidation, [where] the full strength of our Eighth Route Army […] should concentrate its attention on attacking the enemy’ (van Slyke, 1996)signaled a move to a less fluid form of warfare. Perhaps, as Mao had advocated two years earlier, if along with advancing, there was a requirement to ‘withdraw in great strides’ (Tse-Tung, 2001), the Communists may have avoided the ‘powerful counterattacks […] which, lasting until the end of the year, severely mauled the guerillas’ (van Slyke, 1996). They had made the fundamental flaw of being ignorant of their enemy.
This time, the enemy was not supplying ‘piecemeal reinforcements’ but was actively strengthening the outlying units from the nearby larger cities such as Taiyuan and Shijiazhuang. The Communist forces had lost both the element of surprise and of overwhelming numerical superiority. Instead of a fluid withdrawal, by the end of the year, the Communists ‘had been forced to retreat to their base areas away from the Japanese’. (van Slyke, 1996) While Mao believed that weapons ‘are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor’, (Tse-Tung, 2001) in this case ‘reinforced Japanese forces vastly superior in weaponry’ made the outcome a ‘foregone conclusion’ in favour of the Japanese. (van Slyke, 1996)
While Sun Tzu at one point describes the need to ‘keep [the enemy] under a strain and wear him down’ and to ‘exhaust him by causing him continually to run about’, he also stresses that if victory ‘is long delayed, weapons are blunted and morale depressed’ and that there ‘has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited’. (Tzu, 1963) This goes against the core message of Mao’s lectures,
that ‘the only way to final victory is the strategy of protracted war’, rejecting ‘the groundless theory of quick victory’. This belief in the protracted war was important in the decision to withdraw and consolidate, narrowly avoiding the ‘strategic decisive engagement’ which Mao swore to avoid unless the Communists were sure of victory. (Tse-Tung, 2001)
Phase Three and Aftermath
‘The reason troops slay the enemy is because they are enraged’ (Tzu, 1963)
With the large losses sustained in Phase Two of the battle, and Phase Three bringing ‘ferocious Japanese attempts to mop up’ the Eighth Route Army (van Slyke, 1996), knowing that they could not fulfil the ‘primary requirement of war’ — that is, ‘to destroy the enemy’, the Communists acted to fulfil the other requirement outlined by Mao, that of ‘self-preservation’. They did this by dispersal, retreat and a return to the guerrilla tactics favoured by Mao of ‘harrassment and small-scale tactical engagements’. (Tse Tung, 2001)
The Japanese did not take the surprise attacks lightly and moved to subdue the countryside to their rule. Mao had predicted that ‘enemy […] will continue to use base and shameless means to induce China to capitulate’ and this is exactly what came to pass (Tse-Tung, 2001). The enraged Japanese army replaced their commander in the area with a new commander, General Okamura Yasuji, and an unprecedented campaign of terror against the countryside began. This manifested itself in the “Three Alls” campaign ‘kill all, take all, burn all, [which] reduced the Communist-controlled population from forty to twenty five million’ (Gordon, 2006), many millions of which either died at Japanese hands or fled the area.
Looking at Japanese society in the run up to the Sino-Japanese War offers an understanding of how Japanese soldiers could act in this manner toward a predominantly civilian population. By the 1930’s, ‘Japanese schools operated like miniature military units’, with school textbooks ‘vehicles for military propaganda’ and an instilling in Japanese schoolchildren of ‘hatred and contempt for the Chinese people’ by the teachers, ‘some of whom were military officers’ themselves. Japanese soldiers were ‘hardened for the task of murdering Chinese combatants and noncombatants alike’. (Chang, 2012)
In the end, ‘The Hundred Regiments Battle’ did little to weaken the Japanese position in northern China. The rest of the war in the north followed a pattern of repeated harassment of weakened Communist forces by reinforced Japanese, and, from 1941 onwards from the Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai Shek. (Gordon, 2006).
Although interesting to examine ‘The Hundred Regiments Battle’ under the lens of Mao’s 1938 lectures and Sun Tzu’s teachings, it is doubtful to think that even if Communist forces followed Mao’s strategy and Sun Tzu’s teachings to the letter that they would have been able to record any meaningful strategic, rather than tactical, victory against the Japanese.
Please do not re-use these images or the content of this article without prior permission. If you would like to use or re-publish any aspect of this essay, please contact me via email at callanph@tcd.ie *
Bibliography
Chang, I. (2012). The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Basic Books.
Gordon, D. (2006). The China — Japan War, 1931–1945. The Journal of Military History, 137–182.
Mitter, R. (2013). China’s War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival. London: Allen Lane.
Tse-Tung, M. (2001). On Protracted War. Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific.
Tzu, S. (1963). The Art of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Slyke, L. P. (1996). The Battle of the Hundred Regiments: Problems of Coordination and Control during the Sino-Japanese War. Modern Asia Studies, 979–1005.
