Play as · WW2 1939 · L2 · Allies (United Front)

Communist China - 1939

Communist China in 1939 is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operating from the Yan'an base in Shaanxi province, where Mao Zedong has consolidated political and ideological control following the Long March's arrival in 1935-36. The Second United Front with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists has formally operated since the December 1936 Xi'an Incident; the CCP fields the Eighth Route Army (in northern China) and the New Fourth Army (in central and lower Yangtze China) under nominal KMT command but operationally autonomous. CCP membership in 1939 is around 40,000 and growing rapidly; the rural-base-building program under the Yan'an Way ideology converts Japanese-occupation conditions into mass-mobilization opportunities the KMT urban-state model cannot match.

Starting position

The CCP through the war runs three simultaneous operations - anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare in occupied territory (mostly in the rural north and the Shanxi-Hebei-Henan-Shandong base areas), United Front cooperation with the Nationalists (formally maintained, increasingly strained, decisively broken with the January 1941 New Fourth Army Incident where KMT forces attack the southern CCP formation killing several thousand and effectively ending operational cooperation), and rural-base institutional building including land reform, peasant mobilization, and Party recruitment. The August-December 1940 Hundred Regiments Offensive is the largest CCP operation against Japanese forces and produces both substantial Japanese counter-offensive and CCP doctrinal recalibration toward smaller-scale operations. By 1945 CCP membership exceeds 1.2 million; CCP-controlled population is around 100 million; the post-war civil war positions are built on this wartime base-area expansion.

What turns the campaign

What Communist China wants is the United Front sustained as the structure that legitimates CCP operations and prevents KMT concentration against the CCP, the Japanese occupation continued long enough to allow rural-base expansion at scales that determine post-war balance (achieved, the war's duration is what builds the CCP), the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army's autonomous operational space preserved against KMT containment, and the post-war Soviet support delivering Manchuria's military stockpile and territorial advantage (the August 1945 Soviet entry produces this). What Communist China fears is the KMT exploiting the Japanese-CCP conflict to weaken CCP forces (the New Fourth Army Incident is exactly this), the Japanese counter-offensive cleansing the rural base areas (the 1941-42 Three Alls campaigns inflict serious losses), and the post-war US-mediated settlement (the 1945-46 Marshall Mission) producing a coalition government that constrains CCP autonomy more than the war's military balance has earned.

Signature challenge