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26-711: After their success in the Battle of Pingxingguan in September 1937, in October 1937, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army was ordered to occupy the Mount Wutai area of Shanxi in order to set up an Anti-Japanese Base Area. This was called the Shanxi - Chahar - Hebei Anti-Japanese Base Area, often referred to as a communist Border Area or Liberated Area. The abbreviated names of

52-656: A motorised transport column, its rate of advance was limited by the poor roads. By the time they reached the Shanxi border, Lin Biao's 115th Division, after a forced march from Shaanxi , was in place at Pingxingguan on 24 September to ambush the Japanese army. The pass of Pingxingguan was a narrow defile worn through the loess, with no exit for several kilometres except the road itself. Lin's division were able to ambush two columns of mainly transportation and supply units and virtually annihilate

78-507: A series of easy victories against their opponents, they failed to take elementary precautions. Japanese commanders seldom repeated the operational blunders that had led to Pingxingguan. Nonetheless, the battle gave the Chinese a major boost in morale and credence to the Communists in the eyes of the people. The battle was constantly cited by CPC leaders as an example of their commitment to battling

104-872: The Battle of Wuhan , its forces advanced deep into Communist territory and redeployed 50,000 troops to the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region. Elements of the Eighth Route Army soon attacked the advancing Japanese, inflicting between 3,000 and 5,000 casualties and resulting in a Japanese retreat. During the Second Sino-Japanese War , the Communist Party built a broader coalition in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region. Its land policies were more moderate than during other periods, focusing on rent and interest rate deductions. Implementation of these reforms accelerated following 1943. Following

130-785: The National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China , was a group army under the command of the Chinese Communist Party , nominally within the structure of the Chinese military headed by the Chinese Nationalist Party during the Second Sino-Japanese War . The Eighth Route Army was created from the Chinese Red Army on September 22, 1937, when the Chinese Communists and Chinese Nationalists formed

156-752: The Second United Front against Japan at the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, as the Chinese theater was known in World War II . Together with the New Fourth Army , the Eighth Route Army formed the main Communist fighting force during the war and was commanded by Communist party leader Mao Zedong and general Zhu De . Though officially designated the 18th Group Army by the Nationalists,

182-409: The 3rd Battalion of the 21st Regiment was rebuffed by Chinese troops and suffered almost 100 casualties. Lin Biao's troops eventually withdrew from the battlefield, allowing the Japanese to finally reach the site of the ambush on 28 September. The Nationalist Air Force of China provided some close-air support for the Chinese ground forces in course of the battles at Pingxingguan. Japanese casualties in

208-536: The Chinese Communists and Nationalists resumed the Chinese Civil War . The Eighth Route Army consisted of three divisions (the 115th, which was commanded by Lin Biao , the 120th under He Long , and the 129th under Liu Bocheng ). During World War II, the Eighth Route Army operated mostly in North China , infiltrating behind Japanese lines, to establish guerrilla bases in rural and remote areas. The main units of

234-469: The Communist 8th Route Army, Liu Ruming 's ex- Kuomintang troops and various Central Army contingents responsible to Chiang Kai-shek. In reality these forces operated independently from Yan's provincial army. Japanese forces, mainly the 5th Division and 11th Independent Mixed Brigade, moved out from Beiping and advanced on Huailai County in Chahar . A Japanese column advanced quickly into Shanxi, making use of

260-687: The Eighth Route Army were aided by local militias organized from the peasantry. After its fall 1938 victory in the Battle of Wuhan , Japan advanced deep into Communist territory and redeployed 50,000 troops to the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region . Elements of the Eighth Route Army soon attacked the advancing Japanese, inflicting between 3,000 and 5,000 casualties and resulting in a Japanese retreat. The Communist Party's liaison offices in cities under Nationalist control such as Chongqing , Guilin and Dihua (Ürümqi) were called Eighth Route Army Offices. Ethnic Koreans who fought in

286-461: The Japanese occupation, even though Mao had opposed the battle, according to an account written by Lin Biao in Russia (where he was being treated for bullet wounds) and Lin had undertaken it on his own authority. Eighth Route Army The Eighth Route Army ( simplified Chinese : 八路军 ; traditional Chinese : 八路軍 ; pinyin : Bālù-Jūn ), officially known as the 18th Group Army of

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312-452: The May 4, 1946 Instructions on Land Issues issued by the Communist Party, instructions for implementing the instructions in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region stated that the intent was to achieve land to the tiller rather than equal redistribution. At the beginning of the Chinese Civil War in 1946, large Nationalist forces entered the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region. Although information on

338-543: The Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region included several thousand militia members per county, sometimes as many as 10,000 or 25,000. Battle of Pingxingguan [REDACTED] National Revolutionary Army Taishō period Shōwa period The Battle of Pingxingguan ( Chinese : 平型關戰役 ), commonly called the Great Victory of Pingxingguan in Mainland China , was an engagement fought on 25 September 1937, at

364-408: The battle have been estimated at 400 to 500 and the Chinese at about 400. The Chinese forces destroyed about 70 trucks and an equal number of horse-drawn carts and captured 100 rifles, 10 light machine guns, 1 gun and 2,000 shells as well as some clothing and food. The Kuomintang's official history of the Second Sino-Japanese War deals with it in a sentence, without any credit to the Communists. On

390-464: The beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War , between the Eighth Route Army of the Chinese Communist Party and the Imperial Japanese Army . The battle resulted in the loss of 400 to 600 soldiers on both sides, but the Chinese captured 100 trucks full of supplies. The victory gave the Chinese Communists a tremendous boost since it was the only division-size battle that they fought during

416-499: The entire war. After the capture of Beiping (present Beijing) at the end of July 1937, Japanese forces advanced along the Beijing–Baotou railway to Inner Mongolia . Having anticipated the move, Chiang Kai-shek had appointed the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan as Pacification Director of Taiyuan. Theoretically Yan had authority over all the Chinese military forces in his theatre of operations, including Lin Biao 's 115th Division of

442-443: The extent of territory controlled by the Nationalists during this period is not clear, one Communist report indicates that by October 1946, the Nationalists and their allies controlled or contested 45% of villages in the region. This decreased to approximately 35% by February 1947. In April 1947, the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region began a Land Reinvestigation Movement in which poor peasant mass organizations investigated and adjusted

468-502: The land they had received and that some were even concerned about further mass land reform campaigns because of their radical turns in the past, in June 1948, the Communist Party ended land reform in the Border Region and in northern China generally with the exception of an area of approximately ten million people. By late 1948, the Nationalists' conventional armed forces had been ejected from

494-430: The other hand, the Communists' accounts describe Pingxingguan as a typical example of Red guerrilla tactics , inspired by Mao Zedong 's conceptualization of people's war . Japanese losses were greatly exaggerated for propaganda purposes. However, like the victory at the Battle of Taierzhuang , Pingxingguan was explained by Japan as Japanese officers succumbing to what they came to call " victory disease ." After

520-511: The railway which the Chinese did not attempt to destroy. The Chinese abandoned Datong on 13 September, falling back to a line from Yanmen Pass on the Great Wall east to the mountain pass of Pingxingguan . Yan Xishan's troops became more demoralised as the Japanese exerted their air supremacy. The main body of the Japanese 5th Division, under the command of Itagaki Seishiro , advanced from Huaili to invade northeastern Shanxi . Although it had

546-641: The region, although Nationalist-affiliated militia remained active thereafter. The Communist Party's Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region Committee had an official newspaper, the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Daily . When the Chinese Civil War began after the defeat of the Japanese, the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Field Army had more than 180,000 soldiers. It later merged with other forces into the 234,000 soldier North China Field Army. Militias in

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572-411: The results of land distribution during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During this Land Reinvestigation Movement, it was mandated that landlords could not be completely dispossessed of land unless they had collaborated with the Japanese invaders or defected to the Nationalists. It was also mandated that the interests of middle peasants could not be violated. Concluding that most peasants were satisfied with

598-428: The supply column passed into a defile with the two sides rising up more than 10 metres; they were heading towards Caijiayu about 3 km away. At the same time, a motorized column of Japanese supply troops in about 80 trucks left Guangou and headed east. Both of these non-combat formations entered into the ambush set by the 115th division after 10 a.m. on the 25th and were largely wiped out. A relief force consisting of

624-766: The three provinces were often used to describe the area, thus it was known as Jin-Cha-Ji in modern transliteration. In older Western literature it was often called Chin-Cha-Ki. Note that the term Border Area was used in official descriptions, for example, the postal service, set up in November 1937, was named the Shanxi-Hebei-Chahar Border Area Provisional Post. (Renamed the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Area Provisional Post in January 1938). After Japan's fall 1938 victory in

650-411: The trapped Japanese forces. On 25 September, the 21st brigade of the Japanese 5th Division stationed at Lingqiu received a request from the 21st Regiment that they urgently needed supplies due to falling temperature. The supply troops of the 21st Regiment set out with 70 horse-drawn vehicles with 50 horses, filled with clothes, food, ammunition and proceeded westwards towards Pingxingguan. Around 10:00,

676-511: The unit was referred to by the Chinese Communists and Japanese military as the Eighth Route Army. The Eighth Route Army wore Nationalist uniforms and flew the flag of the Republic of China and waged mostly guerrilla war against the Japanese, collaborationist forces and, later in the war, other Nationalist forces. The unit was renamed the People's Liberation Army in 1947, after the end of World War II , as

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