China

Renewed communist-Nationalist conflict

There were numerous clashes between communists and Nationalists as their military forces competed for control of enemy territory and as the communists tried to expand their political influence in Nationalist territory through propaganda and secret organizing. Though both sides continued the war against Japan, each was fighting for its own ultimate advantage. Bitter anticommunist sentiment in government circles found its most violent expression in the New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941.

Chiang Kai-shek meeting with his staff during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45).Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The government had ordered the New Fourth Army to move north of the Huang He (Yellow River) and understood that its commanders had agreed to do so as part of a demarcation of operational areas. However, most of the army had moved into northern Jiangsu (south of the Huang) and, together with units of the Eighteenth Army Group, was competing with government troops for control of bases there and in southern Shandong. Ye Ting and Xiang Ying stayed at the army’s base south of the Yangtze. Apparently believing that Ye did not intend to move northward, government forces attacked the base on Jan. 6, 1941. The outnumbered communists were defeated, Ye Ting and some 2,000 others were captured, Xiang Ying was killed, and both sides suffered heavy casualties. Ignoring Chiang Kai-shek’s order to dissolve the New Fourth Army, the communist high command named Chen Yi as its new commander and Liu Shaoqi as political commissar.

The danger of renewed civil war caused widespread protest from China’s civilian leaders. The People’s Political Council, a multiparty advisory body formed in 1938 as an expression of united resistance, debated the issue and later tried to mediate. Neither the KMT nor the CCP was willing to push the conflict to open civil war in 1941. The government deployed many of its best divisions in positions to prevent the communist forces from further penetration of Nationalist-held territories and to weaken the CCP through a strict economic blockade.