A Province at War Guangxi During The Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1937-45

A Province at War: Guangxi during the Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1937-45
Author(s): Graham Hutchings

Source: The China Quarterly , Dec., 1986, No. 108 (Dec., 1986), pp. 652-679
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and
African Studies
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A Province at War: Guangxi During the
Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1937-45
Graham Hutchings
On the 18 April 1936 General Li Zongren gave a stirring, patriotic

interview to the Canton Gazette. In the current situation argued Li,
China must stand and resist the Japanese since, "despite sacrifices, a
war of resistance may pave the way for the regeneration of our
nation." He was later even more emphatic, "... a war of resistance is
essential for national regeneration."' These seem rather prescient
remarks in the light of subsequent events; a new type of society did
emerge in parts of China during the war against Japan. Perhaps it
should be noted in passing that the form of regeneration expedited by
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was nevertheless hardly what Li
Zongren had in mind in 1936. Indeed, he felt able to endorse it only
late in life.2
But how did the long struggle against Japan affect politics, society
and economy in Li's home province of Guangxi? The war brought
rapid and dramatic changes to this remote and formerly isolated part
of China. These are considered below in the context of three generally
distinct phases: resistance (1937-40), demoralization (1941-44) and
occupation (1944-45). In spite of striking and often contradictory
change, however, there was little evidence of transformation. Indeed
it is clear that the real tragedy of the war in Guangxi (as, doubtless,
elsewhere) was that despite enormous sacrifices it actually resolved
very little.
Since Japan was an important factor in pre-war Guangxi
politics it is appropriate to preface our discussion of the war years
proper with a brief consideration of the province during the mid
1930s.
Background to War
While the Nanking Government was absorbed by the threats posed
to its existence by various internal and external enemies during the
early 1930s, the leaders of the Guangxi faction of the Kuomintang
were engaged in perhaps the most interesting phase of their long
career. Within the framework of a loose alliance with Guangdong and
firm independence of the central government, Li Zongren, Bai
1. The relevant section of the Canton Gazette was enclosed in a despatch from the
Canton Consulate to the Foreign Office, 24 April 1936. P.R.O. (Public Record Office)
F.O. (Foreign Office) 371 20266/F2839.
2. Li Zongren, who since January had been acting-president, left China in December
1949 to seek medical care in the United States. In July 1965 he suddenly returned to
China and died in January 1969. For a recent account see Cheng Siyuan, Li Zongren
xiansheng wannian (The Later Life of Mr Li Zongren) (Beijing: Wenshi ziliao
chubanshe, 1980).

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A Province at War 653
Chongxi and Huang Xuchu - the "Guangxi Clique" - at

reconstruct their province as an exemplar for the nation.
To be sure, the Clique's programme stopped far short o
a radical transformation of the local society and econom
call for a variety of social and political reforms, togethe
development of road and rail communications.4 Two primary
objectives were the creation of a professional well-disciplined army
and a province-wide militia system. As militarists, the Clique set great
store by the organizational structure and values of their profession,
believing them to set a proper framework for the pursuit of
modernization in Guangxi as elsewhere. More practically, however,
they were determined that Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) should not
easily repeat his triumph of 1929 when a Guangxi sphere of influence
that extended as far north as Beijing disintegrated almost overnight.5
As a result of their eventual victory over the communists in Jiangxi,
however, central government troops arrived in force in south-west
China and soon controlled the provinces surrounding Guangxi and
Guangdong. The rebel provinces faced a desperate situation yet were
quite unwilling to succumb; on the contrary, in 1936 the southern
leadership endeavoured to seize the initiative by mounting a new
political offensive. Re-designating their troops an "Anti-Japanese
Army" they capitalized on local anti-Japanese feeling to launch a
series of stirring demands for resistance against China's national
enemy.
While the existence of intense anti-Japanese sentiment in south
China generally is not in question, certain contemporary critics
regarded the Guangxi leadership's sudden bellicosity towards
Japan with justifiable scepticism.6 For one thing, a number of
Japanese military instructors and officers were either employed in
Guangxi or made visits to the province. One of these, as late as 1935,
was no less a figure than General Doihara, "famous" for his activities
in Manchuria.7
More significant, however, is the impression gained by a British
3. Huang Xuchu succeeded another Huang - Huang Shaoxiong - as the third senior
figure of the Guangxi Clique in 1930. Diana Lary, Region and Nation: The Kwangsi
Clique in Chinese Politics, 1925-1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974),
pp. 157-58.
4. The reconstruction programme is comprehensively discussed by Lary, ibid. Ch. 9.
5. On the military struggle between Guangxi and Nanking see Tong Te-kong and Li
Tsung-jen, The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jen (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979),
Ch. 28-29; Lary, Region and Nation, pp. 138-45.
6. See, for example, K. B. Vaidya, Reflections on the Recent Revolt at Canton and
After (Canton: National Publishers, 1936), Vol. I p. 6; Canton to Foreign Office, 2
August 1936, P.R.O. F.O. 371 20250/F4540.
7. In January 1936 Li Zongren felt obliged to make a statement regarding the
Japanese presence in Guangxi. He claimed that there were nine instructors in the
province and that some officers had made unofficial visits. G.O.C. (General Officer
Commanding) Hong Kong to Foreign Office, 30 January 1936, P.R.O. F.O. 371
20248/F459. Vaidya, Reflections, Vol. 2 p. 8, claimed that there were about 60 Japanese
officers in Guangxi at the end of 1935. Information on the Doihara visit comes from
Canton to Foreign Office, 20 April 1936, P.R.O. F.O. 371 20241/F3126.

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654 The China Quarterly
trade official, R. H. Scott, who visited Guangxi during January and

February 1936. Scott maintained that Japanese influence was "very
strong" in the province and that aeroplanes and cement were among
the Japanese products entering Guangxi. There were reports that
Japanese manufacturers had advanced substantial credit to the
provincial government, continued Scott, claiming that in Nanning
and Wuzhou it was even made clear to him that while the authorities
were violently anti-Japanese, they nonetheless found it convenient to
take advantage of the assistance they offered since their credit terms
were unusually generous.8
It is likely that the Guangxi authorities discovered the generosity of
the Japanese in matters of credit in part at least as a consequence of
their unsuccessful appeal to the British for funds. In the early part of
1934 and again in May 1935 representatives of the provincial
government sought British finance for the development of the
province with Guangxi's mineral resources as security. Faced with
British reluctance, Huang Peisheng, the 1935 applicant, spoke of
assistance from Japan as the alternative. He dismissed entirely the
British view that if a loan were to be forthcoming, the prior approval
of the Nanking Government was required.9
In the ordinary way one might dismiss Huang's reference to the
alternative of Japanese assistance as a natural bargaining gambit to
discomfort the British. In fact, however, Guangxi was experiencing a
severe financial crisis due largely to the loss of revenue derived from a
tax on opium in transit. Grown in Yunnan and Guizhou, the product
passed through Guangxi en route to Canton, netting the provincial
authorities as much as half of the total annual provincial income.10
Since the amount of revenue thus received was appropriated for
military expenditure (and was therefore the main pillar of provincial
independence) it is hardly surprising that the Nanking Government
promptly re-directed the opium north from Guizhou once it had
brought that province to heel in 1935."
As a result of this move, the first of three options available to the
provincial government as put to Acting-Consul Cameron by officials
during an April 1935 tour - "self-supporting, self-contained indepen-
dence" - was no longer viable, if indeed it realistically ever had been.
The second option was the acceptance of help from Japan and the
third (here the provincial officials clearly had Britain in mind) was co-
operation with friendly foreign nations without territorial designs.12
8. "Report by R.H. Scott following a six week tour of Kwangsi and Yunnan in
January and February of 1936," P.R.O. F.O. 371 20241/F3917, p. 13.
9. Information on the appeal for British aid comes from the reports of personal
meetings by representatives of the two sides forwarded by the Canton Consulate to the
Foreign Office, P.R.O. F.O. 371 20241/F3917, 18101/F4425, F4681, F6720. Huang
Peisheng was vice-chairman of the Economic Council at Nanning.
10. Lary, Region and Nation, pp. 190-91.
11. "Report by Acting-Consul D. Cameron on a three week tour of Kwangsi
Province in April 1935," P.R.O. F.O. 371 20241/F3917, p. 17.
12. Ibid. p. 7.

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What is significant about these various alternatives is the

even as one option-of reconciliation and co-operation
central government. It was apparently preferable to rely
even Japanese, investment. There could be few clearer in
the antipathy felt towards Nanking.
As indicated, however, this antipathy formed the backgr
whole reconstruction enterprise. In view of this, the asso
Japan and the approach to British sources was almost ine
Guangxi was simply not viable as an autonomous provi
best of times the enthusiasm of the officials for reform
than the ability of the province to support innovation. O
revenue from the opium transportation tax, the considera
expenditure that the reconstruction programme involved
sarily, to approaches towards foreign powers. On the o
militarization demanded much from the local population.
this was the case since the reconstruction programme beg
was especially apparent during the crisis of July 1936 whe
Nanking seemed imminent. As the Senior Royal Naval Of
River Station, observed:
The general situation in Kwangsi is one of hope and endurance; h

Military Over-Lords will soon be abolished; and endurance unti
Many years of enforced submission to the Man with the Gun ha
populace to a fatalistic acceptance of almost any military extort
a most rigid conscriptio ... 13
That war was avoided had a great deal to do with the Ja

stood to gain most from renewed civil conflict. When tr
Nineteenth Route Army murdered a Japanese resident in B
in Guangdong) in early September, a sharp military r
feared.'4 The fact that the Japanese threat was now no lon
to far-off Manchuria or even Shanghai concentrated the m
Guangxi leadership. If it were to be resisted with an
success, co-operation with the central government wa
reconciliation a price that had to be paid.
The path to a settlement was smoothed by Chiang Ka
arrived in Canton in mid September and appealed for uni
soon joined by Li Zongren and the terms of the rapproch
published shortly thereafter.'5 Essentially, Nanking estab
direct political influence in Guangxi but (what was f
important) imposed restrictions on the size of the provinc
establishment whose fixed monthly expenditure was to b
13. "Extract from a report of proceedings of senior naval officer, Wes

Station, covering the month of July 1936," P.R.O. F.O. 371 20247/F6
14. This is known as the "Pakhoi Incident" (from the local pronouncia
and is discussed by Vaidya, Reflections, Vol. 1, p. 20; Tong Te-kong and
The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jen, p. 311; and Lary, Region and Nation, p
15. On the background to the settlement see Tong Te-kong and
Memoirs, pp. 311-12. The terms of the agreement are in Vaidya, Reflec
12.

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debited to the central government. This last, of course, had the

immediate effect of extricating the Clique from the dilemma their
search for financial resources had led them into: I have been able to
discover no evidence of Guangxi attempts to secure external sources
of finance after the 1936 settlement until the very eve of the Japanese
surrender. As will be seen, however, the Japanese did not forget the
contacts they established in the province during the mid 1930s.
In no sense can the 1936 settlement be said to have fundamentally
resolved the conflict between the two sides. Rather the external threat
to China fostered a reconciliation between the parties - much as it did
between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party - which (in both
cases) began to wear thin as the military conflict with Japan dragged
on. The nature and course of the war, moreover, provided a new
context and fresh grounds for the struggle.
Resistance, 1937-40
It is generally understood that reconciliation between the central

government and its enemies (the southern leaders in 1936; the
communists following the Xian Incident at the close of the same year)
played a major part in the Japanese decision to intensify their China
campaign.'6 Equally, Japanese aggression following the Marco Polo
Bridge affair itself strengthened the integrative forces at work in
China. This trend was especially noteworthy with regard to the
Guangxi faction of the Kuomintang. Within a few days of the Marco
Polo Bridge Incident, Bai Chongxi flew to Nanking and was appointed
Chiang's chief of staff.17 He was followed some weeks later by Li
Zongren who was appointed commander, Fifth War Zone, in
October.18 Thereafter, while these two men remained outside of
Guangxi for long spells at a time their authority was still firm in the
province-a situation ensured by Huang Xuchu who remained in
Guangxi as provincial governor.
In many respects, of course, developments within the province
since the early 1930s meant that Guangxi was uniquely prepared for
the task of mobilization in 1937. By the end of August 1937, 40
16. Chalmers A. Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The

Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1962), p. 32.
17. Barbara W. Tuchman, Sand Against the Wind: Stilwell and the American
Experience in China, 1911-1945 (London: Futura Edition, 1981), p. 211. Bai was later
appointed director of military training but was given no effective command until late
1939 and again in late 1944 when, on both occasions, he was charged with the almost
impossible task of defending Guangxi. See below pp. 664, 674.
18. Li first attended to mobilization in the home province. Tong Te-kong and Li
Tsung-jen, Memoirs, p. 331. The Fifth War Zone included all of Shandong, the greater
part of Jiangsu and Anhui north of the Yangzi. Li remained commander until the spring
of 1945 when he was promoted to the nominally powerful position of director of field
headquarters at Hancheng, Shaanxi. John S. Service (ed. J. W. Esherick), Lost Chance
in China: The World War II Despatches of John S. Service (New York: Vintage Books,
1975), p. 46.

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regiments had been activated and were later reorganized

Group Armies: the Eleventh, and Sixteenth and the Twen
Eleventh and the Twenty-first were sent to the front lin
fighting in the Shanghai campaign before linking up with
in Anhui and conducting operations for the greater part
from a base in the Dabie Shan area along the border with
Hubei.'9
The intensity of the mobilization effort impressed visitors to
Guangxi during the early months of the war. In a November 1937
report British intelligence officers noted approvingly that once the
province's regular army was assigned to the front, the training and
despatch of reinforcements was in full swing. In one sense, at least,
they clearly regarded Guangxi as a "model province":
The extent and intensity of the Kwangsi war effort cannot but command
respect, especially when the poverty and isolation of the province is
considered; if other and richer provinces had put half as much determination
as Kwangsi into their efforts, then the task of the Japanese would have proved
immeasurably harder than it has been so far.20
Another facet of the Guangxi war effort impressed a reporter with

the left-wing National Salvation Daily (Jiuwang ribao). This was the
Guangxi Student Army (Guangxi Xuesheng Jun)-a force around
300-strong which was assigned to Wuhan to engage in various
ancillary duties including political work.21 No lesser figures than Zhou
Enlai and Ye Jianying had apparently been invited to address this
body.22
The extent of the Guangxi effort is supported by more than simply
impressionistic evidence, however. Citing figures from the Fifth
Kuomintang Central Executive Committee in January 1940, Huang
Xuchu observed that in terms of conscription as a proportion of
provincial population, Guangxi occupied first place nationally.23 This
was partly a consequence of efficient conscription procedures. On the
other hand, the evident enthusiasm surrounding the war effort
suggests a changed atmosphere difficult to understand other than in
terms of a popular determination to resist the national enemy. Anti-
Japanese feeling had been deliberately nurtured during the mid 1930s
19. Tong Ke-tong and Li Tsung-jen, Memoirs, pp. 322-24.

20. "Report on a tour through Kwangsi, Kwangtung and Hunan provinces,"
November 1937, P.R.O. W.O. (War Office) 106 5303, p. 4. A similar impression was
conveyed to me in an interview with an English medical missionary resident in
Nanning 1937-42, conducted in south London, 29 April 1983.
21. Jiuwang ribao (National Salvation Daily), 15 January 1938, p. 1.
22. Pang Dunzhi, Qingsuan guixi (Expose the Guangxi Clique) (Canton: Nanqing
chubanshe, 1950), p. 1.
23. Huang Xuchu, "Banian kangzhan huiyilu" ("Recollections of the eight-year War
of Resistance"), Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 81 (November 1960), p. 2. The
claim is also made by Yin Shi (pseud.), Li Jiang guanxi yu Zhongguo (The Li-Chiang
Relationship and China) (Hong Kong: Ziyou chubanshe, 1954), p. 62. Yin Shi was the
pseudonym of Cheng Siyuan, Li Zongren's secretary.

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and with the formal outbreak of war this found direct expression in
enlistment into the provincial armies.24
The indigenous spirit of resistance in Guangxi was shortly rein
forced by a dramatic influx of refugees from occupied China. With th
loss of key centres in south-east and central China whole enterprises
were moved west into the hinterland beyond the Japanese advance. A
considerable amount of manufacturing plant, technicians and work-
ers, even entire academic communities moved into Guangxi trans
forming a number of the province's hitherto inconsequential towns
into relatively important economic, cultural and political centres of
Free China.
The upturn in industrial activity was especially marked. Prior to the
outbreak of war, industry was something of a novelty in Guangxi with
only 65 factories (many on an extremely small scale) in operation as of
1935.25 By 1940, however, this figure had more than quadrupled and
included several small-scale metallurgical concerns. In terms of
industrial development this period amounted to the height of
Guangxi's pre-Liberation prosperity. At one point there were 287
factories in the province with a total investment exceeding 700
million yuan and a work force of more than 13,000.26
Another striking example of the new scale of economic activity in
the province concerned the railway construction projects launched in
1938 and 1939. Of these, work on the Hunan-Guangxi railway was
the most rapid. The primary aim of the railway was to gain access to a
port at China's rear - that is, Haiphong.27 According to Ling Hongxun,
the director of this project, French banks underwrote the purchase of
materials, the national government was responsible for labour costs
while the Guangxi provincial government undertook to supply the
work force. Between 1938 and 1940 no less than 600,000 Guangxi
people were recruited to work on the scheme. By the end of 1939,
moreover, Liuzhou in central Guangxi was linked to Hengyang,
24. Li Zongren recalled (with some licence, presumably) that after the outbreak of
war "peasants from all over the province flooded into the government district offices to
report for duty. The number who volunteered far exceeded our needs and we had to cast
lots to decide on those to be taken." Tong Te-kong and Li Tsung-jen, Memoirs, p. 323.
On the other hand, with the large scale transfer of troops to the war areas, some of the
inhabitants of the Guizhou and Hunan border areas of the province (including a section
of the local militia) chose a bandit life in the hills in preference to active service.
"Canton intelligence report for the year ended 1938," P.R.O. F.O. 371 22130/Fl 1450.
This, however, was the exception rather than the rule during the early phase of the war.
25. Figure cited by Lary, Region and Nation, p. 189.
26. Yang Huagong and Huang Qiantai, "Liangge butong shidaide Guangxi gongye"
("Industry in Guangxi during two different periods"), Xueshu luntan (Knowledge
Forum), Nos. 3-4 (1979), p. 43.
27. Long before the war the French built a line from Haiphong to Langson,
a few miles short of Zhennanguan on the Guangxi-Indo-China frontier. Fear of
French designs on Guangxi, however, disinclined the provincial leadership to permit
railway construction across the frontier. "Report on Kwangsi province by Captain A.T.
Wilson-Brand after a tour in March and April 1934," P.R.O. F.O. 371 18153/F5182, p.
16.

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but Japanese moves in Indo-China quickly undermined t

ate strategic purpose of the railway.28
A further conspicuous feature of Guangxi during the ea
the war was the rapid development of cultural and ed
organizations. This brought an uncharacteristic air of in
political diversity to the province generally, and in part
provincial capital of Guilin.29 Always attractive to poets
because of its scenic delights, war-time Guilin played host to
unprecedented gatherings of the country's foremost writers and
intellectuals. Guo Moruo, Liu Yazi and He Xiangning were among
those who made a temporary home in the city.30Alongside Guangxi
University and Guilin Teachers' College, various new (to Guangxi)
research institutes were established covering a range of disciplines
from physics to the dramatic arts. The city, moreover, became a major
publishing and printing centre; bookshops were said to "cover the
entire city."31 Among them were the "life bookstores" (shenghuo
shudian) which sold magazines, pamphlets and books of a liberal
character. These developments together with the regular situation
forums, news and current affairs meetings, War of Resistance lectures
and plays won the Guangxi capital fame as the "city of resistance
culture" ("kangzhan wenhua cheng").32
In many ways, of course, Guilin was an ideal locality for liberal and
left-wing critics of the central government. The agreement of 1936
notwithstanding, Guangxi remained outside of Chiang's direct politi-
cal control and therefore afforded a favourable atmosphere for such
publications as New China Daily (Xinhua ribao) and the National
Salvation Daily (Jiuwang ribao). This last was edited by the
playwright Xia Yan and, according to an experienced traveller in
Kuomintang China, was the kind of progressive patriotic newspaper
freely available only in Guangxi province.33
Guilin was also an important centre of the constitutional move-
ment which grew in strength generally during the early years of the
war. The national government had promulgated a Draft Constitution
in May 1936 but the outbreak of hostilities interrupted the selection
of delegates to a National Congress scheduled to meet in November
1937. As the military conflict began to stabilize, however, many
educated Chinese argued that the achievement of constitutional
government (and perforce the end of the Nationalist Party's political
28. Hung-hsun Ling, "China's epic struggle in developing its overland transportation
system during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945" in Paul K.T. Sih (ed.), Nationalist
China During the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 (New York: Exposition Press, 1977),
pp. 250-56.
29. Part of the 1936 agreement required the transfer of the provincial capital from
Nanning to Guilin. Guilin was the capital in imperial times.
30. Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafan, Guilin shihua (Historical Talk About Guilin)
(Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1979), pp. 133-34.
31. Ibid. p. 134.
32. Ibid. p. 133.
33. Israel Epstein, The Unfinished Revolution in China (Boston: Little Brown and
Co., 1947), p. 131.

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monopoly) was an important war aim; and in November 1939 the

Kuomintang Central Executive Committee agreed to convene a
National Congress in November of the following year.34 The first nine
months of 1940 in Free China were therefore marked by considerable
discussion of constitutional issues - notably on the part of the
Guangxi Constitutional Government Advancement Association
based in the provincial capital.
In its May 1940 Manifesto the Association praised the informal
unity and solidarity that characterized the first period of the war an
argued that these encouraging developments had to be grounded in
clear constitutional principles.35 The pre-war policy of civil war and
literary censorship came under attack with the implication that there
must be no return to such policies once the Japanese had been beaten.
As far as the 1936 Draft Constitution was concerned, the Guangx
Association raised a number of objections. Perhaps the most revealin
of these concerned the centralization of authority called for in the
1936 document. The Association argued, in contrast, that "political
powers concerning the provinces should be in the hands of provincial
representative assemblies and the provincial governments."36 The fact
that this was the defacto situation in Guangxi was of course precisely
why the Association organized in the province and published its
relatively outspoken manifesto in Guilin.
The Eighth Route Army's Guilin Office was another beneficiary of
Guangxi's relative independence of the central government. Thes
"offices" ("banshi chu") had been established by the CCP in a number
of cities following the United Front agreement with the Nationalists;
and as the Japanese threatened Wuhan, the communists were
permitted to transfer their personnel from that city to the Guangxi
capital. Here they played an important part in prosecuting a spirit of
resistance, publishing the city's edition of the New China Daily and
collecting money and supplies for the war effort.37 According to a
recent account, Eighth Route Army personnel in Guilin enjoyed the
favour of a section of the Guangxi leadership.38
Indeed, the Clique acquired something of an enlightened reputation
during this period which even their harshest critics felt obliged to
concede. It was Li Zongren's "golden age" observed a communist
writer some years after the war. In addition to playing a major part in
the remarkable victory at Taierzhuang, he sponsored the Xuzhou
34. Lawrence K. Rosinger, China's Wartime Politics, 1937-1944 (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1945), pp. 56-58. In September 1940 the National
Government announced the cancellation of plans to convene the National Assembly on
the grounds that the nation's primary efforts had to be devoted to prosecuting the war.
Ibid. p. 60.
35. The Manifesto is printed with notes and an introduction by Rosinger in
Amerasia, Vol. 4, No. 8 (October 1940), pp. 368-75.
36. Ibid. p. 373.
37. Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafan, Historical Talk About Guilin, pp. 129-31.
38. Yuan Jishan, "Ji balujun Guilin banshichu beiche" ("Recollections of the Guilin
Eighth Route Army office's withdrawal north"), Geming huiyilu (Recollections of the
Revolution), No. 7 (1982), p. 207.

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Young Cadres Training School - a larger equivalent of t

Student Army in which young people were recruited for w
drilled by left-wing instructors.39 During his brief chair
Anhui province (January-September 1938) Li establishe
Work Committee and employed such men as Zang Keji
and Zhang Naiqi. Zhang was one of the celebrated group of
intellectuals known as the "seven gentlemen" (qi junzi) whose call for
strikes in the Japanese-owned factories of Shanghai during November
1936 had resulted in their arrest and imprisonment.40
Similar policies were adopted by Huang Xuchu in Guangxi. The
provincial chairman was apparently happy to identify himself with
political and cultural developments in the province, accommodating
"progressive individuals" (jinbu renshi) in the provincial administra-
tion, schools and cultural groups, and expounding "progressive"
theories in works with such titles as Cadre Policy (Ganbu zhengce) and
Improve the Political Atmosphere (Gexin zhengzhi fengqi).4'
As far as communist activity was concerned, however, there were
limits to the provincial authorities' toleration - especially outside of
Guilin. The Communist Party (CCP) was operating on two apparently
unconnected levels in Guangxi during the first years of the war. On
one of these was the Eighth Route Army's Guilin Office, which,
established within the framework of the formal United Front and
staffed by outsiders, conducted its operations openly. On the other
was the indigenous communist movement, making a slow recovery
from the near lethal blow it suffered during the crushing of the west
Guangxi Soviets in 1930 and 1931.42 This wing of the movement
engaged in covert operations, gradually gaining strength from its work
among students during the pre-war anti-Japanese movement. By
October 1936 activities were on a sufficiently large scale formally to
establish a "CCP-Guangxi work committee" ("zhonggong guangxi
sheng gongwei").43
If the growing national resistance movement presented new
opportunities, however, the formal outbreak of war presented fresh
dangers for the communist underground in Guangxi. Surprisingly,
these stemmed from a readiness on the part of a section of the local
39. Zhou Quan, Guixi jiepou (Anatomy of the Guangxi Clique) (Hong Kong:
Qixingshuwu, 1949), p. 20.
40. Tong Te-kong and Li Tsung-jen, Memoirs, p. 386, n. 1.
41. Zhou Quan, Anatomy of the Guangxi Clique, p. 35. According to Zhou, Huang
"stole" some of these progressive ideas from Stalin.
42. The Zhuang Soviets are discussed by Diana Lary in "Communism and ethnic
revolt: some notes on the Chuang peasant movement," The China Quarterly (CQ), No.
49 (January-March 1972), pp. 126-35. See also, Graham Hutchings, "The troubled life
and after-life of a Guangxi communist: some notes on Li Mingrui and the communist
movement in Guangxi province before 1949," CQ, No. 104 (December 1985), pp.
700-708.
43. Zhuangzu jianshi bianxiezu (Zhuang Nationality History Group) (comp.),
Zhuangzu jianshi (A Short History of the Zhuang Nationality) (Nanning: Guangxi
renmin chubanshe, 1980), p. 166.

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leadership to forsake the Party's independence. After the outbreak

of the war, Huang Guinan, secretary of the Right river area in
west Guangxi, entered into talks with the local authorities on
his own initiative, provided details of Party organizations and
personnel, and even disarmed a section of his men. This led to the
prompt arrest of many Party members and was a forceful reminder
that at the local level the traditional authorities were unprepared
for the communists to put genuine roots down-United Front or
no.44
Thereafter the local communists appear to have been understan-
dably circumspect. For the most part operations were confined to the
south-east of the province where there had been a tradition of
sporadic CCP activity and which, since the Japanese occupation of
parts of southern Guangdong, was close to the front line.45 In the
townships of Beiliu and neighbouring Yulin, the Party sought to
gain control of the local War-time Work Leagues (Zhanshi Gongzuo
Tuan)46 and operated under the cover of bookshops, disseminating
the anti-Japanese line and establishing a network of local contacts.47
As we shall discover, these activities were soon curtailed by another
of the sharp setbacks that distinguished the history of the commu-
nist underground in Guangxi.
For communist authors writing during the Civil War period, the
Clique's policies of toleration and accommodation during the early
phase of the Sino-Japanese War were "pseudo-progressive" ("wei
jinbu"); they were designed to mask true features which, as ever, were
reactionary.48 Understandable comments perhaps in view of the
Clique's long and violent record of anti-communism. By the same
token, given their almost equally long background of opposition to the
central government, it is likely that the Guangxi leaders were by no
means unhappy to be associated in Guilin, as elsewhere, with
prestigous critics of Chiang Kai-shek. On balance, however, it seems
reasonable to take a less conspiratorial view. For in Guilin particu-
larly, an informal but nonetheless real united front was apparent. It
was of a piece with the great military and economic contributions
made by a poor, hitherto isolated province towards the desperate task
of national resistance.
44. Ibid. p. 169.

45. Details of earlier communist activity are provided in Guangxi junqu zhengzhi-
bubian (Guangxi Military Region Political Department) (ed.), Guangxi geming
huiyilu (Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi) (Nanning: Guangxi renmin
chubanshe, 1959), pp. 142-150; and Tan Shengwen, "Yu Zuoyu he ta cangjia
lingdao Longzhou qiyi" ("Yu Zuoyu and the Longzhou Uprising he led"), Geming
huiyilu (Recollections of the Revolution), No. 7 (1982), pp. 116-39.
46. War Time Work Leagues were organizations of primarily young people designed
to prosecute the war short of formal combat.
47. Guangxi junqu zhengzhibubian, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi,
pp. 173-79; 188-90.
48. Zhou Quan, Anatomy of the Guangxi Clique, pp. 15-16. Pang Dunzhi, Expose
the Guangxi Clique, p. 1.

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Demoralization, 1941-44
Late in November 1939 the war was brought directly into Guangxi
by the sudden Japanese occupation of Nanning.49 Japanese objectives
in attacking Guangxi were threefold. An immediate aim was to cut the
Nanning-Langson (in Indo-China) road, presently one of the few
routes over which supplies could reach unoccupied China from
abroad. Another broader purpose, as Ch'i Hsi-sheng has observed,
was to counter the unfolding Winter Offensive mounted by the
Chinese in various war zones during this period.50 Finally, it has been
suggested that the Japanese had a political objective in establishing a
foothold in Guangxi: that of prising Bai Chongxi and local war zone
commander Zhang Fakui away from Chiang Kai-shek.5s Bai was the
primary target; he had employed Japanese advisers in 1934 and these
same men accompanied the invading forces to Nanning where they
sought, through their former servants, to revive their disrupted
relationship. In the changed circumstances this was a forlorn hope but
it was the only objective the Japanese failed to achieve in their
Guangxi campaign.
Within a few days of landing at Beihai and Qinzhou, a Japanese
force of between four and five divisions had marched through the
difficult country of what was then southern Guangdong to enter
Nanning on the 24 November. The Japanese encountered little
serious resistance. Indeed the Chinese retreat was so rapid that the
Japanese were unable to keep up with it.52 For the most part the
defending forces were made up of Guangxi people but they were far
from the cream of the provincial army which, ironically in the
circumstances, had been deployed in the Yangzi valley camp-
aigns.53
Once the defenders had been reinforced, however, fierce fighting
regularly broke out between the two sides, particularly around the
strategic pass of Kunlunguan, some 50 kilometres north-east of the
city. It is clear nevertheless that the Japanese were not seriously
troubled by the Chinese counter-attacks whose tactics were largely
ineffectual; indeed, according to one source, "almost farcical - had it
49. Certain provincial towns had been subject to frequent air raids since December
1937 when six people were killed in Wuzhou. From Canton to Foreign Office, 11 April
1938, P.R.O. F.O. 371 22038/F4036. The following account of the south Guangxi
campaign is based mainly on military intelligence materials in the Public Record Office;
Huang Xuchu, "Banian kangzhan huiyilu" ("Recollections of the eight-year War of
Resistance"), Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 81 (November 1960), pp. 2-4;
Hsiang-hsiang Wu, "Total strategy used by China and some major engagements in the
Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945" in Sih (ed.), Nationalist China During the Sino-
Japanese War, pp. 37-80; Frank Dorn, The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1941: From
Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbour (New York: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 284-302.
50. Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political
Collapse, 1937-1945 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), p. 58.
51. Hsiang-hsiang Wu, "Total strategy used by China," p. 63.
52. Dorn, The Sino-Japanese War, p. 288.
53. Huang Xuchu, loc. cit.

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not been for the dead, the uncared for wounded and the peasant
driven from their homes and farms."54
The one bright spot on an otherwise depressing Chinese military
record was secured by the activities of the local guerrillas. Hardly able
to dislodge the Japanese by themselves, they were, nonetheless, a
constant irritant to the occupation forces, attacking their vulnerable
lines of communication stretching south to the coast. Later National-
ist and communist accounts both claim the south Guangxi guerrillas
as their own.5 Significant contemporary evidence is unfortunately
lacking. Experience in other parts of China, however, indicates that
the communists were generally far more ready to organize guerrilla
warfare that the Nationalists.
The Japanese campaign in southern Guangxi lasted almost exactly a
year and was concluded by an agreement with Vichy France whereby
Japanese troops obtained the right to garrison the northern province
of Indo-China.56 In these circumstances continued occupation of
Nanning served little purpose and the Japanese withdrew south to
Hainan Island.
In addition to the human and material losses resulting from the
expedition, the ease with which the Japanese achieved their objectives
considerably impaired Guangxi's reputation of offering staunch
resistance to the national enemy. According to contemporary obser-
vers, the failure to recover Nanning "resulted in (a) great lessening of
Pai Chung-hsi's influence (Bai had been assigned to assist Zhang
Fakui in the defence of the province) and Kwangsi military pres
tige."57 In a later account Huang Xuchu concurred, recalling that
Chiang authorized several demotions and sackings following the
Chinese failures and bemoaning the fact that there were those who
again looked askance at Guangxi's anti-Japanese credentials.58
The success of the Japanese offensive was also significant in the
wider context of the war. Ch'i Hsi-sheng has shown that one of the
purposes of the Japanese in opening another front was to stage a
diversion and to snatch the initiative Chiang was trying to gain by
mobilizing for the Winter Offensive. In this the Japanese were highly
successful. Uncertainty as to the exact intentions of the enemy in
southern Guangxi coupled with a marked reluctance on the part of
regional commanders to commit their forces against the Japanese led,
by April 1940, to the disintegration of the Winter Offensive.59 This
was an uncomfortable reminder (especially as far as Chiang was
concerned) that China was essentially fighting the national enemy as a
54. Dorn, The Sino-Japanese War, p. 296.

55. Compare, for example, Yin Shi, The Li-Chiang Relationship and China, p. 80,
with Zhuangzu jianshi bianxiezu, A Short History of the Zhuang Nationality, pp.
171-72.
56. Dom, The Sino-Japanese War, pp. 301-302.
57. G.O.C. Hong Kong to Foreign Office, 29 December 1939, P.R.O. F.O. 371
23419/F13161.
59. Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War, pp. 89-93.

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loose alliance between a series of regional militarists and

government.
The ensuing military stalemate, moreover, enhanced th
demoralization which the failure of the Winter Offensive
engendered and the establishment of the Wang Jingw
March 1940 sealed. This period witnessed a steady dete
relations between the various military and political group
rarily reconciled when the Japanese threat was at its heig
spectacular break occurred between the central governme
communists in January 1941 when the New Fourth Army
buried what remained of the luke warm co-operation betw
sides. Nonetheless, as the purely military struggle agains
subsided, friction between the central government and t
leaders also increased. The effects of both these conflicts were
strikingly evident in Guangxi.
One of the first casualties of the New Fourth Army Incident in t
province was the Guilin Eighth Route Army Office which the
authorities closed during the second half of January 1941. Repres
measures were not, however, confined to recognized communi
activities. There was a clampdown on various forms of politica
dissidence during this period as bookshops and newspapers wer
closed, a tighter censorship enforced and local cadre training scho
and War Time Work Leagues disbanded.60
During the early 1940s the arrest and detention of dissidents
became more frequent. A concerted move by the authorities i
number of provincial centres during July 1942 resulted in over 40
arrests among whom (with disastrous consequences for their move
ment) were a number of local communist leaders.61 According to
eye-witness account those arrested were usually accused of bei
traitors (hanjian)- an elastic term used by the authorities to descr
Democratic League and Communist Party members as well as sp
for the Japanese-and subjected to beatings and other forms
torture.62
It is clear from these moves that regardless of the situation durin
the first years of the war, Guangxi was not immune from wi
processes in which the United Front "narrowed" as a result, general
of the course and nature of the war, and particularly of the N
Fourth Army Incident. The provincial authorities nonetheless s
became concerned about the management of political dissent and it
60. Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafan, Historical Talk About Guilin, pp. 136-38; Pa
Dunzhi, Expose the Guangxi Clique, p. 18; Yuan Jishan, "Recollections of the Gu
Eighth Route Army office," p. 207; Zhuangzu jianshi bianxiezu, A Short History of
Zhuang Nationality,, p. 172.
61. Pang Dunzhi, loc. cit. Guangxi junqu zhengzhibubian, Recollections of t
Revolution in Guangxi, pp. 179, 211-12.
62. Sa Kongliao, Guiyu jiaowai (Outside Guilin and Chongqing) (Hong Kon
Chunfeng chubanshe, 1947), pp. 64-68. Sa, a newspaper correspondent, was arrested
Guilin during May 1943 and was imprisoned in the city until June of the following
when he was flown to Chongqing to serve a further year's confinement. The reasons
his arrest were never made clear.

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consequences for their own position in Guangxi. This was made plain
by Sa Kongliao who in 1947 published an account of his war-time
imprisonment in Guilin. Since he was held in relatively privileged
conditions, Sa was able to build up a fairly comprehensive picture of
the public security apparatus in Guangxi.
Sa was arrested in May 1943 by special agents of the Investigation
and Statistics Department, Guangxi Kuomintang Party Bureau.63
Agents from this department were directly subordinate to the
Kuomintang Party Centre and had extended their activities through-
out Guangxi during the early stages of the war.64 By 1942, however,
the local authorities in Guilin were becoming increasingly concerned
by the actions of these people over whom they exercised little if any
control.65 Matters were brought to a head by the July 1942 arrests in
which the Centre's agents were apparently instrumental and as a
result of which three Guilin middle-school teachers committed
suicide.66 Aware that the targets of such arrests were primarily young
Guangxi people of ability, the Guilin authorities contended that this
boded ill for the future of the province. Accordingly a counter-
measure was adopted: the provincial authorities began to deploy thei
own network of agents to "co-operate" with, but essentially it would
seem, to restrain the Centre's agents.67 These moves were probably
taken less out of sympathy with the generally liberal and left-wing
views of the National Government's critics than to ensure effective
local control. The handling of political dissidence in Guangxi had
become a battleground between the provincial and central authori-
ties.
A similar situation developed with regard to other more serious
consequences of the protracted conflict with Japan: the heavy
demands the province faced by way of material and human support
for the war. Given the sharp contraction in the area of China under
Nationalist control, Guangxi, in common with her south-western
neighbours, had to bear an inordinate share of the war effort.
Taxation and conscription were especially onerous in the province
and in some respects worked against each other.
Faced with increasing financial difficulties, in July 1941 the central
government reasserted its right to collect the land tax from the
provinces, henceforth to be paid in grain rather than in cash.68 Among
other things this move was designed to erode the financial basis of
63. Sa Kongliao, Outside Guilin and Chongqing, p. 3.

64. Support for this view comes from Huai Xiang, Li Zongren yu zhong-mei
fandongpai (Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary Clique) (Hong Kong:
Yuzhou shuwu, 1948), p. 31. According to this source, these agents represented the CC
Clique.
65. Sa was given to understand that his own case was outside Provincial Chairman
Huang Xuchu's control and was dependent on instructions from Chongqing. Sa
Kongliao, Outside Guilin and Chongqing, p. 27.
66. This episode is also referred to by Zhou Quan, Anatomy of the Guangxi Clique, p.
3, and Pang Dunzhi, Expose the Guangxi Clique, p. 18.
67. Sa Kongliao, Outside Guilin and Chongqing, pp. 32-38, 71.
68. Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War, p. 154.

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provincial autonomy and was later recognized and critici

by an associate of the Clique.69
In the province itself tax collection was a very decentral
It was left to xian governments to do the best they could
the natural advantages, or otherwise, of the xian itself.7
clearly an inefficient system and insofar as it was based
land registers, an inequitable one.71 The situation was
serious, of course, in view of the length of the conflict.
meagre resources were put under enormous strain as the
attempted to meet the extra grain requirements of th
government and the forces of the Fourth War Zone.72
Equally severe during the early 1940s were the dema
by conscription. Guangxi's original efforts in this regard
especially noteworthy. But as Provincial Governor Hu
the war was too long, losses too great and consequently the
conscription policy soon ran into difficulties. Fear of death, disinte-
rest, concern for young or old in the family, lack of winter clothing
and fear of mistreatment at the hands of officers were all cited by
Huang as reasons for increasing evasion.73 It is likely that evasion
reinforced existing (and technically illegal) abuses in the conscription
procedures such as conscription of the very old or the very young;
conscription of all those of eligible age in a family; and the non-
conscription of those wealthy enough to bribe the local authorities or
make a "donation" in lieu of military service.74 As with taxation, so
with conscription: the greatest demands were placed on those least
able to meet them. In some respects, moreover, the extraction of
manpower and grain were at cross purposes. For while increased
taxation (in kind) was designed to support the military effort,
conscription policy often had the effect of leaving the old, the young
and the weak to work the fields; production in the province naturally
declined.75
In the same way that the Guangxi authorities came to regard the
activities of secret agents loyal to Chongqing in the province with
69. As far as Guangxi was concerned, it was later argued that this policy considerably
weakened the much vaunted militia system which traditionally consumed a significant
percentage of provincial income. In the end, moreover, the policy proved self-defeating;
it made it impossible for local forces to be raised against the communists during the
Civil War. See Yin Shi, The Li-Chiang Relationship and China, pp. 80-82.
70. Huang Xuchu, "Recollections of the eight-year War of Resistance," Pt 2,
Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 82 (December 1960), p. 7.
71. According to Huai Xiang (Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary
Clique, p. 25) the compilation of land registers in Guangxi was associated with a good
deal of corruption. The bribes of rich peasants and landlords often secured the
registration of less land than they actually owned, to their considerable advantage when
taxes were due.
72. Guangxi and Guangdong together made up the Fourth War Zone.
74. Yi Ye, Guiqian lushang zayi (Sundry Recollections of the Roadfrom Guangxi to
Guizhou) (Hong Kong: Zhicheng chubanshe, 1970), pp. 37, 49-50. Pang Dunzhi,
Expose the Guangxi Clique, p. 8.

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unease, they resented the way in which material and human resource
were extracted and sometimes withheld from their province. Resen
ment over conscription became apparent in May 1943 when the
provincial government expressed its reluctance to commit any more
men outside of the province. British consular officials reported
feeling that the great efforts made earlier in the war had bee
squandered and that the Guangxi population should not be reduce
by further conscription.76
Another more frequently expressed grievance concerned Chiang's
(as seen from the Guangxi viewpoint) withholding of lend-leas
supplies and funds for military purposes from the province. Since th
provincial leadership allegedly received only 30 per cent of the aske
for 1943 budget, the British consul in Guilin was given to understand
that: "Wherever possible, Kwangsi will from now on devote mor
attention to conserving her energies since she believes an intern
problem will arise after the war."77 In the ensuing months there wer
more emphatic expressions of discontent from the Guangxi side; an
by May 1944 the local leaders were reported so dissatisfied wit
Chongqing that they were thinking of "cutting loose."78 They were
said to favour the United Front and contended that Chongqing
"ought to change its attitude towards Yenan."79
Perhaps the most dramatic expression of the conflict between
Guangxi and Chongqing during this period, however, concerne
measures designed by Bai to forestall any attempt by the centr
government to establish control over the province. In January 1944 h
gave orders that the local Pacification Headquarters prepare fo
dissolution and called for the formation of a company to be known a
the Yu Kuo Industrial Company. At an appropriate moment th
company would take over all stores, staff and supplies. The Guangxi
Provincial Highway Department was reported to have made
a similar move, having handed over its vehicles and equipment
to a new company known as the Kwangsi Transportation Com-
pany.80
Clearly, these expressions of discontent and of a determination to
"conserve energy" represented a very different stance on the part of
the Guangxi authorities towards the central government and the war
effort generally by comparison with the period 1937-40. The focus
had shifted to post-war "internal problems"; and in this context,
armies and equipment were a form of capital not readily squandered
in campaigns against the enemy, still less readily given up to the
Centre. Defeatism was hardly a surprising phenomenon in these
circumstances; neither, given the tight financial situation in the
province, was the appearance of illicit forms of economic activity
76. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 3 May 1943, P.R.O. F.O. 371 35853/2916.
77. Ibid.
78. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 8 March 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 41608.
79. Ibid. 23 May 1944.
80. "Kweilin Intelligence Summary," January 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 208 404.

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which themselves contributed to the downfall of mo

orthodox enterprise.
As far as economic life in Guangxi was concerned, th
blockade and the outbreak of the Pacific War naturally cre
difficulties. A poor harvest in 1943, moreover, created in
pressures which ineffective price control in Guangxi
withstand and the price of rice was high throughout the
Nevertheless, even in periods of famine, rice was exporte
where it fetched an even higher price.81
By 1943 also, industry in Guangxi had run into serious d
Many factories either reduced production or suspended o
they finally succumbed to the problems of increased taxat
of materials and fuel which had been gradually under
economic boom in the province since at least as early
Rather than encourage the development of industry a
resources, the provincial authorities pursued any activ
produce swift returns - including indirect involvement i
supplies to the enemy. It was widely understood that "tr
oil (which the Japanese passed on to Germany) and wolfr
mercury (which the Japanese wisely kept for thems
especially brisk. The provincial government's agent in th
was the Kwangsi Industrial Development Company.83
A principal economic activity in Guilin during this
commodity speculation. Superficially, there was still
prosperity about the Guangxi capital but, as one of t
sizeable foreign community put it, this was a "tinsel faca
which was a "welter of corruption, confusion and want."8
ingly, contemporary discussion of economic activity
emphasized such features as profiteering (in the case
manufacture), price raising and regulation (in the case
manufacture) and corruption (in the provincial salt admini
These activities were mirrored on a smaller but equally
scale as the influx of United States Air Force personnel e
profiteering on the part of merchants. "There is nothing t
remotely be called a war atmosphere in Kweilin," noted a
feeling of 'get rich quick' pervades the place and self-den
existent."86 The provincial capital's accelerating rate of in
hardly surprising in these circumstances; it was part of a
depressing picture.87
81. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 9 September 1943, P.R.O. F.O. 37

His Majesty's Consul-General regarded such rice exports as "criminal.
82. "Kweilin Intelligence Summary," 18 August 1944; 2 Septembe
F.O. 208 404.
83. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 9 September 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 35853/2916.
84. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 8 September 1943, P.R.O. F.O. 371 35853/
F4331.
85. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 8 January 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 41608.
86. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 6 May 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 41608.
87. A 505 per cent general increase over July 1942 was recorded in December 1943

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Perhaps more surprising (and certainly ironic) was the fact that
sorry state of affairs in Guangxi was not lost on the Japanese. W
into the advance that brought Japanese troops into south-west Ch
Tokyo Radio offered a "new deal" for Guangxi, "contrasting
present muddled state of the province under the Chungking reg
with her efficient administration when semi-autonomous and mistress
of her destinies."88
Occupation, 1944-45
By early 1944 American advances in the Pacific posed a severe

threat to Japan's overseas communications. Faced with the virtual
isolation of parts of their empire, the Japanese were therefore
concerned to establish overland communications between their forces
in the China theatre and those occupying Indo-China and other parts
of South-east Asia. The campaign to realize this objective - Operation
Ichigo - would also have the important result of knocking out Allied
air bases in south-west China, one of the most important of which was
located outside of Guilin. The attack developed in earnest in north
Henan during April. Following the fall of Zhengzhou, the Japanese
rapidly overwhelmed Chinese opposition, encountering serious resis-
tance only when they had penetrated as far south as Hengyang in
Hunan. And with the fall of that city and its strategic rail junction on 7
August, the route to Guangxi lay open.89
The objectives of Operation Ichigo were well understood in the
Guangxi capital long before Japanese troops seriously threatened the
province. The Guilin authorities published their first civilian evacua-
tion order in June and their second the following month.90 Neither, it
seems, secured much response - except that is on the part of Huang
Xuchu and Bai Chongxi. Huang moved his family out on the 25 June
while Bai was said to have sent four lorry loads of household effects
away and ordered the immediate evacuation of his family.9'
During July and August, however, desperate attempts were made to
transfer factory plant in Quanxian (modern Quanzhou), Guilin and
Liuzhou west, out of the path of the Japanese advance. This exercise
and a 570 per cent increased by January 1944. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 11
February 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 41608.
88. Radio Broadcast reported by Guilin Consulate to Foreign Office in June 1944
Newsletter, P.R.O. F. 0. 371 41608.
89. This brief discussion of Operation Ichigo is drawn mainly from Li Xin, Peng
Ming, Sun Sibai, Cai Shangsi, Chen Xulu (eds.), Zhongguo xinminzhuzhuyi geming
shiqi tongshi (A History of China During the Period of the New Democratic Revolution),
Vol. 3 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1980 edit.), pp. 320-23; Hu Puyu (ed.), Kangzhan
shihua (Historical Talk About the War of Resistance) (Taipei: National Defence
Department, 1972), pp. 183-84; Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Nationalist China at War, pp. 68-82.
90. Chongqing to South-east Asian Command, 24 June 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 208 404.
Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafan, Historical Talk About Guilin, p. 139.
91. Huang Xuchu, "Guangxi dierci lunxian yu shoufu" ("The second occupation
and recovery of Guangxi"), Pt 1, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 89 (June 1961), p.
3. Chongqing to South-east Asian Command, 24 June 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 208 404.

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faced considerable difficulties. Not only were the availabl

transfer insufficient to cover the enormous expenses
formidable logistical problems had to be surmounted. Plan
Guilin factory bound for Guiyang, for example, had to c
at Liuzhou before the journey northwards towards Guizh
continued. Once on the Guangxi-Guizhou line, progress
be made as far as Jinchengjiang (modern Hechi), the
terminus, where the equipment would have to be transferr
lorry or various forms of non-motorized transport for th
of the journey to Guiyang.92
The weeks immediately preceding the Japanese advance
present a stark, tragic miniature of Nationalist China at w
growing panic continually reinforced by thousands o
streaming in from Hunan, the city's Defence Headquarter
compulsory evacuation order on the 8 September to be co
midnight on the 12 September.93 This was the signal for s
evacuation and desperate struggles on the part of the
military authorities as well as countless ordinary Chinese
any form of transport likely to keep ahead of the Japanes
Guilin station was promptly inundated with evacuees
whelmed the coaches likely to make up one of the irregul
bound trains. The fact that many compartments were res
either civil and military dignitaries or various governmen
ments obliged many passengers to clamber onto carriag
even prostrate themselves on planks suspended beneath th
Many of these travellers were killed as the train passe
tunnel or, cold, tired and hungry, they fell from thei
accommodation to be crushed by the carriage wheels. The
of those fortunate enough to travel in the more conventio
the train were far from ideal. So packed were the coaches
dared leave for fear of permanently losing their place. Co
hygiene on a journey which, due to lack of fuel, often st
over several days were naturally appalling.
Those unable to cram onto trains sought room in the
lorries heading south from the provincial capital. The ove
majority, however, travelled on foot, streaming sout
thousands along both the highway and the railway line. In
and confusion there were numerous fatalities due to road
Far higher, though, was the number of deaths attributab
92. "Kweilin Intelligence Summary," 2 September 1944, P.R.O. W.O.

Ye, Sundry Recollections of the Road from Guangxi to Guizhou, pp. 19,
93. A recent account dates the issue of the evacuation order to 11 Sept
Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafen, loc. cit.
94. The following account of the evacuation of Guilin is based main
Sundry Recollections of the Road from Guangxi to Guizhou, pp. 1-56;
"The second occupation and recovery of Guangxi," pp. 2-4; Zhang Yig
Jiafan, Historical Talk About Guilin, pp. 139-40; and an interview w
missionary, himself evacuated from Guilin during this period, conducte
shire, 19 May 1983.

202.43.232.187 on Thu, 03 Nov 20hu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
food and to disease. Cholera was especially prevalent. For the most
part, the dead lay unburied by the roadside; there was no time for
formalities.
As they trekked or rode south towards Liuzhou and then north
towards Guizhou province the plight of the refugees was frequently
aggravated by Japanese bombing and, worst of all in the circum-
stances, by mistreatment at the hands of Chinese troops.95
Huang Xuchu recalled that both local Guangxi residents and
Nationalist soldiers plundered the refugees, regarding them as fair
game.96
In the same memoir written long after these events Huang
intimated that the tragedies surrounding the evacuation of Guilin
could have been avoided had it not been for public blindness. Few
responded to the evacuation order until the last moment when there
was predictable chaos and panic.97 It is easier, however, to censure
"public blindness" than to discern what realistic alternatives were
available for the majority to the semblance of security provided in
Guilin. Given the symbolic and strategic importance of the city,
moreover, it might have been felt that Guilin would have been
defended to the last - though there was admittedly little evidence of
this in the recent activities of the local authorities or the Chinese
response generally to Operation Ichigo.
Indeed, as in late 1939, the Japanese encountered little determined
resistance as they advanced into Guangxi. Following the fall of
Hengyang, their main force undertook a spell of rest and reorganiza-
tion before pushing south again along the Hunan-Guangxi railway
early in September. The advance was slow but inexorable, and as the
main force approached the provincial border, smaller contingents of
troops moved up the West river from Canton and north from the
Leizhou peninsular into south-east Guangxi. The Chinese response
was at best desultory:
... for 60 miles northeast of Kweilin there was not a soldier nor any sign of
preparation for defence to be seen until Chuanxian (Quanzhou) was reached;
here the garrison was inside the city where they could be easily by-passed; in
other words the way to Kweilin was wide open.98
In and around the Guangxi capital, however, considerable effort

was soon devoted to the task of demolition. This was something of a
multi-national endeavour; while United States servicemen set to work
destroying the installations at one of the country's largest air bases,
members of a British underground unit assisted Chinese troops in
95. Yi Ye, Sundry Recollections of the Roadfrom Guangxi to Guizhou, pp. 3, 23-25.
96. Huang Xuchu, "The second occupation," Pt 2, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn),
No. 90 (July 1961), p. 9.
97. Huang Xuchu, "The second occupation," Pt 1, p. 3; Pt 2, p. 9.
98. "Kweilin Intelligence Summary," September 1944, P.R.O. W. 0. 208 3260. This
eye-witness report dating from early September was by a British Officer, Col. Lindsay
Ride.

202.43.232.187 on Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:40:04 UTC
blowing up bridges and mining roads in order to frust

Japanese advance.99
Yet while it was clearly lacking in most of the regular troo
of resistance was not entirely absent in the province.
students in Guilin and Liuzhou attempted to organize them
guerrilla warfare against the invaders. Bewildered and con
authorities viewed these moves with disfavour, apparently f
consequences of arming patriotic young people as much as t
the Japanese themselves.100 In Guilin, the Guangxi bra
Sanminzhuyi Youth Corps was a centre of resistance. One h
so members of this group demanded to participate in the d
their city. A grudging admirer, Huang Xuchu nonetheless f
was a futile exercise; it was like "a mantis trying to stop a
("tangbi dangche").0?l
So, in the event, it proved. While a section of the 93rd Ar
stand north of Guilin, slowing the advance by forcing
flanking attacks, the defenders were ill-equipped, out-num
out-classed. The Japanese entered the city (by now almost
destroyed by fire) on the 10 November 1944.102
Subsequently, the Japanese advanced as rapidly as th
forces disintegrated. On the 11 November the invadin
converged on Liuzhou and a section penetrated north
Guangxi-Guizhou railway line. These moves caused unde
alarm for Guiyang and even for Chongqing itself. Desperat
were made to halt the Japanese in southern Guizhou and th
finally stabilized just inside the border of that province.
Meanwhile, however, the Japanese had moved south to
and, assisted by a small force moving east from Indo-china
was occupied on the 24 November. This second Japanese
of Nanning - it was five years to the day since the first - r
the completion of an overland communications line stretch
Manchuria to Indo-China.
The dramatic success of the Japanese advance during 1944 put a
new strain on relations between Chiang Kai-shek and his south China
generals. Since it was apparent that Chiang viewed with equanimity
the prospect of the Japanese cleaning up his domestic enemies in the
99. Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder Out of China (New York: Da
Capo Press, 1980 edit.), pp. 190-93. The British underground organization was known
as the British Army Aid Group (BAAG) and was formed, among other things, to gather
intelligence and facilitate the escape of prisoners of war from Japanese camps in Hong
Kong. Commanded by Lindsay Ride, BAAG Headquarters was located in Guilin
between 1942 and 1945. See Oliver Lindsay, At the Going Down of the Sun (London:
Sphere Books, 1982), Ch. 8; Edwin Ride, British Army Aid Group: Hong Kong
Resistance, 1942-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
100. Yi Ye, Sundry Recollections of the Road from Guangxi to Guizhou, p. 4.
101. Huang Xuchu, "The second occupation," Pt 2, p. 5.
102. Communist accounts attribute the destruction of Guilin to retreating National-
ist troops. See, for example, Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafan, Historical Talk About
Guilin, p. 140. Ride, British Army Aid Group, p. 255, suggests that it was largely the
work of Japanese agents with incendiary pistols.

202.43.232.187 on Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:40:04 UTC
south, talk of "cutting loose" acquired a new seriousness. A key figure

in this dissent was Li Jishen, who, by August 1944, and with the
reported support of Long Yun, Zhang Fakui and Yu Hanmou, sought
United States' aid for the establishment of a provisional democratic
government.'03 That this latest separatist movement was not of greater
consequence was largely due to the attitude of Bai Chongxi whom
Chiang now considered loyal enough to be entrusted with the defence
of his home province. As the Japanese troops bore down on Guangxi,
Bai persuaded the provincial government to move west to areas under
Chongqing's nominal control rather than undertake an uncertain
political and military adventure. Bose in west Guangxi became the
temporary seat of the provincial government and the headquarters of
the Fourth War Zone.'04
In their dramatic flight the provincial authorities were apparently
unconcerned to lay down any instructions for the local authorities as
to the action they should take towards the enemy. Since, moreover,
the rural areas became so many islands surrounded by Japanese
troops, an extremely confused situation developed during the occupa-
tion. Some influential figures clearly decided to make the most of the
situation. A number of xianzhang were reported to have caused
trouble in their localities (one can only speculate on the meaning of
this); and in Tian'e county, close to the Guizhou border, minor
officials made off with Pacification Bureau supplies and joined the
local bandits.'05 In Lipu, due south of Guilin, the local population
took advantage of the new circumstances to chase off a detested
county head.'06 Nonetheless, in a number of xian there was some
resistance to the Japanese. Occasionally this seems to have been
organized by the local authorities - for example by xianzhang Xiao
Baoyu in Yishan, central Guangxi - but for the most part resistance
seems to have occurred in spite rather than because of the authori-
ties.107
In the south-east region of Guixian, for example, the well-equipped
Peace Preservation Corps (Baoan Dui) confined their hostility to
verbal assaults on the enemy and quickly fled to the southern,
unoccupied part of the county. Local communists acting under the
103. China Intelligence Secret Telegram, 17 August 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 106 3583A.
Lloyd E. Eastman, "Regional politics and the central government: Yunnan and
Chungking," in Sih (ed.), Nationalist China During the Sino-Japanese War, pp. 114-15.
A Guangxi man, though not part of the formal provincial leadership, Li Jishen, if
anything, exceeded what might be regarded as the traditional Guangxi hostility towards
Chiang Kai-shek. Li broke decisively with Chiang in January 1948 when he played an
important part in the formation of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee.
104. "Report from J. S. Service, Yenan 21 March 1945 on situation in Kwangsi," in
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1945, Vol. 7
(Washington, D.C. State Department), p. 295.
105. Huang Xuchu, "The second occupation," Pt 4, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn),
No. 92 (September 1961), p. 8.
106. Ibid. and Pt 5, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 93 (October 1961), p. 6.
107. Huang Xuchu praised Xiao for training a section of the local population and
attacking Yishan city, facilitating its early recovery. Huang Xuchu, "The second
occupation," Pt 4, p. 8 and Pt 5, p. 6.

202.43.232.187 on Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:40:04 UTC
guidance of the South-east Guangxi Anti-Japanese Gu

Committee (Guidongnan Kangri Youjiquwei) promptly
initiative, mobilizing local resistance from bases in tw
November 1944 a force of 200 had been recruited, most of whom
were poor peasants and labourers. In spite of a prevalent feeling that
to resist the Japanese was to court severe reprisals, this communist-
led force engaged enemy patrols and in early December forced the
Japanese back into Guixian city.'08
Communist activists were also at the centre of guerrilla resistance
among the people of the Rongan-Liucheng area (north central
Guangxi), many of whom were of the Miao nationality. Like other
Guangxi minorities, the Miao had little affection for the chauvinistic
local Nationalist authorities and as early as September 1938 they
forcibly opposed the government's taxation and conscription poli-
cies.109 With the rout of the Chinese regular forces in 1944 they
responded warmly to communist attempts at organizing guerrilla
resistance and by the spring of 1945 the local partisans were
successfully resisting Japanese mopping up operations."0
A different pattern of communist activity took shape in a number of
xian around Guilin. With the occupation of Lingchuan (north-west of
the provincial capital) xianzhang Qin Tingzhu led a 500-strong self-
defence force into the countryside. This, however, was something of a
tactical retreat for the leaders of this group were unprepared to remain
passive. Since, moreover, Qin had an apparently long-standing
grievance against certain members of the Guangxi Clique, he was
susceptible to the overtures of local communists who promptly
formed a propaganda unit and secured official designation as the
Lingchuan Government Political Work Team. The communists made
the running in both political and military work. They published a
mimeographed newspaper - The Masses Weekly (Qunzhong zhoubao)
- together with other propaganda materials and attempted to put the
enemy under pressure by means of sabotage, assasinations, and so
forth."' Early in 1945 it was decided to shift the focus of work south
to the Yangshuo region where according to an admittedly partisan
source, two Anti-Japanese Democratic Regimes (Kangri Minzhu
Zhengquan) were set up and the local puppet forces dealt with."2
Necessarily, the details of the foregoing account of communist
activities are drawn almost wholly from later, sympathetic sources.
Even the most favourable interpretation of the evidence, however,
fails to suggest that, in terms of the province as a whole, communist
108. Guangxi junqu zhengzhibubian, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, pp.

202-218.
109. "Canton Intelligence Report for the Year Ended 1938," P.R.O. F.O. 371
221230/F11450, p. 1.
110. Zhuangzu jianshi bianxiezu, A Short History of the Zhuang Nationality, p. 17
Guangxi junqu zhengzhibuian, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, p. 244.
111. Guangxi junqu zhengzhibubian, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, p
232.
112. Ibid. pp. 235-36.

202.43.232.187 on Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:40:04 UTC
activity was conducted on a significant scale during the occupation. It

is nonetheless worth noting that the returning Nationalist authorities
were sufficiently concerned about the situation to list the elimination
of local communist activity as a high priority during a conference
attended by 14 xian Nationalist Party secretaries."3
While they might have sustained isolated minor reverses in various
localities, the Japanese were never seriously troubled during thei
tenure of Guangxi. It was Allied pressure on the Japanese outside of
Guangxi - indeed outside of China - that occasioned their withdrawa
from the province. This was a long drawn out affair beginning as early
as February 1945 and finally completed immediately after the August
unconditional surrender. In pace with the withdrawal Huang Xuchu
endeavoured to re-establish the apparatus of local authority in th
province. The concern was naturally to ensure as swift a return to th
status quo ante as possible and a target date of 15 September 1945 was
set for the resumption of formal provincial government operations in
Guilin."4 It would be difficult, however, to overestimate the task
facing the Guangxi authorities in 1945. Material damages were
officially estimated at a value close to two thousand million yuan an
the number of dead and injured in excess of one million; but such
details have meaning only in conjunction with a brief review o
conditions in Guangxi following the Japanese withdrawal."15
Of the four major provincial cities - Guilin, Liuzhou, Nanning and
Wuzhou - the first two suffered extensively in the conflict. Th
provincial capital was unrecognizable on recovery; as a local saying
had it: "The Japanese burnt everything in Guilin - everything, that is
except the flies.""6
In Nanning, on the other hand, the recovery was marred less by the
behaviour of the departing Japanese than by a section of the newly-
arrived Chinese forces. For the most part these were non-Guangx
troops; a situation which doubtless encouraged the view that
commercial and business concerns be regarded as war booty. Many
small shipping companies were driven out of business as the military
helped themselves to goods scheduled for transport and, what was far
more serious, shipped vast quantities of rice to Kunming by plan
where it fetched a much higher price than in Guangxi."7
A similar situation developed in the more important commercia
centre of Wuzhou. Here, "special forces" ("biedongdui") were quick
to label as traitors merchants who had dealt with the Japanese and
113. Huang Xuchu, "The second occupation," Pt 4, p. 7. While admitting that there
were no "liberated areas" in Guangxi, Huang listed a number of south-east xian in the
province in which communist activity had spread from neighbouring Guangdong. See
"The second occupation," Pt 3, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 91 (August 1961
p. 9.
115. Guangxisheng zhengfu gongbao (Guangxi Provincial Government Report), 16
January 1947, p. 11.
116. Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafan, Historical Talk About Guilin, p. 141.

202.43.232.187 on Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:40:04 UTC
their premises were sealed in the name of this or that m

Usually this was a preliminary to confiscation by the un
the officers) concerned."8
The misdemeanours of the restored military author
clearly far less serious than those recorded in Shanghai,
elsewhere."9 Nanning and Wuzhou were almost shanty
comparison in terms of the rich pickings they had t
provincial authorities, moreover, promptly established g
rather than military control in the two cities, replacing
with those of the provincial government and anxious as e
local control.120 Nonetheless, the behaviour of the Natio
was hardly an auspicious beginning to the work of r
reconstruction.
Outside of the cities, Guangxi's principal overland communications
were all but wrecked as a result of the occupation. Those facilities
which escaped destruction at the hands of Allied and Japanese air
raids usually fell victim to demolition by either Chinese or Japanese
forces. With regard to both roads (where the province's achievements
were notable in the 1930s) and railways (where great efforts had been
made during the early phase of the war) vast reconstruction projects
lay ahead.
More immediately crucial, however, was the situation in large areas
of the Guangxi countryside. The margin of existence was narrow here
at the best of times, but when years of harsh taxation and conscription
culminated in the Japanese occupation it was simply swallowed up:
hundreds of thousands were driven below the poverty line into a
desperate situation. One of the worst hit areas was the north-east
which had borne the brunt of the Japanese advance. Never-
theless, the seriously affected areas cut a swathe through the
province from the north-east to the south-west: along the line,
in fact, of the Japanese advance through Guangxi west towards Indo-
China. 12
The severity of the rural crisis in the north-east especially, probably
became apparent only with the failure of the 1946 harvest. Since
farmers lacked both seeds and draught animals (many of which had
been slaughtered either by the Japanese or the returning central
government troops) there was an acute shortage of rice that year. This
in turn exacerbated the harshness and inequality of rural life as small
landlords were compelled to exchange their land and thereby their
status for grain. For those with little of tangible value to exchange,
however, starvation was avoided, or perhaps more often just delayed,

119. For the behaviour of the returning Nationalist forces in Shanghai and Canton
see Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle 1945-1949 (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 16-28.
121. Huai Xiang, Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary Clique, p. 22.

202.43.232.187 on Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:40:04 UTC
by a diet of bark and roots.'22 Inevitably, hunger was not the o

enemy: smallpox, pernicious malaria and dysentry were responsi
for many deaths among a population weakened by war, poverty
inadequate medical care.'23
In these circumstances, the primary and immediate requiremen
Guangxi (as, of course, elsewhere) was a long period of peace.
was an essential preliminary to engaging in the work of reconst
tion. It implied, moreover, not simply the absence of combat, w
Guangxi saw relatively little of and which was anyway secured by
Japanese withdrawal, but the end of military exactions, the end
"enforced submission to the 'Man with the Gun' "and all this entailed.
A further condition for genuine reconstruction was a resolution of the
conflict between the Guangxi leaders and Chiang Kai-shek. Some
form of political and economic integration with the remainder of
China was essential.
Neither of these minimum conditions for progress was secured by
the defeat of Japan. There was little significant disbandment among
Nationalist forces generally after 1945 and apparently none as far as
the main Guangxi forces were concerned. Indeed the province's two
crack armies - the Seventh and the Forty-eighth - "returned" to
Guangxi only in the closing weeks of 1949, when, having fought in
various parts of China for over 10 years, they were finally annihilated
by communist troops.'24 Almost regardless of the previous eight years,
therefore, Guangxi essentially remained a rear area after the Japanese
defeat and was soon required to support an increasingly bitter conflict
against a new enemy.
With regard to Guangxi-central government rivalry, we saw earlier
how the strains imposed by the conflict with Japan undermined the
initial reconciliation between the two sides. Although they were
united at least in principle in their opposition to communism, the
contest continued in the post-1945 period, revolving around a struggle
for political advantage and the control of financial resources. As ever,
this proved as injurious to the Nationalist cause as it did to countless
ordinary Chinese affected directly or indirectly as a result.'25
From the Guangxi point of view, the central government conveni-
ently forgot the enormous efforts of the south-west during the war,
122. Ibid. pp. 22-23. Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafan, Historical Talk About Guilin, p.
143. North Guangxi was still reported a starvation and rice shortage area in the summer
of 1947. While crop conditions elsewhere in the province were reported good, food
shortages were anticipated in south-west Guangxi. "Report to President Truman by
Lieutenant Albert C. Wedemeyer, U.S. Army," in U.S. Department of State, The China
White Paper, Vol. 2 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), pp. 797-98.
123. Huai Xiang, Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary Clique, p. 24.
124. Liang Shengjun, Jiang-Li douzheng neimu (The Hidden Struggle Between
Chiang and Li) (Hong Kong: Yalian chubanshe, 1954), pp. 197-98. Liang Shengjun,
Chise kongbuxiade Guangxi (Guangxi Under the Red Terror) (Hong Kong: Ziyou
chubanshe, 1951), p. 11.
125. The post-war struggle between the Guangxi group and Chiang Kai-shek is the
subject of Liang Shengjun, The Hidden Struggle, and Yin Shi, The Li-Chiang
Relationship and China.

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and for political reasons discriminated against the area

to the allocation of funds. The central government ha
river and then removed the bridge" (guohe zhaiqiang) as
it.126 Bai Chongxi appears to have foreseen this. A few
the Japanese surrender he resorted to solutions first at
the height of pre-war Guangxi-Nanking animosity.
meeting with an official from the British Embassy in
appealed for direct financial aid for the reconstruction
during the 1930s, also, the British politely declined to
126. The phrase is attributed to Yuan Manhong, head of the Hun

zhou Railway Bureau by Huai Xiang, Li Zongren and the Sino-Am
Clique, p. 24.
127. Chongqing to Foreign Office, 28 June 1945, P.R.O. F. 0. 371 46135/F4130.

202.43.232.187 on Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:40:04 UTC

A Province at War Guangxi During The Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1937-45

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A Province at War Guangxi During The Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1937-45

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A Province at War: Guangxi during the Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1937-45

Author(s): Graham Hutchings

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/653534

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On the 18 April 1936 General Li Zongren gave a stirring, patriotic

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Chongxi and Huang Xuchu - the "Guangxi Clique" - at

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trade official, R. H. Scott, who visited Guangxi during January and

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What is significant about these various alternatives is the

The general situation in Kwangsi is one of hope and endurance; h

That war was avoided had a great deal to do with the Ja

13. "Extract from a report of proceedings of senior naval officer, Wes

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debited to the central government. This last, of course, had the

It is generally understood that reconciliation between the central

16. Chalmers A. Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The

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regiments had been activated and were later reorganized

Another facet of the Guangxi war effort impressed a reporter with

19. Tong Ke-tong and Li Tsung-jen, Memoirs, pp. 322-24.

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but Japanese moves in Indo-China quickly undermined t

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monopoly) was an important war aim; and in November 1939 the

34. Lawrence K. Rosinger, China's Wartime Politics, 1937-1944 (Princeton:

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Young Cadres Training School - a larger equivalent of t

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leadership to forsake the Party's independence. After the outbreak

44. Ibid. p. 169.

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54. Dorn, The Sino-Japanese War, p. 296.

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loose alliance between a series of regional militarists and

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63. Sa Kongliao, Outside Guilin and Chongqing, p. 3.

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provincial autonomy and was later recognized and critici

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which themselves contributed to the downfall of mo

81. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 9 September 1943, P.R.O. F.O. 37

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By early 1944 American advances in the Pacific posed a severe

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faced considerable difficulties. Not only were the availabl

92. "Kweilin Intelligence Summary," 2 September 1944, P.R.O. W.O.

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In and around the Guangxi capital, however, considerable effort

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blowing up bridges and mining roads in order to frust

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south, talk of "cutting loose" acquired a new seriousness. A key figure

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guidance of the South-east Guangxi Anti-Japanese Gu

108. Guangxi junqu zhengzhibubian, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, pp.

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activity was conducted on a significant scale during the occupation. It