Though Mao deluded some Americans into supposing that his guerrillas were making war effectively, for much of the conflict he maintained a tacit truce with the Japanese, and indeed became secret partners with them in the opium trade. While the Nationalists recorded 3.2 million military casualties during the Japanese occupation, the communists acknowledged only 580,000. Latterly, Chiang devoted as much military energy to holding his ground against Mao as to fighting the Japanese. He was unembarrassed by his own equivocations. He said: “The Japanese are a disease of the skin; the communists are
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