THE THREE YEARS BETWEEN the fall of Wuhan in late 1938 and Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941 may at first glance give the appearance of a stalemate in the history of the Sino-Japanese War. It is true that the three major parties settled in for a long war, a strategy acknowledged by both Chiang and Mao. But there was nothing calm or stable about China’s situation during those three years. For a start, China had to fight practically alone without any assurance that help from the outside world would be forthcoming. It took massive military commitments on all sides to maintain a division
