Over the next three years the 250,000 troops in the Communist bases in north China were subjected to a wrenching assault by 150,000 men of the NCAA assisted by 100,000 Chinese collaborator troops. Rather than launching raids and then leaving, the Japanese army would destroy whole villages, ruin local crops, and confiscate grain stores; then they would return repeatedly to make sure that no resistance could spring up again. Communist sources admitted that the population of the base areas shrank from some 44 million to 25 million people, and there were large numbers of desertions from the
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