Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945

by Rana Mitter

The loss of Xuzhou was both strategic and symbolic. Its fall marked another terrible blow to Chiang’s attempt to hold central China and control the transportation of troops in the region. Morale, built up so suddenly by the Taierzhuang victory, was now battered again, though it did not collapse. The fall of Xuzhou was also a sign, if one supported the resistance, that the war would be a long one and that a swift victory against Japan was no longer a possibility. Mao Zedong’s Yan’an base area was many hundreds of kilometers northwest of Xuzhou, but he understood the meaning of defeat there. In May 1938 he gave one of his most celebrated lectures, “On Protracted War,” in which he chided those who had been overly optimistic: “After the Taierzhuang victory, some people maintained that the Xuzhou campaign should be fought as a ‘quasi-decisive campaign’ and that the previous policy of protracted war should be changed.” Such people had been made “giddy” by Taierzhuang. Mao had no doubts that China would ultimately prevail (he could hardly say otherwise), but “it cannot win quickly, and the War of Resistance will be a protracted war.”26 In the meantime, the development of guerrilla warfare was an essential part of the long-term strategy, which the Communist armies would seek to develop in north China.