Rural areas feared the depredations of the Nationalist army at least as much as those of the Japanese. Peasants had a saying: “Bandits come and go. Soldiers come and stay.” Modern Chinese historians argue, however, that the fact that their own people inflicted atrocities upon each other was, and remains, a domestic matter of no rightful concern to foreigners; that nothing done by Chiang or Mao mitigates the crimes of the Japanese.
