Forgotten Ally

China's World War II, 1937-1945

Rana Mitter, 2013


An interesting book about a complex subject. What does a war history have to do with Server Sky?

This book is primarily about Nationalist China's war, led by Chiang Kai-shek, pitched battles by large armies against the more modern and better equipped Japanese. Chiang was flawed - like many WW II leaders, his personality was larger than his skills, and he made many mistakes and permitted many others. Chiang is contrasted with Nationalist defector Wang Jingwei, who defected to the Japanese and formed a puppet government in Shanghai in 1939. Less is said about Mao Zedong, forming a guerilla network in Northern China while taking personal control of the Chinese Communist Party.

The book suggests that the CCP armies were not expended in battle the way the Nationalists were. Instead of throwing waves of soldiers and large weapons at the Japanese, the CCP used guerilla warfare to confine the Japanese to camps, cities, and the railroads that connected them. The CCP could operate far more autonomously, and did not rely on supplies of weapons and materiel from the Russians and Americans as Chiang's Nationalists did. Both strategies, plus the American strategy of technological warfare against Japan and the Russian attack through Manchuria, were all needed to stop the Japanese war. However, the CCP came out of the war stronger, far more integrated with the people, while Chiang's war decimated army and people.

MORE LATER: Breaching the Yellow River dikes in 1938 Xiong Xianyu 8th Division Huayuankao 2000 diggers, no explosives, 2000 yuan/worker if by midnight June 8 54000 km2 inundated, Henan, Anhui Jiangsu 844K dead, 4.8M refugees. Slowed war by 6 months, permitting the evacuation of Wuhan.

So, the strong CCP vanquished the fatally weakened Nationalists. Sadly, they almost erased the history of the Nationalist contribution. Fortunately, as China and the CCP have matured into a modern society, they are preserving and glorifying the positive contributions of the Nationalists who, underneath all the corruption and bungling, were also working towards a modern China.

The west excoriated Nationalist China for weakness and corruption. General Joe Stilwell, an incompetent gloryhound who kept most of America's lend-lease material for his own projects, and traded a tiny fraction of it for hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers to waste in futile battles, is the poster boy for American stupidity and the long term damage this did to American/Chinese relations.

Modern China could have formed out of the Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s, but interference by the West, primarily the British, suppressed this revolution. China lost another half-century to the Qing dynasty, while Japan modernized. The first Chinese Republic took power under Sun Yat Sen on February 12, 1912, years after Japan had already begun its territorial expansion. The Chinese were building rails, and factories, and beginning the long haul towards modernization, when the Japanese conquered Manchuria in 1931, and began the conquest of the rest of China in 1937.

China was attempting to make a leap from medieval feudalism to late 19th century technology, reforming government, technology, public education, public health ... a 400 year leap, which they might have made by 1950 without external interference. China was dominated by western traders, but was developing strong ties to Russia. Something like the modern synthesis of "communism with Chinese characteristics" might have emerged under the name of Chinese Republicanism by that time, growing into the modern "international China" 20 years earlier, perhaps reducing its dependence on strong-man rulers like Chiang and Mao. The Chinese still have not mastered pluralism (their new society is still too fragile), but I expect them to develop the world's most pluralistic society in a shorter timespan than the West needed to develop its multipolar systems. A pluralistic society requires a broadly educated and prosperous citizenry, and may be the natural consequence of that. When China focuses its attention on schools rather than export factories, it will grow into the light of the world - if India does not grow faster.

And this is why China matters for Server Sky. It would be totally inappropriate, not to mention stupid and tactically unwise, to attempt to impose or even offer to supply a western model for China. The model that China is developing itself will, in time, be more suitable for adoption by the west. What Server Sky can offer is the technology for the development of the Next China, connected to the world and an equal partner with other connections, interchanging wisdom as a durable capital resource, while showing everyone worldwide that what is good and possible anywhere is exportable everywhere. In particular, it seems that western China is being left behind eastern coastal China, with its smelly factories and strong ties to US corporations and global export. Perhaps western China can develop a different version of Chinese prosperity, less dependent on resource depletion, based instead on the enduring cultural values that have sustained China for millennia. Perhaps next-generation Chinese factories will fit in a window box, powered by sunlight and rainfall, connected to a solar system full of computation. With a wave of an educated hand, next-generation Chinese will provide prosperity and wisdom for their children, and children worldwide. I don't know precisely how that will happen, but I can count on a billion smart Chinese to figure it out for me.