hich received substantial military aid, training and political advice from the Soviets. After Sun's death, Chiang emerged as the leader of the Kuomintang. According to Kennan (1960), "by the mid-Twenties, it [CCP] achieved a certain degree of ideological unity, but it remained weak and without mass support" (p. 268). After some success in quelling warlords during his Northern Expedition of 1926-1928, Chiang turned against the Communists, few of whom survived massacres in Shanghai and Canton and a series of punitive expeditions (1930-1934) which forced the survivors to undergo the hardships of the Long March (1934-1935). Meanwhile, China faced a mortal challenge, the seizure by Japan of Manchuria in 1931, of chunks of northeastern China in 1933-1936 and full-scale Japanese invasion after the Incident at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing in July 1937. Even though he promised to form a united front [with the Communists] against the Japanese after he was kidnapped by Marshal Chang Hsueh-ling in Sian in December 1936, Chiang then and later made a much stronger effort to exterminate the Communists than to defend China against Japan. As he explained, "the Japanese are an affliction of the skin, the Communists a disease of the heart" (Morwood, 1980, p. 184).
The Americans, Chiang and the CCP (1937-1945)
Ever since it had enunciated its Open Door policy at the turn of the century, the United States had supported the territorial and political integrity of China and opposed diplomatically its dismemberment by European powers and Japan. However, even as successive Japanese governments increased their pressure on and depredations in China in the 1930s, American "policy continued to reflect the view that China was not important enough to risk embroilment with Japan" (Tsou, 1963, p. 15). In 1937-1938, Japanese forces captured most of Eastern China, including all its industrial centers and its most fertile farmland. Japanese atrocities such as...