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> From 1937 to 1945, there were 23 battles where both sides employed at least a regiment each. Communist guerilla armies tend not to deploy regiments regularly

> From 1937 to 1945, there were 23 battles where both sides employed at least a regiment each. Communist guerilla armies tend not to deploy regiments regularly. Mao discusses this in "On Guerilla Warfare". The NLF in Vietnam, the 26th of July movement in Cuba etc. we're not big on regiments. Vietnamization and US withdrawal from Vietnam happened without much regiment deployment (other than the Tet offensive and a handful of other occasions). The guerilla tactics were fairly effective though. "Guerrilla armies should fight like large, well funded armies" is a very old complaint that has been made. I'm sure the British and loyalists used it against George Washington.

bpodgursky 5y ago
If you look at the article, there's plenty more to make it clear the communists did no pulling: > The only time it participated, it sent a mere 1,000 to 1,500 men, and then only as a security detachment on one of the flanks.There were 1,117 significant engagements on a scale smaller than a regular battle, but the CCP fought in only one. Of the approximately 40,000 skirmishes, just 200 were fought by the CCP, or 0.5 percent.” and > Specifically, in January 1940 Zhou Enlai sent a secret report to Joseph Stalin which said that over a million Chinese had died fighting the Japanese through the summer of 1939. He further admitted that only 3 percent of those were CCP forces. Also, guerilla tactics are effective when the enemy is not willing to exterminate the enemy population. The Japanese absolutely were. > I'm sure the British and loyalists used it against George Washington. This is kinda overwrought. The US continental army did refrain from some continental-style line-up-and-shoot "tactics", but outside the south they engaged mostly in pitched battles. They didn't win by sniping redcoats here and there.
- yorwba 5y ago
  > The only time it participated, it sent a mere 1,000 to 1,500 men, and then only as a security detachment on one of the flanks.There were 1,117 significant engagements on a scale smaller than a regular battle, but the CCP fought in only one. Of the approximately 40,000 skirmishes, just 200 were fought by the CCP, or 0.5 percent.” This is implausible, considering the Eighth Route Army (counted as the 18th Group Army by the Nationalists), which participated in e.g. the Battle of Taiyuan, started out with more than 30,000 soldiers and grew to several hundreds of thousands over the course of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Route_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Route_Army The only way you could come to the conclusion that the Communists only fought once is if you tried to assign all soldiers to either Nationalists or Communists, and discounted all Communist forces fighting as part of the United Front, which officially placed them under Nationalist command.

bpodgursky 5y ago

If you look at the article, there's plenty more to make it clear the communists did no pulling: > The only time it participated, it sent a mere 1,000 to 1,500 men, and then only as a security detachment on one of the flanks.There were 1,117 significant engagements on a scale smaller than a regular battle, but the CCP fought in only one. Of the approximately 40,000 skirmishes, just 200 were fought by the CCP, or 0.5 percent.” and > Specifically, in January 1940 Zhou Enlai sent a secret report to Joseph Stalin which said that over a million Chinese had died fighting the Japanese through the summer of 1939. He further admitted that only 3 percent of those were CCP forces. Also, guerilla tactics are effective when the enemy is not willing to exterminate the enemy population. The Japanese absolutely were. > I'm sure the British and loyalists used it against George Washington. This is kinda overwrought. The US continental army did refrain from some continental-style line-up-and-shoot "tactics", but outside the south they engaged mostly in pitched battles. They didn't win by sniping redcoats here and there.

yorwba 5y ago
> The only time it participated, it sent a mere 1,000 to 1,500 men, and then only as a security detachment on one of the flanks.There were 1,117 significant engagements on a scale smaller than a regular battle, but the CCP fought in only one. Of the approximately 40,000 skirmishes, just 200 were fought by the CCP, or 0.5 percent.” This is implausible, considering the Eighth Route Army (counted as the 18th Group Army by the Nationalists), which participated in e.g. the Battle of Taiyuan, started out with more than 30,000 soldiers and grew to several hundreds of thousands over the course of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Route_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Route_Army The only way you could come to the conclusion that the Communists only fought once is if you tried to assign all soldiers to either Nationalists or Communists, and discounted all Communist forces fighting as part of the United Front, which officially placed them under Nationalist command.