p Under the impression of Red Army victories and the collapse of Hitler’s Reich, Japan’s number one war ally, the national liberation struggle expanded swiftly in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

p In Vietnam, guerrilla units merged into armies of liberation 257 and national salvation, which mounted extensive operations against the Japanese occupation forces in the end of 1944 and the early months of 1945. A Provisional People’s Committee, the nominal government of the rapidly expanding liberated areas, was formed on June 4, 1945, with control over six of the country’s provinces with a population of more than one million.  [257•1 

p In Burma, the prominent liberation fighter, Aung San, became chairman of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League in August 1944. On March 27, 1945, the League headed a popular armed uprising—a decisive factor that aided the British troops, jointly with the insurgents, to clear the country of the Japanese. In the Philippines the guerrilla liberation army, Hukbalahap, fought with eminent success, easing the US landing and defeat of the Japanese occupation forces. Major-General Decker, US 6th Army Ghief-of-Staff, heaped praise on the Hukbalahap for being "one of the best fighting units" he had ever known.  [257•2  Extensive guerrilla fighting erupted in Malaya in 1944, led by the Anti-Japanese Union, which formed an Anti-Japanese Army of Malaya. The three nationalities—Malayans, Chinese and Indians — fought shoulder to shoulder in its ranks. The three stars on the flag of that army of peasants, workers and men of the national ’bourgeoisie, symbolised the wartime unity of these nationalities.

p People in Indonesia and Korea also rose up against the occupation forces.

p The Chinese people fought on heroically against the imperialist invader. The Eighth and New Fourth armies, and the partisans, were highly active. Regular troops operated in the first half of 1945 chiefly in the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei area, but the main form of combat was guerrilla warfare, which spread to most parts of the country.

p In 1944 and 1945 the Kuomintang armies were still suffering heavy losses, conceding to the enemy much territory and many important strategic points. A large-scale Japanese offensive in the summer of 1944 in Hunan and along the Canton-Hankow railway rolled across all Hunan Province and extended Japan’s control over Central China.

p From Peking to Canton the Japanese were in control, with the seaboard and its at least 100,000,000 population totally in their hands. The Kuomintang Government was denied a considerable portion of the nation’s food sources, raw materials, the manufacturing industry, railways and motorroads, and inland waterways. By the summer of 1945, out of the country’s 11,000 kilometres of railway track (figure for 1937) the Kuomintang was in control of but 1,100.  [258•1  Casualties climbed to over 1,100,000 dead, wounded and captured with the heavy loss in lives traceable to mass desertions of the demoralised Kuomintang troops in face of the Japanese.  [258•2  Many Kuomintang generals went over to serve the invaders.

p Yet, despite the sweeping Japanese advances, Kuomintang China was deterred from surrendering by the Red Army victories in Europe, which had pushed the fascist blqc to the brink. Besides, the US and British governments objected strongly to Chiang Kai-shek’s toying with the idea of surrender. The US imperialists made the most of the Kuomintang’s difficulties: American monopolies became highly active in China in 1944. US Vice-President Henry Wallace, who visited China that^year, and a special mission headed by Donald Nelson, Gfiairman of the War Production Board, which came in the autumn, studied “opportunities” for US Capital.

p Washington asked the Kuomintang regime to grant US monopolies the key heights in the economy. A series of agreements was drafted in 1944, and soon signed, granting US interests extensive room for colonial-style exploitation.

p The turning of the scales in the Second World War, effected by the Red Army, was, however, utilised by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. While Chiang Kai-shek’s troops conceded the country’s most important regions to the enemy, suffering ignoble defeats and heavy losses, the People’s Army made significant advances, although Japan’s main forces in China were massed against it. Much territory was cleared in the course of 1944. At the beginning of the following year there were 19 liberated areas, stretching from Inner Mongolia in the north to Hainan in the south, with a population of some 95,500,000. Against them operated 56 per cent of the enemy troops and 95 per cent of the Nanking puppet 259 government’s armies, totalling over 800,000, of which a large portion consisted of former Kuomintang troops who had gone over to the enemy with their generals.  [259•1 

Nothing but Soviet aid could save China from colonial enslavement—if not by Japan, then by some other imperialist power.