I do not mean to run down the Flying Tigers or those Chinese troops that fought alongside Merril's Maruaders at Mytchkina (sp?), for example. All I'm saying is that lives and treasure were expended (opening the Ledo Road, Flying the Hump, Keeping the 14th Air Force supplied, etc)on a scale that far outweighed the Chinese contribution to the overall fighting.
China served best as a magnet for Japanese troops and materiel that would have gone elsewhere.
Chiang played Roosevelt like a fiddle, getting the money, supplies and other aid that he artfully avaoided using against the Japsanese. He instead used it against the Commies, and look where it got him? The fact is that the Chinese Army was rife with corruption, staffed by political cronies and ineffective officers and served mainly by standing in front of the Japanese who had to station troops to merely watch them.
Over 2 million Japanese troops were still in China in August of 1945. No Chinese troops were in Japan, or anyplace else for that matter.
"Over 2 million Japanese troops were still in China in August of 1945. No Chinese troops were in Japan, or anyplace else for that matter."
Theres quite a lot of wrong facts, and poor deductions, amid a few canny observations in your anti-China tirade, but I just wanted to correct one of the most glaring ones. Your completly flawed analysis of the Chinese role in WW2.
WW2 for China didn't begin in 1941 but rather 1937. The initial years of the second Sino-Japanese war were the bloodiest, however after 1939, the China front had more or less stabilized to a degree with the Japanese lacking the manpower or logistical depth to carry the invasion further and the Chinese lacking the firepower to recover occupied territories. To say that Chiang completly avoided fighting the Japanese is somewhat inaccurate, in fact I could say that you are buying into Communist propaganda. The Nationalist army took part in dozens of major actions against the IJA, beginning with one of the most prominent engagements during the battle of Shanghai. The allegations that Chiang was more or less content to wait out the Japanese are only accurate after 1942 when the U.S. had entered the war. Knowing that Japan would ultimately be defeated, why bother wasting your men and material when you knew that you would have another war with the communists at hand afterwards?
The U.S. had begun the process of supply China with war materials by early 1941 but the fact of the matter was when the U.S. entered the war in December, the China front was not a priority and thus received far fewer material than was earmarked for Europe. Your criticism is true, but you fail to note just how little supplies China actually received. Following 1942 and the closing down of the Burma road, all supplies had to be flown past the hump. The airlift capabilities within India were limited by the number of available transport aircraft and so the result was that even the relatively small amount of supplies destined for China proved undeliverable, with much of it simply lieing in wait at depots in India.
You are correct that the primary aim of U.S. vis-a-vis the China front was to keep as many Japanese soldiers occupied as possible while preparing for an invasion of the home islands. Of course the atomic bomb rendered such a plan moot. However, to use this fact to dismiss the Chinese war effort is ridiculous because it dismisses the years of warfare prior to this period. Japan had taken over a million casualties in China and millions of Chinese both soldiers and civilian paid with their lives.
P.S. The reason that I quoted that particular sentence is because you completly forget the Chinese presence in the SE Asia front. X-force were the original Chinese divisions present that withdrew into India by 1942, Y-force were the Yunnan divisions that linked up with British forces and drove the Japanese out of Burma.