It was at Yanan that Mao, in the ongoing struggle for survival against continuing attacks from Chiang's Nationalists, developed his military skills as a strategist and tactician. That Mao was able to do so was largely explained by a factor that dominated the Chinese situation until 1945 - the occupation of China by Japan.
In 1931, as a first step towards a massive expansion into Asia, Japan had seized the northern region of Manchuria which was renamed Manchuguo. From this base the Japanese forces began to spread out into other parts of China. In 1937, the occupation became a full-scale Sino-Japanese war which continued until Japan's defeat in 1945.
Chiang Kaishek was slow to respond to the Japanese action. The CCP exploited this by asserting that they, not the Nationalists, were the true defenders of China against the Japanese. The Communists both exaggerated their own contribution to China's anti-Japanese struggle and understated that of the Nationalists, who did the bulk of the fighting. Nevertheless, since Chiang's primary aim throughout was to crush the Communists, it appeared that he was not fully committed in his resistance to Japan. Ironically, as Mao later admitted, the Japanese occupation was the saving of the Chinese Communists. The Japanese, by diverting Chiang away from his main objective of destroying the CCP's bases, unwittingly enabled the Communists to survive.
World History
