Hundred Regiments Offensive
백단대전
The offensive of 20 August 1940 to January 1941 in which 105 regiments of the Eighth Route Army under Peng Dehuai attacked Japanese-held railways, roads and mines in north China. Cutting communications above all along the Zhengding–Taiyuan railway and shutting the Jingxing coal mines for six months, it was the largest Communist offensive of the war with Japan. The Japanese retaliated with the Three Alls campaigns, and Mao later criticised the offensive and made it one of the pretexts for Peng’s purge.
In depth
In 1939–1940 the Japanese pressed the north China bases with the “cage policy” of cutting them apart with railways, roads and blockhouses and with over a hundred mopping-up operations, while calls for peace grew within the Kuomintang. Peng Dehuai first planned the offensive with twenty regiments, but regiments of the 115th, 129th and 120th Divisions joined one after another until there were over eighty by 22 August and 105 in the end. The offensive went through three phases: wrecking railways, attacking strongpoints and repelling the Japanese counter-attack.
Its results differ by record. Eighth Route Army reports claim over twenty thousand Japanese and puppet troops killed or wounded and hundreds to thousands of strongpoints taken; Western sources give 20,900 Japanese and about 20,000 puppet casualties. The Chinese side claimed 474 kilometres of railway and 1,502 kilometres of road destroyed, while Japanese records list damage to 73 bridges and 20 stations.
Its assessment shifted with politics. In December 1940 Mao wanted the offensive’s impact used for propaganda against Chiang’s anti-Communist drive, but later held that it had exposed the army’s strength and provoked Japanese reprisals. At Lushan in 1959 and in the Cultural Revolution it became a charge that Peng had launched an adventurist offensive without the centre’s approval; since the Cultural Revolution it has again been viewed favourably in China.