Editing Second Sino-Japanese War (section)

===Communist resistance===
After their victory at Wuhan, Japan advanced deep into Communist territory and redeployed 50,000 troops to the [[Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region]]. Elements of the Eighth Route Army soon attacked the advancing Japanese, inflicting between 3,000 and 5,000 casualties and resulting in a Japanese retreat.<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|pages=122–124}} The Eighth Route Army carried out guerilla operations and established military and political bases.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|pages=34–35}} As the Japanese military came to understand that the Communists avoided conventional attacks and defense, it altered its tactics.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|122}} The Japanese military built more roads to quicken movement between strongpoints and cities, blockaded rivers and roads in an effort to disrupt Communists supply, sought to expand militia from its puppet regime to conserve manpower, and use systematic violence on civilians in the Border Region in an effort to destroy its economy. The Japanese military mandated confiscation of the Eighth Route Army's goods and used this directive as a pretext to confiscate goods, including engaging in grave robbery in the Border Region.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|122–124}}

With Japanese casualties and costs mounting, the Imperial General Headquarters attempted to break Chinese resistance by ordering the [[Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service]] and [[Imperial Japanese Army Air Service]] to launch the war's first [[Strategic bombing during World War II#Japanese bombing|massive air raids]] on civilian targets. Japanese raiders hit the Kuomintang's newly established [[Bombing of Chongqing|provisional capital of Chongqing]] and most other major cities in unoccupied China, leaving many people either dead, injured, or homeless.