Editing Shanxi (section)

===War with Japan and the Chinese Civil War (1937–1949)===
The [[Marco Polo Bridge Incident]] in July 1937 led the [[Imperial Japanese Armed Forces]] to invade China, and Shanxi was one of the first areas the Japanese attacked. When it became clear to Yan that his forces might not be successful in repelling the [[Imperial Japanese Army]], he invited Communist military forces to re-enter Shanxi. [[Zhu De]] became the commander of the [[Eighth Route Army]] active in Shanxi and was named the vice-commander of the Second War Zone, under Yan himself. Yan initially responded warmly to the re-entry of the arrival of Communist forces, and they were greeted with enthusiasm by Yan's officials and officers. Communist forces arrived in Shanxi just in time to help defeat a decisively more powerful Japanese force attempting to move through the strategic [[Pingxing Pass]]. The [[Battle of Pingxingguan]] was the largest battle won by the Communists against the Japanese.<ref name="Warlord263-4">Gillin, Donald G. ''Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949''.  Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. pp.&nbsp;263–264</ref>

After the Japanese responded to this defeat by outflanking the defenders and moving towards [[Taiyuan]], the Communists avoided decisive battles and mostly attempted to harass Japanese forces and sabotage Japanese lines of supply and communication. The Japanese suffered, but mostly ignored the Eighth Route Army and continued to advance towards Yan's capital. The lack of attention directed at their forces gave the Communists time to recruit and propagandize among the local peasant populations (who generally welcomed Communist forces enthusiastically) and to organize a network of militia units, local guerrilla bands and popular mass organizations.<ref name="Warlord263-4"/>

Genuine Communist efforts to resist the Japanese gave them the authority to carry out sweeping and radical social and economic reforms, mostly related to land and wealth redistribution, which they defended by labeling those who resisted as ''[[Hanjian]]''. Communist efforts to resist the Japanese also won over Shanxi's small population of patriotic intellectuals, and conservative fears of resisting them effectively gave the Communists unlimited access to the rural population. Subsequent atrocities committed by the Japanese in the effort to rid Shanxi of Communist guerrillas aroused the hatred of millions in the Shanxi countryside, causing the rural population to turn to the Communists for leadership against the Japanese. All of these factors explain how, within a year of re-entering Shanxi, the Communists were able to take control of most of Shanxi not firmly held by the Japanese.<ref>Gillin, Donald G. ''Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949''.  Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. p.271</ref>

[[File:Chinese troops marching in Xinkou.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Chinese troops marching to defend the mountain pass at Xinkou.]]
During the [[Battle of Xinkou]], the Chinese defenders resisted the efforts of Japan's elite [[Seishirō Itagaki|Itakagi Division]] for over a month, despite Japanese advantages in artillery and air support. By the end of October 1937, Japan's losses were four times greater than those suffered at Pingxingguan, and the Itakagi Division was close to defeat. Contemporary Communist accounts called the battle "the most fierce in North China", while Japanese accounts called the battle a "stalemate". In an effort to save their forces at Xinkou, Japanese forces began an effort to occupy Shanxi from a second direction, in the east. After a week of fighting, Japanese forces captured the strategic [[Niangzi Pass]], opening the way to capturing Taiyuan. Communist guerrilla tactics were ineffective in slowing down the Japanese advance. The defenders at Xinkou, realizing that they were in danger of being outflanked, withdrew southward, past Taiyuan, leaving a small force of 6,000 men to hold off the entire Japanese army. A representative of the Japanese Army, speaking of [[Battle of Taiyuan|the final defense of Taiyuan]], said that "nowhere in China have the Chinese fought so obstinately".<ref>Gillin, Donald G. ''Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949''.  Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. p. 272–273</ref>

The Japanese suffered 30,000 dead and an equal number wounded in their effort to take northern Shanxi. A Japanese study found that the battles of Pingxingguan, Xinkou, and Taiyuan were responsible for over half of all the casualties suffered by the Japanese army in North China. Yan himself was forced to withdraw after having 90% of his army destroyed, including a large force of reinforcements sent into Shanxi by the central government. Throughout 1937, numerous high-ranking Communist leaders, including [[Mao Zedong]], lavished praise on Yan for waging an uncompromising campaign of resistance against the Japanese. Possibly because of the severity of his losses in northern Shanxi, Yan abandoned a plan of defense based on positional warfare, and began to reform his army as a force capable of waging guerrilla warfare. After 1938 most of Yan's followers came to refer to his regime as a "guerrilla administration".<ref>Gillin, Donald G. ''Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949''. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. pp.273–275, 279</ref>

After the [[surrender of Japan]] and the end of the [[Second World War]], [[Yan Xishan]] was notable for his ability to recruit thousands of Japanese soldiers stationed in northwest Shanxi in 1945, including their commanding officers, into his army. By recruiting the Japanese into his service in the manner that he did, he retained both the extensive industrial complex around Taiyuan and virtually all of the managerial and technical personnel employed by the Japanese to run it. Yan was so successful in convincing surrendered Japanese to work for him that, as word spread to other areas of north China, Japanese soldiers from those areas began to converge on Taiyuan to serve his government and army. At its greatest strength the Japanese "special forces" under Yan totaled 15,000 troops, plus an officer corps that was distributed throughout Yan's army. These numbers were reduced to 10,000 after serious American efforts to repatriate the Japanese were partially successful. Yan's Japanese army was instrumental in helping him to retain control of most of northern Shanxi during much of the subsequent [[Chinese Civil War]], but by 1949 casualties had reduced the number of Japanese soldiers under Yan's command to 3,000. The leader of the Japanese under Yan's command, Hosaku Imamura, committed suicide on the day that Taiyuan fell to Communist forces.<ref>Gillin, Donald G. and Etter, Charles. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2055515 "Staying On: Japanese Soldiers and Civilians in China, 1945–1949."] ''The Journal of Asian Studies''. Vol. 42, No. 3, May, 1983. Retrieved February 23, 2011. pp.506–508</ref>

Yan Xishan himself (along with most of the provincial treasury) was airlifted out of Taiyuan in March 1949. Shortly afterwards [[Republic of China Air Force]] planes stopped dropping food and supplies for the defenders due to fears of being shot down by the advancing Communists.<ref>Gillin, Donald G. ''Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949''. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. p.288.</ref> The [[People's Liberation Army]], depending largely on their reinforcements of artillery, launched a major assault on April 20, 1949, and succeeded in taking all positions surrounding Taiyuan by April 22. A subsequent appeal to the defenders to surrender was refused. On the morning of April 22, 1949, the PLA bombarded Taiyuan with 1,300 pieces of artillery and breached the city's walls, initiating bloody street-to-street fighting for control of the city. At 10:00 am, April 22, the [[Taiyuan Campaign]] ended with the Communists in complete control of Shanxi. Total Nationalist casualties amounted to all 145,000 defenders, many of whom were taken as POWs. The Communists lost 45,000 men and an unknown number of civilian laborers they had drafted, all of whom were either killed or injured.<ref name="Spence488">[[jonathan Spence|Spence, Jonathan D.]] ''[[The Search for Modern China]]'', [[W.W. Norton and Company]]. 1999. p.488</ref>

The fall of Taiyuan was one of the few examples in the Chinese Civil War in which Nationalist forces echoed the defeated [[Southern Ming|Ming loyalists]] who had, in the 17th century, brought entire cities to ruins resisting the invading Manchus. Many Nationalist officers were reported to have committed suicide when the city fell. The dead included Yan's nephew-in-law, who was serving as governor, and his cousin, who ran his household. [[Liang Huazhi]], the head of Yan's "Patriotic Sacrifice League", had fought for years against the Communists in Shanxi until he was finally trapped in the massively fortified city of Taiyuan. For six months Liang put up a fierce resistance, leading both Yan's remaining [[Republic of China Army]] forces and his thousands of Japanese mercenaries. When Communist troops finally broke into the city and began to occupy large sections of it, Liang barricaded himself inside a large, fortified prison complex filled with Communist prisoners. In a final act of desperation, Liang set fire to the prison and committed suicide as the entire compound burned to the ground.<ref name="Spence488"/>