Chapter 2 The Burma Road is closed, and China's foreign aid is cut off

On July 17, 1940, succumbing to the pressure of Japanese fascism, the British government signed an agreement with Japan to close the Burma Road for three months from 6:00 p.m. on July 18.This undoubtedly made things worse for China, which was already extremely difficult in the War of Resistance. The Yunnan-Burma Highway starts from Kunming and passes through Lufeng, Chuxiong, Nanhua, Xiangyun, Xiaguan, Yangbi, Yongping, Baoshan, Mangshi to Wanding.It crosses the Yangbi River, Lancang River, and Nujiang River, crosses Yunling, Nushan, Gaoligong Mountains and other Hengduan Mountains, and the Rift Valley in western Yunnan, and connects with the Myanmar Highway to Wanding.The Yunnan-Burma Highway was the lifeline that maintained the entire War of Resistance. In a sense, it can be said that without the Burma Road, there would have been no victory in the War of Resistance in 1945.

After the July 7th Incident, the Japanese army quickly occupied the Beijing-Tianjin region in northern China, and the central, eastern and southern regions of China including Guangdong, Hankou, Shanghai, Nanjing and other important cities in the south. China's major cities, 95% of the industry, 50 % of the population fell under the iron heel of the Japanese invaders.More importantly, almost all ports along the coast of China fell into the hands of the Japanese.After the Battle of Wuhan, China and Japan entered a stalemate of war.The war turned into a war of attrition.For China, the problem of material supply is becoming extremely serious at this time.

When overseas Chinese living abroad learned that their motherland was invaded by Japan, they donated money and materials one after another, raising a large number of urgently needed medicines, cotton yarn, automobiles and other materials in China.Due to the grim situation of resisting Japanese aggression and saving the nation, the government also used extremely precious foreign exchange to purchase a large amount of automobiles, oil, and arms from the West.These materials need to be transported back home urgently.China urgently needs a safe international transportation channel. As early as 1935, Chiang Kai-shek predicted that once war broke out, it would be impossible for the Chinese army to defend the cities in the eastern coastal areas and inland plains, and the Nationalist government would eventually retreat to the west.

The Chinese government began to build the Burma Road in 1938 in consideration of the possible crisis.The highway is connected to the Central Railway of Myanmar and directly runs through the port of Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. The difficulty in building the Yunnan-Burma Highway lies in the fact that 80% of the sections of the road pass by are steep mountains.Due to the increasingly urgent situation of the Anti-Japanese War, many sections of the Yunnan-Burma Highway had to be constructed while surveying.There was a shortage of experienced engineers and technicians before the war, and this problem became more acute after the start of the Anti-Japanese War.What's more, the Yunnan-Burma Highway will pass through the "miasma" epidemic area in the Yunnan border area, which has become a big problem in recruiting engineering and technical personnel.

The Yunnan-Burma Highway General Engineering Office trained some educated young people living in Kunming to learn geography and geology in a short period of time, and learned how to speed up the progress of road projects, use gravel to level the road surface, and slowly draw a curve A series of courses such as forming a straight line, reducing sharp bends and steep slopes, improving drainage systems, and how to build bridges with a load capacity of no less than 10 tons.This kind of crash training is amazing.But in that time of urgency, the young people with high enthusiasm for the war of resistance had amazing learning efficiency. They honed into technical backbones in the construction of the Burma Road and created miracles on the Burma Road.Groups of technicians crossed the enemy-occupied areas, ventured across the Japanese blockade, and traveled long distances in the mountainous areas of Hunan, Guizhou, and Yunnan to Kunming.Many people spent all their money on the way, pawning their luggage and clothes all the way to Kunming; some people died during the journey due to exhaustion and weakness.

Another very obvious difficulty is the lack of mechanical equipment, which makes the project more dependent on the manual operation of tens of thousands of laborers.Because of time constraints and the deteriorating situation of the war, the initial construction work had to use the most primitive methods.On almost all sections of the road, the laborers used the back baskets they brought from home to carry dirt and stones.On the road section as long as 959.4 kilometers, most of them operate in this way like ants moving. At the end of 1937, about 200,000 laborers from nearly 30 counties along the Burma Road were conscripted to work on the road.Most of these people are the elderly, women and children, and most of them were conscripted into the army because they were young and middle-aged.This may be the most peculiar road-building army in the world, and they come from different nationalities.They wear clothes made of blue homespun cloth, and only a few of them are strong laborers. The children bring their own dogs, chickens and small parrots with long tails.In Dai areas, those children who come to work with adults also bring monkeys.

Due to the urgency of the construction task, the national government put forward the policy of "seeking connectivity first, and then seeking improvement" for the Burma Road.It was strictly ordered that the counties along the highway must start construction before the end of 1937, and a simple highway that could barely open to traffic should be built within three months. At the end of August 1938, after the hard work of 200,000 people, the Burma Highway, which attracted the attention of the whole of China and even the world, was finally opened to traffic. On September 2, "Yunnan Daily" published an editorial titled "The Yunnan-Burma Highway Completed".At that time, almost all newspapers in the Kuomintang-controlled area reported this extremely encouraging news, which also shocked the whole world.The U.S. ambassador to China said after going to Chongqing via the Yunnan-Burma Highway: The Chinese government was able to complete this arduous project in a short period of time. This kind of courage and spirit is really admirable.Moreover, the material conditions for the construction of the Burma Road were extremely lacking. First, there was a lack of machinery, and second, it was purely manpower development.It all depends on the hard-working spirit of the people along the way, which is beyond the reach of any nation in the world.

Scholar Wang Li said: In the process of building the Burma Highway in western Yunnan, a large number of laborers made arduous efforts.They left their wives and children and brought their own dry food and tools. However, there is no monument to commemorate these laborers on the entire Yunnan-Burma Highway.During our investigation, it is said that there used to be a monument in memory of laborers in Songshan.What this monument says is that while we remember the achievements of these officials and engineers and technicians, we should not forget the contributions of those ordinary people. The importance of the Burma Highway is obvious.At that time, there were three main lines of communication with foreign countries: the South China Line centered on Hong Kong, the Southwest Line with Haiphong Port in French Indochina as the transshipment port, and the Northwest Line connecting Gansu and Xinjiang.But the first two lines are on the verge of the South China Sea, easily cut off by the Japanese army.Therefore, the Kuomintang government decided to speed up the construction of the international traffic line from Yunnan to Yangon, Myanmar - the Burma Road.After the first two lines were cut off by Japan, only the Burma Road was left as a traffic line leading to the world.Since most domestic materials rely on imports, this channel is even more important.The Yunnan-Myanmar Highway was originally built urgently to transport the strategic materials purchased by the Chinese government abroad and international aid. With the Japanese army occupying Vietnam, the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway was interrupted. Soon after the completion of the Yunnan-Myanmar Highway, it became the link between China and the outside world. the only transportation channel.In the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, the weapons and equipment needed by millions of troops, the various materials needed to maintain the operation of the economy, and the basic consumer goods needed by countless people who migrated to the rear area, in short, China could not produce what was needed to maintain the entire Anti-Japanese War. All supplies rely on this lifeline to be transported into the rear.

In the three years from 1939 to 1942, about 50 tons of military supplies, more than 15,000 vehicles, and other materials that cannot be counted were transported on the Burma Road.It can be said that without the Burma Road, there would be no material support for the War of Resistance.The Burma Road also had an intangible effect—it changed the course of the war.The Japanese army originally wanted to defeat the Chinese army head-on and force the Nationalist government to surrender.However, because of the external passages including the Burma Road, the Japanese army abandoned the original plan and instead blocked China's external passages from coastal Vietnam, Northwest China and Burma.This gave the tired Chinese soldiers and civilians a chance to breathe.

However, as the war progressed, the Burma Road was closed, cutting off China's foreign aid.As we all know, Britain is an old imperialist and colonialist country, and it is very conceited.It has always used two tactics to control the European continent.Instigating war and profiting from it is its specialty.Shortly after the First World War, in order to compete with France for European hegemony, Britain gradually supported German fascism and tried to encourage Hitler to attack the Soviet Union.It is exactly that whoever plays with fire must set himself on fire. Hitler did not attack the Soviet Union first according to Chamberlain's intentions. On the contrary, after annexing a series of small countries, he first attacked France in 1940. Chamberlain's cabinet collapsed on May 10, and the British and French troops retreated in Dunkirk on June 4. London was panicked for a while.However, the United Kingdom did not accept this lesson, raised its vigilance against the crazy aggression of the Japanese fascists, and actively deployed defenses in Burma.On the contrary, Fantasia is still perfunctory with Japan in a double-faced manner, in order to preserve its rear in the Far East colonies.

From the very beginning, the Japanese deliberately cut off the Burma Road.Cutting off this international line of communication would cut off China's supplies and force the Nationalist government to surrender.In order to achieve the goal of blocking China, the Japanese army also set up a "Burma Road Blocking Committee". In June 1940, the British and French troops were defeated in the Western European battlefield, France fell, and the British mainland was also facing the threat of German attack.At this time of crisis, Japan took advantage of the fire to loot in the East. In late June, the Japanese military and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs successively made demands on the British side to close the Burma Road.Yuichi Dohashi, intelligence chief of the Japanese General Staff Headquarters, claimed that if Britain rejected these demands, the Japanese military would insist on declaring war on Britain.In line with this threat, the Japanese army amassed a force of 5,000 men in the border area adjacent to the British Kowloon Concession.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan has clearly proposed the types of materials that are required to be embargoed, such as weapons and ammunition, fuel, trucks, and railway equipment. On July 17, 1940, succumbing to the pressure of Japanese fascism, the British government announced that the Burma Road would be closed for three months from 6 pm on July 18.When China needed help the most, the British closed the Burma Road, which worsened the already dire situation. Foreign aid was basically cut off, and China's war of resistance was difficult. However, the Japanese fascists did not stop their ambition to dominate Asia because of Britain's overtures. On the contrary, they used this agreement to see through Britain's weakness, invaded Vietnam in September, and signed a treaty of friendship with Thailand, directly threatening the British colonies such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Myanmar.