The Hundred Regiments Offensive
The Hundred Regiments Offensive was a large-scale Eighth Route Army offensive against Japanese forces in North China in 1940. On 20 August Eighth Route Army headquarters sent the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Military Region, the 129th and 120th Divisions and other units into simultaneous attacks, chiefly against the Zhengtai Railway, followed by assaults on strongpoints and counter-mopping-up operations. Official figures give 105 regiments and more than 200,000 men, 1,824 engagements between 20 August and 5 December, more than 25,000 Japanese and puppet troops killed or wounded, and more than 17,000 Eighth Route Army casualties; the number of regiments, the results and the end date are all disputed. Japanese mopping-up operations then intensified and the base areas shrank sharply. Mao Zedong first called the offensive "exhilarating" but later held that it had exposed Communist strength; from 1945 it repeatedly figured in criticism of Peng Dehuai.
Background: The "Cage Policy" in North China
By the summer of 1940 the Japanese army in North China had used railways and roads to build a dense network of strongpoints, blockhouses, blockade ditches and walls that cut the anti-Japanese base areas into small pieces, a system the Communists called the "cage policy". On 22 July, Eighth Route Army Commander-in-Chief Zhu De, Deputy Commander-in-Chief Peng Dehuai and Deputy Chief of Staff Zuo Quan issued a preparatory order for a large-scale sabotage campaign against the Zhengding–Taiyuan (Zhengtai) Railway. The order was reported to the CCP Central Military Commission and sent down to the 120th and 129th Divisions and the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Military Region at the same time. Its stated aims included "influencing the national war situation" at a moment when international changes had heightened the "danger of capitulation", striking at the "cage policy", and disrupting a Japanese thrust towards Xi'an. The preparatory order originally envisaged using about 22 regiments.
The Course of the Campaign
The offensive opened on the night of 20 August. Forces of the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Military Region (commanded by Nie Rongzhen), the 129th Division (commander Liu Bocheng, political commissar Deng Xiaoping) and the 120th Division struck simultaneously, concentrating on the Zhengtai Railway linking Shijiazhuang and Taiyuan while also attacking the Tongpu and Beiping–Hankou railways and main roads. As more units joined, the name "Hundred Regiments Offensive" first appeared in a telegram issued by Peng Dehuai and Zuo Quan on 22 August; official figures put the forces involved at 105 regiments and more than 200,000 men. Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei troops took the Niangziguan pass and broke into the Jingxing coal mines, a key Japanese fuel base in North China, while part of the 129th Division fought the Japanese for six days and nights on Mount Shinao south-west of Yangquan.
From late September the campaign entered a second phase focused on removing Japanese and puppet strongpoints along the communication lines and inside the base areas, with assaults around Yushe, Liaoxian, Laiyuan and Lingqiu that cost the attacking units heavy casualties. From 6 October the Japanese massed forces for retaliatory "mopping-up" operations against the base areas, and the campaign entered a third, counter-mopping-up phase. From 30 October to 1 November the Eighth Route Army besieged the Japanese Okazaki Battalion at Guanjianao in the Taihang region; Chinese accounts record that most of it was wiped out.
During the fighting at the Jingxing mines, Eighth Route Army soldiers rescued two Japanese girls from the flames. Nie Rongzhen ordered that they be taken in, and later had them returned to the Japanese side together with a letter he wrote to Japanese officers and men. After newspapers in both countries reported the story in 1980, the elder girl, Mihoko, was traced and visited China that year, where she was reunited with Nie.
Results and Disputed Figures
According to Eighth Route Army headquarters, between 20 August and 5 December its forces fought 1,824 engagements, killed or wounded more than 20,000 Japanese and more than 5,000 puppet troops, captured more than 280 Japanese and more than 18,000 puppet troops, and destroyed more than 470 km of railway and more than 1,500 km of road; official accounts also put the Eighth Route Army's own casualties at more than 17,000. According to Jiang Jie, Chiang Kai-shek, as Chairman of the Nationalist government's Military Affairs Commission, sent a telegram of commendation, and the Nationalist general Wei Lihuang cabled that the offensive had "dealt the enemy a fatal blow".
These figures have long been disputed. Researchers note that the wide adoption of the results announced in Yan'an is an important reason for today's statistical confusion, and estimates of the number of regiments involved range from 104 or 105 to about 80. The end date is also given variously as 5 December 1940 or 24 January 1941, the latter being the current official version.
Japanese Retaliation and Hardship in the Base Areas
After the offensive the Japanese army revised its anti-Communist policy in North China and launched five successive "Public Security Strengthening Campaigns". According to Jiang Jie's figures, from early 1941 to the end of 1942 the Japanese mounted 174 "mopping-up" operations of more than a thousand troops each against the North China base areas, committing more than 830,000 troops in all, and carried out the "Three Alls" policy of killing all, burning all and looting all. By the end of 1942 the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei base had shrunk by a third and the south-east Shanxi base by half. Jiang attributes this mainly to Japan's strategy of securing its occupied territory in North China and to the enemy's superior strength, while counting the offensive's premature exposure of Communist strength as another important cause.
Shifting Assessments Within the Party
During the campaign Mao Zedong cabled Peng Dehuai that "the Hundred Regiments Offensive is truly exhilarating". Assessments later changed: Mao came to believe that such publicity had "exposed our strength" and led the enemy to concentrate his forces against the Eighth Route Army. At the North China work conference held in Yan'an in 1945, Peng was criticised over the offensive and other matters and made a self-criticism. At the Lushan Conference of 1959 and during the Cultural Revolution, the offensive was again listed among the charges against Peng, who was accused of launching it without the Central Committee's approval.
In 1979 Jiang Jie, writing in the first issue of the journal Modern Chinese History Studies (Jindaishi yanjiu), argued that the campaign was "premature" militarily and mistaken politically, but that its major battlefield successes could not be denied. On procedure, he concluded that it "went ahead without the Military Commission's formal approval", but that the preparatory order had been "sent up and down simultaneously", so the claim that it was launched "behind the Central Committee's back" was untrue.
Narrative Comparison
| Source | Narrative |
|---|---|
| Xinhua and China Military Online commemorative reports (2025) | Official reports describe the offensive as the Eighth Route Army's "largest and longest offensive of a strategic character in North China". "At the cost of more than 17,000 killed and wounded", they say, it "smashed the Japanese 'cage policy', checked the tendency within the Kuomintang to compromise with Japan, raised the prestige of the Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army, and lifted the whole nation's confidence in victory". They also stress that, besides guerrilla warfare, the army used assaults on fortified positions and encirclement tactics where conditions allowed. |
| Lyman P. Van Slyke, Modern Asian Studies (1996) | The Stanford historian Van Slyke takes the 1,824 engagements recorded in Communist sources as his subject and examines the problems of coordination and control they posed. In a note he writes that many have seen the campaign as an effort by Peng Dehuai, "and perhaps others", to pursue a more conventional strategy at odds with Mao's guerrilla approach; his own view is that although disputes certainly took place early in the war, by 1940 they were "at most, differences of emphasis and degree, not of fundamental line". He also observes that the offensive later became one of the charges in the vilification of Peng's entire career. |
| Nie Rongzhen's 1940 letter to Japanese officers and men (as quoted by the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs) | Nie Rongzhen, commander of the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Military Region, took in two Japanese girls rescued from the fighting at the Jingxing mines. When he sent them back, he enclosed a letter to Japanese officers and men: "The Japanese warlords have tyrannically invaded our China, and the war has now dragged on for four years. Countless people of China and Japan have been killed, wounded or maimed, and countless more driven from their homes. Responsibility for these tragic events lies wholly with the Japanese warlords." The Eighth Route Army, he wrote, "will fight to the end for the survival of the Chinese nation and the lasting peace of humankind". |
Key Milestones
- Eighth Route Army HQ issues preparatory order
Zhu De, Peng Dehuai and Zuo Quan issue a preparatory order for the sabotage of the Zhengtai Railway, reporting it to the Central Military Commission and sending it to the units at the same time.
- The offensive opens
Eighth Route Army units strike simultaneously that night, concentrating on the Zhengtai Railway.
- The name "Hundred Regiments Offensive" first appears
A telegram issued by Peng Dehuai and Zuo Quan uses the term "Hundred Regiments Offensive" for the first time.
- Counter-mopping-up phase begins
The Japanese mass forces for retaliatory mopping-up operations, and the campaign enters its third phase.
- Battle of Guanjianao
The Eighth Route Army besieges the Japanese Okazaki Battalion at Guanjianao in the Taihang region; fighting lasts until 1 November.
- Cut-off date for reported results
The results announced by Eighth Route Army headquarters, including 1,824 engagements, run to this date; some studies treat it as the end of the campaign.
- The offensive ends (official version)
The current official version gives this as the end date of the offensive.
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