26年 1月 19日
The attack had two main objectives. The first was the mountainous western half of Sichuan province. 1936 had seen a gradual strengthening of the central government within the Sichuan basin itself. In 1927, all of the Sichuan warlords had officially joined the Guomindang, however, Sichuan remained one of the richest and most isolated provinces of China. The famous 8th century poet, Du Fu, once described the road to Sichuan as more difficult than the road to Heaven. This meant that, while the central government had some control over the civil administration, it lacked the power to prevent regional warlords from imposing their own taxes or halting government work. The Southern War had impressed upon the regional commanders how foolish it would be to try to fight the Central Army on the flat, open fields of the Sichuan Basin. They had withdrawn to Western Sichuan where the Himalayas bend south towards the Indian Ocean. From there, they were close enough to threaten Chengdu and ChongQing but far enough to prevent a surprise offensive from wiping them out in one fell swoop. For the Guomindang, this was untenable. Sichuan province was both larger and more populous than France and the second century water works at Du Jiang Yan had made Sichuan the agricultural heart of China for the past 2,000 years. The problem was that most of that food was feeding the feuding provincial armies and very little of it was making it's way down the Yangtze to the rest of China. The central army in Sichuan was tasked with entering the mountains at Ya'an to remove the immediate threat to the Sichuan Basin.
Chiang Kai Shek meanwhile directed his attention towards Yunnan and Long Yun. Long Yun was the most powerful of many regional warlords in the Southwest, and had official recognition as governor of Yunnan province. Governor was actually a misnomer as it implied subordination. In truth, the entirety of Yunnan was under his direct control with the exception of the mountainous border with Sichuan， Chiang was being direct and attacked first towards Qujing with the intent on marching on Kunming as soon as possible
His 120,000 well trained, rested, and experienced troops easily routed the defenders. Long Yun had heard that the central army was stronger, but now he really believed it.
In the North, 27,000 thousand troops from the plains supported by an attack in the Northeast from Chongqing and the Norhtwest from Xining would easily rout the defenders.
Their ordeal had just begun as they were forced to retreat south, to the mountainous border region between Yunnan and Sichuan.
There, the Han people were a clear minority, living only at the base of the mountains. Further up lived the Yi people, animists who herded, farmed, wrote and spoke a completely different language than the Han. At the top, lived Yak herding ethnic Tibetans. Both the Yi people and Tibetans were comparatively well armed and lowland armies, dating back to imperial times, had learned to keep a wide berth.
26年 1月 24日
On the 23rd, Yan Xishan played right into Chiang's hands by entering into an alliance with Long Yun against Chiang. The assault on Long Yun had generated considerable dissent as people viewed uniting the country as secondary to defending against Japan. However, when Yan Xishan moved against Chiang, the Guomindang's reprisal could be legitimately couched as self defense. Troops in the north were well placed both immediately below the Yellow river and also among the old communist fortifications in Yan'an. On both fronts the Guomindang remained slightly outnumbered in terms of men, but if artillery, trucks, and other support units were added into the mix, central government forces far outclassed their opposition. Guomindang military planners were optimistic that both armies could be brought under central command within three to four months. Once completed, these troops were to be reorganized and rearmed to the standards of the rest of the army to be ready for an offensive into Manchuria in mid 1938.
The Japanese would force them to move up the timetable a wee bit.
Japanese diplomats said that recent events had made it clear that Japan needed to move into China to protect their Chinese brothers from the devastation of another civil war.
This was a huge crisis for the Revolutionary Army's high command. Chinese coastal defenses north of Fuzhou were nonexistent with only a small garrison in Shanghai. Immediately, Muslim troops from Xibei San Ma and troops from the north were hastily bundled onto trains and moved with all haste. Even so the entire coastal region from Yantai to Shanghai would remain defenseless for the next two weeks.
26年 1月 25日
Sheng Shicai saw allying with the Japanese as the only way to break free of Soviet domination and started to advance his troops into Gansu province, threatening the homeland of the loyal Ma Clique.
The treaty of Shanghai was deemed void and troops were immediately sent to reinforce the garrison. However, Chinese troops were ordered to respect the extra territorial enclave within Shanghai, as a move against it now would certainly induce the Japanese to reinforce it beyond China's ability to match. The current war was also thought to be the work of the militarists within Japan's army, if that was true, it could take weeks for them to get the Navy's permission for an amphibious offensive. Unless, of course, Chinese forces moved on Japanese marines on the coast. As long as the Japanese thought they were superior, they would take their time resolving the "China incident" as it was called in Japan. If, however, China made a direct move against them, they would be honor bound to counter attack. Spies in Japan were told to impress upon the Japanese military the need for proper preparation for a continental war. This wasn't entirely a lie, they just neglected to say that it was the Guomindang that needed the time. *
Germany saw an opportunity here. Unlike Franco, Chiang and the Guomindang enjoyed popularity in both Britain and America. They immediately expressed their full support to the Guomindang, with the notable exception of ground and naval assets. Germany hoped to gain brownie points with the Western democracies by helping China in it's struggle with Japan.
26年 1月 26日
Troops rushed into Taiyuan following the same route of the Red Army's aborted "Eastern Expedition." Even though the troops had not been fully upgraded, they were ordered to advance as Chiang sought to take the defensible mountains of Shanxi as soon as possible.
26年 1月 27日
While the Revolutionary Army had learned and reorganized from the war with the communists, Yan Xishan had not. Nationalist troops advanced in three groups. The first would move directly up the Fen river valley towards Taiyuan while the other two would advance on parallel courses through the mountains on either side. The goal was not to destroy the enemy troops but make their position so untenable that they would have no choice but to retreat North to serve as a buffer between the Revolutionary army and the Japanese. The strategy was an astounding success and Taiyuan was abandoned by it's defenders.
The IJN decided to bomb the Chinese fleet in harbor at Zhanjiang. The Guomindang knew that it's ships stood no chance against the Japanese and there had been plans on the board to scrap them in 1938. The ships had been purposely towed to Zhanjiang and placed in shallow water. Japanese bombers would report solid hits on many ships, but what they didn't know was the ships only had about a meter of water below their keels. They couldn't be sunk. The Japanese would fooled into days of useless bombing as the ships were made to look still functional through various tricks. The most audacious was probably the "treasure ships，" these looked like they were full size destroyers and torpedo boats, but were actually mostly cloth and paper over a bamboo frame.
In the Southwest, regional troops advanced into Zigong.
Zigong was one of the richest cities in China and had been for thousands of years. The layer of brine below the surface led to the creation of a large domestic salt industry. Initially, wells had been shallow, but, as the water was saltier deeper down, the wells had gotten deeper. As they got deeper, they hit natural gas which was quickly utilized to serves as fuel for the boilers. By the 1700's the wells had exceeded 3,000 feet in depth and the Chinese Salt Administration became a very important source of government funding. The Guomindang did not want to lose that revenue stream.
26年 2月 1日
And they wouldn't, as modern forces in western Sichuan and Chongqing quickly converged to evict the enemy troops from the city.
At the same time, Falkenhausen was given the go ahead to advance north in Handan. It was still winter in north China and the Guomindang sought to capture as much land as possible while that was still true. The Guomindang wanted to have as much territory as possible under its direct control before spring and the probable Japanese move south.
Falkenhausen's army would be opposed only by a cavalry division using tactics and weapons from the 1800's.
26年 2月 2日
The troops would be victorious.
The United States was deathly afraid of the threat to it's own south pacific holdings should Japan be victorious on the land, and needed a way to help China but not antagonize Japan. The US solution was not to sell guns but give china the money to buy guns from someone else. In America, Claire Chennault resigned from the Army and accepted a commission by Chiang Kai Shek to create an "International Squadron" for the Republic of China Air Force. (ROCAF)
At the same time it was proposed to move the industry to the interior, as the coast was still vulnerable. This was reluctantly approved. **
Chiang's forces would meet some more opposition on their way to Qujing. It was easily brushed aside.
26年 2月 5日
The window for an easy Japanese naval assault was rapidly closing as Chinese divisions completed their redeployment to the coast. Japanese military planners hadn't quite realized it and they merely bombed the coastal garrisons.
1937年 2月 6日
Chinese troops arrived at the provincial capital of Taiyuan. It was becoming clear that Japan was unwilling to move against Yan Xishan. Many theories were debated in Chinese military circles. One proposed that they didn't want to waste troops destroying Yan Xishan's armies and were waiting for the nationalists to do it. Another suggested that the Kwangtung Army was going to move south regardless once the snow melted. A final one postulated that the Japanese were waiting for the fall of Long Yun, at which point a desperate Yan Xishan would welcome the Japanese to help him fight the Guomindang.
Whatever the truth, the Kwangtung army had not moved against Yan Shixan, so nationalist armies would concentrate on keeping his army between them and the Japanese.
26年 2月 10日
The last part of Sichuan to fall were the Himalayas proper. 40,000 men moved up the mountains to assault 28,000 troops of varying quality. The ROCAF would be on hand to provide air support but only the close proximity of the airbase in Chengdu allowed their old planes to operate at the extreme altitude.
26年 2月 11日
But operate they did and enemy forces would be sent retreating south.
26年 2月 12日
The industry of newly captured Taiyuan, especially it's critical arsenal, was packed up and moved away from the front lines. Guangzhou would see a similar reduction as the more portable industries were moved away from the coast.
Up next, more surprises！
*I did not actually anticipate the war declaration coming this soon. The text is based on the history of the Battle of Shanghai. In OTL, the Japanese wanted the "China incident" confined to the north, like the Mukden incident before it. This way they could win the regional battle quickly followed by an unequal treaty. They wanted to gobble China up in small manageable bites. Chiang had no control over the northern troops and thus sought to prevent this by winning a victory in the south, where he was strong. Chinese troops in 1931 fought the Japanese to a standstill in Shanghai, so Chiang knew it could be done. Chiang attacked the Japanese garrison in Shanghai in an all or nothing attack to win a victory against Japan. The results were disastrous as he lost all of his elite and loyal divisions and would spend the rest of the war with a much weakened hand to control the regional commanders. In my game, I plain and simple lucked out that Japan did not invade in the 16 days when I had nothing on the north coast. This was my fault as I didn't have enough militias to make the 2 to 1 ratio that I like and thought to put it off until I had inherited some more. If they had landed, everywhere but Yan'an and Taiyuan in the north would have sent troops with the goal of luring them inland and cutting them off from the coast.
** This was a case of gameplay overruling story. Even though I wasn't particularly threatened, the event is written so that the choice is +20% infrastructure from moving or nothing if you stay put. Unfortunately, the first one triggers all the subsequent ones so Guangzhou moves it's industry even though it's perfectly well defended. 
What find in dealing with Guangxi is that, once you take Maoming, the garrison in Hainan will move out to Zhangjiang and leaving the island open for your landing.
