You're definitely going to attrition to death with artillery. Maybe support but not line. Use planes instead, tac bombers have great range for such large air zones and poor airfields. Alternatively armored recon can work. It's just enough armor that basic infantry cannot pierce it. Bringing any kind of armor against china will make them crumble.
For supply you have to invade as many supply zones as possible to spread your army out. It doesn't really make any sense but putting enough men in the mountains of Shanxi will fix your supply.
When i am playing using infantry 7-2 (on all frontlines) i never get bogged because of attrition in China. The supply consumption of 7-2 is 1.11 (with art, recon, eng and signal as support companies), pretty close to 10-0, 0.9; while the 14-4 is 1.9 without Logistic Company (with LC, it is reduced to 1.8). I noticed that any division with more than 1.5 of supply consumption will have problems of attrition in China, which will make the player expend 150 PP to get the Army Logistic Expert (-8% Attrition).
While you're right about the buff that Armored Recon (or Tank Recon) provides, you're forgetting that China starts with AA1 researched from day 1, and that is enough to pierce even Light Tanks 2. If i were to use them, i would expend a lot of IC to put them in my divisions, to be countered by any 10 width chinese division with a support AA. Not only that, but it is pretty common to see China investing in AA, as it demolish any CAS that you can through against them.
He is talking about playing against Human China though, still I wouldn't go for 14/4 either way. I like to use LSPART and high range CAS/TACs.
CAS is essential against the chinese human wave, but have the negative side of destroy all the infrastructure in the process. Which will take too much of your time to repair.
7-2’s aren’t going to have the firepower concentration to as efficiently push through the Chinese division spam.
If China is devoting enough factories to TACs or STRATs to actually hurt you, they should have sacrificed enough that their armies will be too weak to hold you. The bigger issue is if the Soviets start sending them planes and guns to make up for any such shortcomings and throw off the air balance. If they do, you probably want your Axis allies at least sending you air support to help even the odds.
More broadly though,making heavy fighters as Japan isn’t too bad, at least until you get the Zero. The extra range is nice for the Pacific and large Asian air zones and they can always be repurposed as kamikazees later.
As for naval invasions, put one submarine on each tile of the Chinese coast to scout coastal defences. If the Chinese player is properly garrisoning, there’s no reason to risk a landing. If not, there’s lots of good places you can land and take out any insufficiently supported units in the area.
About soviet interference, (of course that depend of house rules) that's probably the biggest game changing situation in the Sino-Japanese war. - If you've a soviet player determined to screw with Japan, he will send any and every equipment needed to do so. - It's not uncommon to see soviets sending planes, or air volunteers to China (That's why i always research fighters 1). If they do that, heavy fighters would suffer big losses against fighters 1.
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Thinking about it, maybe fighting in China is not about high quality divisions, or massive numbers, but maybe speed. If i'm able to land Marines in a port and rush with Tank divisions encirclements, filling the gaps with 7-2 or 10-0 calvary units, that might work. I just don't know how it would work against another player reacting to a situation like that. (Maybe having a Manchukuo player controlling half of the army is a good idea too.)
