The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia

Chinese Communist Order of Battle

Note: The order of battle pages in the Pacific War Online Encyclopedia are still under construction.

We present here the Chinese Communist order of battle from 7 December 1941 on, as near as we have been able to determine it. This order of battle is uncertain due to the secretiveness of the Chinese Communists and the chaos in China during the war years, which for the Chinese began in 1937 with the Japanese campaign against Shanghai.

The rank and unit structure of the Chinese Communist Army is difficult to correlate with anything in Western armies. Some sources claim that divisions had grown to the size of Western army groups by the time of the Japanese surrender. Some support is given to this claim by the success of the Communists in the Civil War of 1945-1949.

Units that deployed as part of a higher echelon (such as battalions assigned to regiments) are not listed separately. Also, units redesignated from other units are not included separately. The intent is to give a reasonable reinforcement schedule for war games.

Tabulated information

Unit. This is the name of the unit.

Commander. This is the commander of the unit at the time of its activation. For units already active when war broke out, it is the commander of the unit on 7 December 1941. In general, we do not display commanders below flag or general rank.

Start. This gives the date and location of the unit's activation. For units already active when war broke out, only the location is given (at 8:00 AM on 7 December 1941, Hawaii time). If no locationis given, a unit should be assumed to be at the same location as its operational headquarters (or administrative headquarters if no operational assignment is given.)

Administrative Assignment. The administrative assignments in this table represent the formal organizational structure. The table is sorted by adminstrative assignment, such that every unit appears after the unit to which it is administratively assigned.

Operational Assignment. The operational assignment, if one is given, represents temporary attachment to another unit for a single operation. For example, an aircraft carrier might be administratively assigned to a carrier division, but be operationally assigned to a task force for a particular mission.

Notes. Miscellaneous information about a unit, such as its manpower and equipment, where it was raised, what its initial orders were, and how well it
performed in battle.

Organization of the tables

The order of battle tables are laid out for maximum readability by software tools while retaining some semblance of human readability. Because the complete orders of battle for the major powers are many megabytes in length, we have broken the tables up into individual sections of less than 400K to avoid difficulties with older Web browsers.

In addition to the displayed text and associated links, each unit has an HTML anchor with a unique identifier based on the unit name. For example, the entry for Pacific Fleet includes the anchor Pacific_Fleet, which appears immediately before the unit name in the table. These anchors are used to cross-reference the tables but may also be of use to software tools scanning the tables.

We are considering offering the complete orders of battle as SQL files or as C++ code. Users of the Encyclopedia who desire these or other formats may write to trollingshallows@msn.com and make their desires know.

The order of battle

Unit	Commander	Start	Administrative Assignment	Operational Assignment	Notes
People's Liberation Army	Mao Tse-tung	Yenan (109.481E 36.601N)
Eighth Route Army	Chu Teh	Shansi province	People's Liberation Army		Claimed to have grown from 80,000 to 600,000 troops during the war. Chu Teh, who was not trusted by Mao, was largely a figurehead; de facto command was exercised by his deputy, P'eng Te-huai. During the period of the United Front, when the Communist forces were nominally part of the national army, Chiang designated 8 Route Army as 18 Army Group and authorized its strength at 40,000 men, a limit that was ignored. One regiment from each of its divisions was retained at Yenan to protect the Communist base.
115 Division	Lin Biao		Eighth Route Army		Ambushed and nearly annihilated a column of 10,000 men from 5 Division in 1937 at Pingxingguan (113.959E 39.345N). However, the division itself lost nearly a thousand casualties.
120 Division	Ho Lung	northwest Shansi province	Eighth Route Army
129 Division	Liu Po-ch'eng		Eighth Route Army		Includes 769 Regiment.
New Fourth Army	Chen Yi	Fukien and Kiangsi provinces	People's Liberation Army		Ordered north of the Yellow River by Chiang in 1940. This resulted in clashes with the Kuomintang and the end of effective cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists. Its authorized strength under the United Front was 12,000 men, a limit likely ignored.
Shansi-Chahar-Hopei Guerrilla Base		Wut'ai Mountains of northeast Shansi	People's Liberation Army
Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan Guerrilla Base		Taihang mountains of south Hopei and western Shantung	People's Liberation Army
Shansi-Suiyuan Guerrilla Base		Ningwu and Shen-ch'ih counties	People's Liberation Army
Shantung Guerrilla Base	Fan Chu-hsien	Shantung	People's Liberation Army
East Kiangsu Guerrilla Base		East Kiangsu	People's Liberation Army
Central Kiangsu Guerrilla Base		Central Kiangsu	People's Liberation Army
South Kiangsu Guerrilla Base		South Kiangsu	People's Liberation Army
Huai River North Guerrilla Base			People's Liberation Army
Huai River South Guerrilla Base			People's Liberation Army
Central Anhwei Guerrilla Base		Central Anhwei	People's Liberation Army
East Chekiang Guerrilla Base		East Chekiang	People's Liberation Army
Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei Guerrilla Base			People's Liberation Army
East River Guerrilla Base		Kwangtung	People's Liberation Army
Ch'iung-ya Guerrilla Base		Hainan	People's Liberation Army

References

Ellis (1993)

Generals.dk (accessed 2008-8-16)

Hsiung and Levine (1992)

Sih (1977)

Willmott (1982)

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