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Eighth Route Army / 18th Group Army

Initially the Chinese Red Army was organized into a number of "armies" that enjoyed only brief combat experience. During the Second United Front Period, the Red Army was nominally integrated into the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomingtang (KMT) as the Fourth and Eighth Armies. These soon became known to history as the New Fourth Army and Eighth Route Army. When the Red Army set off on the Long March, after three bloody years, the Communist rear guard that stayed behind regrouped as the New Fourth Army, which later helped to drive the Nationalists from the mainland.

The Eighth Route Army epaulettes had the words "18th Army of the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China". The Eighth Route Army belonged to the Communist Party. On 22 August 1937, the 26th year of the Republic of China, the National Government Military Commission ordered that the main force of the Red Army of the Workers and Peasants of China be reorganized into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army. The National Government Military Commission officially announced that the former Northwest Main Red Army, namely the First, Second, and Fourth Army of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army, was transformed into the "National Revolutionary Eighth Route Army".

After the Kuomintang and Communist Party reached a cooperative resistance in September 1937, the Red Army was reorganized by Chiang Kai-shek into the 18th Route Army and the New Fourth Army. However, it was still under the independent command of the Communist Party of China. Chiang Kai-shek, chairman of the Kuomintang government’s military committee, appointed Zhu De and Peng Dehuai as commanders and deputy commanders of the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army. On August 25, Chairman Mao Zedong of the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Zhu De and Zhou Enlai, vice-chairmen of the Communist Party of China, issued an order for the Red Army to be converted into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army. On September 14, Zhu De and Peng Dehuai issued a general order for the Eighth Route Army to change to the Eighteenth Army.

The Kuomintang and the Communist Party established a national united front against Japan. In the spring of 1938, Mao Tse-tung delivered a series of lectures at the "Yenan Association for the Study of the Anti-Japanese War." The Japanese War had been going on for almost a year. The Communists and the Nationalists had joined in a tenuous "United Front," and the Communists' Eighth Route Army, commanded by Chu Teh, was in the field. Japanese forces, driving out of Manchuria, had overrun the northern area of China down to the Shantung peninsula and in the south were well established on the Yangtze River. Chiang Kai-shek had borne the brunt of the Japanese attack and, despite heavy losses around Shanghai, had managed to preserve the fighting strength of his army. The Communists, in the meantime, had begun the political organization of the thinly-held Japanese territory. Chinese Nationalist forces in 1937 totaled around 2 million men. The quality of these soldiers ranged from miserably-armed, ill-trained men of questionable loyalty, to 100,000 well-armed, German-trained and advised elite troops.

Because the name of the Eighth Route was too widely known, even if the name was changed, the people still used to call the Eighth Route Army. The Eighteenth Army of the National Revolutionary Army had three hand-picked divisions: the 115th, commanded by Lin Piao; the 120th, commanded by Ho Lung; and the 129th, commanded by Liu Po-cheng. Each division had two brigades, each brigade had two regiments, and each division had a capacity of 15,000. The Communist Eighth Route Army was supposedly, 45,000 strong, but some estimates put it between 80,000 and 90,000. In fact, the Eighth Route Army expanded very much behind enemy lines.

The Eighth Route Army crossed the Yellow River from Shensi to Shansi province in September 1937. Its orders were probably to produce a significant victory in order to cement the "United Front" and then to organize and Sovietize the peasants. A victory over the Japanese Fifth Division provided a tremendous boost to Communist morale and gave the Reds a "show-piece" battle on which Chairman Mao could claim the correctness of the concept of mobile warfare.

The "Hundred Regiments Campaign", a well-coordinated series of surprise attacks executed by most of the elements of the growing Eighth Route Army, began on the night of 20 August 1940. The defeat suffered by the Communist forces and their bases forced them to resort to guerrilla warfare, and thereafter they offered very little resistance in this area. The Japanese reprisals probably exceeded in ferocity and brutality the worst Red expectations. Strength figures of the Eighth Route Army showed that from the end of 1940 to the end of 1941, Red forces decreased from 400,000 to 350,000.

After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, nearly a million people, including regular forces, county brigades, district teams, the Red Guards, and the Armed Forces, as well as logistic personnel, accumulated.

The Eighth Route Army had participated in the Taiyuan battle in the Anti-Japanese War, launched guerrilla warfare in the Japanese occupied area, and established anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy. He launched the Hundred Regiments in 1940 and was the main force in the battlefields behind enemy lines during the Anti-Japanese War. By May 1944, the Eighth Route Army fought 74,000 times against the enemy and wiped out 150,000 enemies. By August 1945, the Eighth Route Army had grown to more than 900,000 people. At the beginning of the 1946 civil war, it had expanded to 2.3 million people.

After the War of Resistance Against Japan, the headquarters of the 18th Army remained, and it was the highest military command organ under the leadership of the Central Military Commission. On March 24, 1947, the 18th Army Headquarters was officially renamed the People's Liberation Army Headquarters.