Roosevelt agreed, but thereafter his relations with Chiang were no longer cordial. Stilwell was replaced by Gen. Albert Coady Wedemeyer.

Nationalist Deterioration

The military weakness in 1944 was symptomatic of a gradual deterioration that had taken place in most aspects of Nationalist Chinese public life. Inflation began to mount alarmingly as the government pumped in large amounts of paper currency to make up its fiscal deficits. Salaries of government employees, army officers, teachers, and all those on wages fell far behind rising prices. For most, this spelled poverty amid growing war-weariness. Dissatisfaction with the government’s policies spread among intellectuals. Inflation gave opportunities for some groups to profit through hoarding needed goods, smuggling highvalue commodities, black market currency operations, and graft. Corruption spread in the bureaucracy and the armed forces. As the war dragged on, government measures to suppress dissidence grew oppressive. Secret police activity and efforts at thought control were aimed not only against communists but also against all influential critics of the government or the KMT.

Communist Growth

The communist armies were growing rapidly in 1943 and 1944. According to U.S. war correspondents visiting the

Yan’an area in May 1944 and to a group of U.S. observers that established itself there in July, the communists professed allegiance to democracy and to continued cooperation with the Nationalist government in the war effort. There was convincing evidence that the areas under communist control extended for hundreds of miles behind Japanese lines in northern and central China.

This situation was the result of many factors. Communist troop commanders and political officers in areas behind Japanese lines tried to mobilize the entire population against the enemy. Party members led village communities into greater participation in local government than had been the case before. They also organized and controlled peasants’ associations, labour unions, youth leagues, and women’s associations. They linked together the many local governments and the mass organizations and determined their policies. Because of the need for unity against Japan, the communist organizers tended to follow reformist economic policies. The party experimented with various forms of economic cooperation to increase production; one of these was mutual-aid teams in which farmers temporarily pooled their tools and draft animals and worked the land collectively. In areas behind Japanese lines, some mutual-aid teams evolved into work-and- battle teams composed of younger peasants: when danger threatened, the teams went out to fight as guerrillas under direction of the local communist army; when the crisis passed, they returned to