Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia by Thant Myint-U Page A

claim that there was tea in China too. Invading armies had also come this way. The Mongols had passed through in the thirteenth century, as did a great Chinese and Manchu force in the seventeenth century, sent to arrest and execute a renegade prince. In the 1700s the Manchus had invaded again, not once but four times, but each time were defeated by a spirited Burmese regime.
    In British times the Chinese had turned inward, engulfed in civil war and warlordism. But in the 1930s, as Japanese armies swept through China’s eastern coastline, Burma’s military value sky rocketed, not only for the Chinese but for all the powers fighting Japanese expansion. Overnight, the country turned from back water to strategic centre. For the British, Burma became an essential part of any plan to protect India from the Japanese. For the Americans, Burma was critical to continued access to China and support for the armies of Chiang Kai-shek. And for the Japanese, Burma became a potential springboard to India and Asian domination.
    Through the 1930s, Japanese armies had overrun the entire Chinese coastline, from Manchuria to Hong Kong. In 1937, after months of intense fighting, more than 200,000 Japanese imperial troops and naval aircraft had captured Shanghai (other than its Western enclaves) and by the end of 1937, the then capital Nanjing had itself been taken, leading to the killing of as many as 300,000 Chinese men, women and children. The industrial centre of Wuhan was next together with the cities of the south coast. Chiang Kai-shek withdrew his government to Chongqing along the middle Yangtze and continued a stubborn defence. The Chinese–both Chiang’s Nationalist forces and the Communists under Mao Zedong–would soon be tying down no fewer than twenty Japanese divisions. As war between the US and the Axis powers approached, Washington was increasingly anxious to keep China in the fight. Sending help via China’s own port cities was now impossible. A back door via Rangoon was the only option and the Burma Road was born.
    From Rangoon, American war materials were sent by both truck and train up to Mandalay and then over the hills, from Maymyo to Lashio, the easternmost railway station in British Burma. A new road then joined Lashio to Chinese-held Kunming, more than 500 miles away. The road was built at literally break-neck speed, by 200,000 Chinese labourers using shovels, or some times nothing but their bare hands, to dig away at hills and mountains. At least 2,000 died in the process. But by 1938, where there had only been dirt tracks and jungle ravines, there was now a road capable of handling military lorries.
    The war then came to Burma from the other direction. Beginning in December 1941, Emperor Hirohito’s forces swept through almost all of southeast Asia, from Manila to Jakarta and Singapore, in a series of lightning conquests. For the Japanese, cutting the Burma Road had become a top priority and this they achieved by March 1942, after an invasion of Burma from Thailand and the capture of Rangoon. The British, caught unawares and with little preparation, then began a long northward withdrawal.
    On 5 April in Maymyo, an American general, Joseph ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell, met Chiang Kai-shek. Mrs Luce was there to interview Stilwell for a cover story in Life magazine and the British brought out kilted soldiers with bagpipes to welcome the Chinese leader and his wife, the Wellesley College educated ‘Dragon Lady’ Madame Chiang. The Chinese 5th, 6th and 66th Armies were then marching into Burma to join the anti-Japanese fight; 50,000 would soon die. In an innovative and never very satisfactory Allied arrangement, Stilwell had been placed (at least theoretically) in charge of the Chinese forces and appointed as Chiang’s chief of staff. The American press were soon running enthusiastic headlines like ‘Chinese Cavalry Rout Jap Panzers in Burma’ and ‘Look Out Hirohito!’ But within days Mandalay too fell to the enemy