On today’s 70 Seconds, 70 Years we will bring back the memory of the Battle of Xuzhou which marks the beginning of China’s attrition strategy.
In order to take control of the railway from north to south China, 240,000 Japanese troops were directed towards Xuzhou, in China’s Jiangsu Province in early 1938.
The Chinese military assembled 64 divisions, around 600,000 soldiers, to defend the area.
After losing Shanghai and Nanjing, Chinese top brass realized that huge disadvantage in equipment rendered unwise the head-on defense strategy. Accordingly, China began gradually adopting the warfare of attrition during the Battle of Xuzhou.
The Chinese army managed to hold back its lines for months until May 1938. As a result, valuable time was saved for the preparation of Wuhan Defense in south China’s Hubei Province which completely frustrated Japan’s ambition to perish China rapidly.
I’m Wang Yizhi with CCTV NEWS, see you next time.
