Temporary capital during wartime engaged American military aviation advice and training for the Flying Tigers to fend off aerial bombing by the Japanese
Shopping area in Chongqing: With a population of more than 32 million and a municipal area the size of Austria, Chongqing may be the biggest city in the world. Photograph: Qilai Shen/BloombergThere was a short break in the rain and within moments Chongqing’s Jiefangbei pedestrian street was filled with people, many of them posing for pictures against the backdrop of the city’s soaring skyscrapers.
The Japanese air force bombed Chongqing more than 200 times between 1938 and 1944, killing almost 12,000 people in the longest and most sustained bombing campaign against any city during the war. The Chinese air force was neither trained nor equipped to fend off the Japanese bombers, so Chiang hired Claire Lee Chennault, a US army aviator, to advise him.
The US had entered the war after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour the previous year and China was now an ally. But Stilwell soon fell out with Chiang after it became clear that the American general wanted to take unrestricted command over Chinese forces. China’s nationalists and communists had been fighting a civil war until the Japanese invasion and they put their conflict aside to fight the common enemy. But Stilwell suspected that Chiang was holding back some of his forces from the war effort in anticipation of resuming the civil war.
“The people of both countries should enhance exchanges, deepen understanding and expand co-operation, continuously injecting new impetus into the development of bilateral relations.”
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