Comments by "Fredinno" (@innosam123) on "China has border disputes with 17 countries" video.

@user-ym1bs7om9e Japan couldn’t defeat China in WW2 because they were being beaten back by the Americans. They continued to make advances into China until the war was basically over.
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@user-ym1bs7om9e Look at any map of the Pacific Front in WW2, and overlay it onto a map of the important parts of China. https://youtu.be/tS-BWXfFkVY The Japanese conquered almost all of the important and valuable lands in China (with the exception of Sichuan). The issue for the Japanese is that the war became a war of attrition, less because the Japanese couldn’t beat them (half of the army was being stationed in Manchuria to protect against the Soviet Union, which was busy elsewhere) but because they knew there was no point. The Japanese, for all practical purposes, had already ‘won’ after the initial invasion (as in, they got most of what they wanted). It didn’t matter, and dumping more troops into the Chinese meat grinder made no sense. Especially since they were literally months from running out of oil and they needed more ASAP. Especially once they were getting pummelled by the Americans. It’s similar to the Americans in Vietnam. The Americans were winning, but external factors unrelated to the battles themselves resulted in an American defeat. The Americans rejected sending more troops even before the Tet Offensive, because it would have been pointless. It was a war of endurance, not military strength.
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@bigheadrhino So it wasn’t losing to China. It was losing to America’s oil embargo. If the US kept exporting oil to Japan, the Pacific War would never have happened. The Japanese took over Indochina because Vichy France was weak and the Japanese wanted to more effectively blockade China. The original intention, interestingly, was for Japan to only occupy Tonkin in Northern Vietnam for that purpose, but the Japanese soldiers o;the ground basically didn’t listen and they had to take the entire thing as a result.
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@lc9245 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ichi-Go This was accomplished in 1944, when the Americans were taking over Saipan and approaching the Home Islands. You could say the same thing with the Americans in Vietnam. The Viet Cong held down tons of American soldiers, but were actually losing overall in the war of attrition. They lost 1/3rd of their forces in the Tet Offensive, an offensive undertaken precisely because the North Vietnamese knew they were losing. China has been conquered several times despite its enormous size by much smaller armies (mostly by people on horses). It’s not Russia.
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Stephen Jenkins ROC only holds the disputes because otherwise they’d have to declare themselves as Taiwan by giving up the mainland.
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@lc9245 The problem is that Afghanistan is a bit of a special case that isn’t really replicated by most other nations facing invasion. Japan had its own puppet government(s) over China that actually ended up being in comparable size to the Kwantung Army (though they were iffy in quality- the Japanese didn’t trust them and used them mostly for anti-partisan activity) and were (nominally) headed by Chinese/Manchus. Many warlords switched sides from the ROC to Japan out of self-interest, and honestly, if Japan managed to take out Chongqing and consolidate their gains on the Yanztghe, there really isn’t much left of China outside of rural jungle, deserts, and mountains that would not be able to supply itself without outside support. Which was kind of difficult without allied control of Burma. You could have made the same argument that no one would have turned to the brutal Communist dictatorship of Mao and that the anti-communist ROC guerrillas in the mountains would eventually have overthrown the PRC. But they didn’t.
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GeoT91 Taiwan was also legally never given to China as part of its territory, post WW2, but as an occupied region.
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Stephen Jenkins ROC=Taiwan...
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