This article on military tanks deals with the history of tanks employed by various military forces belonging to the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) within China. From the early half of the 20th century, tanks were initially obtained from other countries; eventually indigenously designed Chinese tanks started manufacture and became used during the Cold War and towards the modern era.
Overview The first tanks and armored cars in Chinese hands were imports they could acquire and some armoured vehicles they fashioned ad hoc. Warlords set up their own armies and bought what tanks and weapons they could. The Chinese use of armored fighting vehicles prior to 1943 suffered from many of the same problems as that of the artillery, and most of China's small inventory of AFVs were quickly lost in combat or were simply allowed to break down due to lack of maintenance and spare parts. Armor was not used en masse for shock, but in penny packets in an infantry support role exclusively; tank against tank fighting with the Japanese was never contemplated and never attempted.
Political developments influencing Chinese armoured forces
After the decline and overthrow of the Qing Dynasty following the Xinhai Revolution, China was left without any generally recognized central authority and the army quickly fragmented into forces of combating warlords, nominally the Beiyang Army, but actually fighting each other. Those warlord armies would have their own suppliers and were equipped with non-standard material, differing wildly from region to region, and even with different calibers within the same subunits. The strongest of those warlords were Wu Peifu, "The Jade Marshal", and Zhang Zuolin, "The Tiger of the North". The former imported French Citroën-Kégresse halftracks, while the latter got Renault FT and Schneider tanks. The Tiger of the North was also the first to get armoured trains from the defeated White Russian armies in Siberia after the fall of Vladivostok in 1922; with other trains being built locally under Russian supervision.
Foreign advisers were commonplace, with Japanese and Russian advisers being employed by the many warlords. The Russians included renegade White Russians, experienced veterans of the Russian Civil War; they primarily manned technical positions such as artillery and the armoured trains - the latter a paramount asset in the vast, roadless distances of China. The warlord Zhang Zongchang, "The Dogmeat General", was one of the foremost employers of White Russians, with some 3,000 "White Guards" under the Menshikov brothers. The armoured trains were intended to be used offensively and could carry troops, weapons and supplies; with them being considered so valuable in the campaign of 1927–1928, that captured or surrendered train crews were shot on the spot.
Sun Yat-sen, first provisional president of China and his protégé Chiang Kai-shek tried to bring the warlords under control in order to establish order throughout the nation; to do so, Sun Yat-sen founded the Kuomintang ("Chinese National People's Party"). In the early 1920s this revolutionary army was just another warlord army, small and very poorly equipped, even by warlord standards. Being from the south, from Canton, it was typically in the "low end" of warlord armies and so had a poor military reputation. This began to change when a Soviet military advisory mission was established in late 1923. In 1924, Sun Yat-sen set up the Whampoa Military Academy to train and indoctrinate cadets as the leaders who would take the fight to the warlords. The extremely poorly equipped National Revolutionary Army (NRA) started receiving large quantities of Soviet material from 1924 to 1926, when it felt ready to face the warlord coalition of the Beiyang government, the National Pacification Army (NPA) in the Northern Expedition (1926–1928). Chiang Kai-shek took Sun's place at the head of the party when the latter died in 1925 and led the Northern Expedition to unify the country, becoming China's overall leader.
Weimar Germany started a military cooperation with the NRA from 1926 that would endure until 1941. This cooperation intensified with the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933 and would end in 1941 when, in July, Hitler officially recognised Wang Jingwei's puppet government in Nanking. Before that, Japan asked Germany to withdraw its military advisors in 1938. This German military mission, under Hans von Seeckt from 1933 to 1935, supplied small arms, artillery, armoured cars, and Panzer I light tanks to the NRA. The NRA armoured force was organized in three armoured battalions, with the first and 2nd battalions having 29 Vickers-Carden Loyd amphibious tanks each, with 20 Vickers 6-Ton tanks being distributed among the 1st and 2nd battalions. Also, 29 Carden Loyd Mark VI tankettes served in the 2nd battalion. The third battalion had 15 Panzer I Ausf. A, bought in 1936, 20 Italian CV-35 tankettes and 15 Leichter Panzerspähwagen (mostly SdKfz 222, two SdKfz 221, with at least one SdKfz 260).
In the course of 1937, the NRA's three tank battalions were wiped out by the Japanese, with the remnants being regrouped into the new 200 Division, that was augmented by Soviet T-26 light tanks. Created in 1938, this unit would survive up to 1949 through different reorganizations. From 1941 onwards the Chinese Nationalists would rely more and more on the United States, receiving large quantities of M3 and M5 Stuart light tanks and M4 Sherman medium tanks. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the NRA and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engaged into a power struggle for control of China. Both sides used Japanese captured tanks and US-supplied tanks, mainly Stuart light tanks. The leader of the Communists, Mao Zedong, established the People's Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China in 1949, with Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists holding onto only Taiwan Province and minor islands in Fukien. On 1 October 1949, the communists' People's Liberation Army (PLA) held a major parade in the capital Beijing, with smaller parades in other major cities, with the tanks being a mixture of Japanese tanks captured by the NRA and then captured by the PLA, American tanks supplied to the NRA through Lend-Lease and captured by the PLA, and Soviet T-26 supplied by the Soviet Union to the PLA.
In October 1950, Mao made the decision to send the People's Volunteer Army into Korea against the United Nations forces led by the U.S. in the Korean War; Chinese armies fighting there were equipped with Soviet-made heavy weapons, including T-34 tanks. During the early 1950s, China began producing copies of the Soviet T-34 tank and established its own manufacturing plants to build further improved designs (predominantly copies of Soviet designs) until the current and contemporary Chinese tanks which bear their own domestic influences.
History
Post World War I
The Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin introduced tanks to China. France had dispatched a small contingent of Renault FT tanks to Vladivostok in 1919, during the joint Allied intervention that began in August 1918 with the tanks being later acquired by the Manchurian Army under Zhang Zuolin.Humphreys, The Way of the Heavenly Sword: The Japanese Army in the 1920s, page 26
Surprised during the Northern Expedition by Chiang Kai-shek's National Revolutionary Army, he bought several Renault FT tanks armed with 37 mm guns from France in 1927. However, by 1929 the FTs were under the Chinese Nationalists and nominally attached to the 1st Cavalry Brigade of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army (NRA), which by 1930 had acquired 36 FTs. However, the Japanese Army seized nearly all of Chinese/Manchurian FTs in 1931 when they occupied Manchuria. The tanks captured by the Japanese army were deployed in the Kwantung Army and later used during the Mukden Incident.
In 1929, 24 of the British Mk VI Carden Loyd tankettes were purchased by the Chinese Nationalists.Zaloga, Steven J., Armour of the Pacific War, Vanguard 35, London, 1983, Osprey Publishing Ltd.Zaloga, Steven J., The Renault FT Light Tank, Vanguard 46, London, 1989, Osprey Publishing Ltd.
Influenced by the Japanese tank performance during the First Battle of Shanghai, the Chinese Nationalist government started the mechanisation of the army in 1933, with the 24 British Carden Loyd Mk VI tankettes. Later they bought 20 Vickers 6-ton tanks between 1934 and 1936, which were used in combat against the Japanese in the Battle of Shanghai in 1937. Ledwoch, Janusz (2009). Vickers 6-ton Mark E/F vol. II, Militaria no. 325, Warsaw, , p.28-29, 34 They also bought 29 Vickers Amphibious Tanks, which were developed in 1932 but not used in the United Kingdom.
The Sino-German cooperation, which had begun between Germany and China since before World War I had been instrumental in modernizing the industry and the armed forces of the Republic of China, so it was natural to look to German military advisers to help them. The Chinese urgency to modernize the military and its national defense industry, coupled with Germany's need for a stable supply of raw materials, put the two countries on the road of close relations from the late 1920s to the late 1930s.
In 1927, after the dissolution of the First United Front between the Nationalists and the Communists, the ruling Kuomintang purged its leftist members and largely eliminated Soviet influence from its ranks, and General Chiang Kai-shek severed the ties with the Soviets. Chiang Kai-shek then turned to Germany, historically a great military power, for the reorganisation and modernisation of the National Revolutionary Army, and German advisors started to come in. The Nationalists hired many German military advisers to help them with their buildup of the mechanisation and training of the army.
When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 and disregarded the Treaty, the anti-communist NSDAP and the anti-communist KMT were soon engaged in close cooperation with Germany training Chinese troops and expanding Chinese infrastructure, while China opened its markets and natural resources to Germany.
The German military advisers made the Nationalists purchase many European weapons through a German company with which the German advisers cooperated. The Nationalists bought Italian CV-35 tankettes, German Panzer I Ausf. A light tanks, and British 12-ton tanks. The exact name of the British 12-ton tank is unknown. The Nationalists bought 29 Vickers Carden Loyd amphibious tank in 1935, and they were organized into the 1st tank battalion. Also, 20 of the British Vickers 6-Ton Mk E & F tanks were purchased by the Nationalists and used in the 1st and 2nd tank battalions. They also purchased other British designs, such as the Carden Loyd M1936, two-man light tank, fitted with radio equipment, in service in 1936. 29 more of the British VCL Mk VI Carriers were purchased in 1936 and used as part of the 2nd tank battalion.
There is information to suggest that in the 1930s, Poland sold three companies of Renault FTs to China, but only as a cover up for their sale to Republican Spain. Tarczyński, Jan; Barbarski, Krzysztof; Jońca, Adam (1995). Pojazdy w Wojsku Polskim - Polish Army Vehicles - 1918-1939; Ajaks; Pruszków, p.285 Also about 6 or 10 Renault UE light armoured carriers armed with Browning MG were bought in France. There were also some Fiat-Ansaldo CV-35 Italian tanks that were purchased, twenty CV-35 tankettes were sold to China. In 1937, 15 Panzer I tanks Ausf. As were sold to ChinaJentz, Thomas L. (2002), Panzertracts No.1-2. Panzerkampfwagen I. Kl.Pz.Bef.Wg. to VK 18.01., Panzer Tracts, , p.1-176 which were used in the Battle of Nanjing by the 3rd Armored Battalion.