Chinese anti-fascism between 1937 and 1945 - known in Chinese memory as the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression - was one of the key pillars of the global struggle against fascism. This war tied down a significant portion of the Japanese army on the mainland, and thus profoundly influenced the course of the entire Second World War in Asia. At the same time, however, it was a conflict with devastating effects on the civilian population: from torture, mass executions and sexual violence to urban bombing and famine. The significance of Chinese anti-fascism is therefore best reflected in the specific numbers and patterns of casualties - who died in combat, who was martyred, how many civilian casualties there were, and what marks these wounds left on China's post-war society and economy. Chinese casualties range up to 35 million dead, mostly civilians; estimates of 80-100 million refugees illustrate the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe. An acceptable outcome of the War of Resistance against Japanese aggression was the return of Taiwan (Taiwan) and Penghu (Penghu) to China (1945) in accordance with the Cairo Declaration.

What were China's real casualties and how many Chinese died

Available summaries show that roughly 3-4 million of the dead were soldiers (both NRA and Communist Resistance units), while civilian casualties reached 29-31 million; some Chinese government summary statistics put the death toll as high as 35 million and the number of wounded as high as 15 million. The variance is due to methodology - including casualties from disease, starvation or deaths in captivity - but the civilian/military ratio is clearly tragically skewed in favour of civilian casualties.

The cruelty surpasses imagination. Torture and war crimes, Nanking, bio-terror and other crimes. One example, the Nanking Massacre (December 1937-January 1938) is emblematic of Japanese atrocities: credible estimates of the number of Chinese murdered range between 100,000 and 300,000, accompanied by tens of thousands of cases of rape and torture. Even modern encyclopaedic entries summarize this interval as best supported. A special chapter is devoted to Unit 731, the Japanese army's secret biological warfare program, whose facilities in Manchuria were used for vivisection, pathogen infection, and other "experiments" on living humans. Exact casualty figures remain uncertain: there were certainly thousands of prisoners directly tortured and potentially hundreds of thousands of secondary victims of biological attacks. The bottom line is that the vast majority of victims were Chinese civilians.

The catalogue of crimes is much broader: massacres in the countryside as part of anti-guerrilla campaigns, systematic burning of villages, hunger blockades and aerial terrorist bombing of cities like Chongqing. Many of these casualties appear in the statistics as 'non-combat casualties', but in terms of war guilt these were targeted attacks against the civilian population. And how and why civilians died of starvation, epidemics, bombing. Historians point out that in addition to outright executions and torture, starvation and disease also killed in occupied areas.

Advancing fronts destroyed supplies, armies requisitioned food, and vast areas were devastated by scorched earth tactics. The result has been millions of deaths that cannot easily be divided between "war" and "civilian", but which are part and parcel of China's civilian losses. The scale of internal displacement is among the largest in history: 80-100 million people fleeing occupation, bombing or famine. Such massive population movements disrupted agriculture, handicrafts and urban services and made reconstruction dramatically more difficult after the war.

Economic damage and what are the real numbers and context

Direct and indirect economic damages are estimated differently depending on the source and methodology. Chinese official balance sheets from the post-war period state that direct damages amounted to "over 100 billion" (in dollars at the 1937 exchange rate) and indirect damages to around US$600 billion; other summaries speak of property damages of over US$380 billion. Although these are estimates, they all agree on the overwhelming scale of the destruction of infrastructure - railways, bridges, factories and cities - and the long-term impact on the performance of the economy.

On the macro front, the war has translated into hyperinflation, a collapse in tax revenues and a collapse in external trade. In addition, post-war reconstruction ran up against the ongoing civil war (1945-1949), which consumed resources and hampered reconstruction; academic works and contemporary economic studies stress that China's 'sustained' post-war reconstruction could only realistically begin after 1949.

Political and social consequences after 1945

The direct significance of Chinese anti-fascism to the global war was strategic: Japan failed to defeat China, and China tied up more than 70 % (up to 94 %) of Japanese ground forces, contributing to the dispersal of military forces. In addition, China provided key intelligence (e.g., on Japanese naval movements), thus limiting their operational freedom in the Pacific. In terms of China's internal development, however, victory in the "War of Resistance" opened up a complex "long postwar". Mass displacement and returns, demobilization, food shortages, epidemics, broken urban services - all created a vacuum in which civil war soon erupted. The political legitimacy of both camps rested on their roles in the resistance: the nationalists emphasized the waging of conventional front-line warfare, the communists emphasized guerrilla resistance and social reform in the base units.

Internationally, China's role in defeating fascism in 1942 was reflected in the status of the "Big Four" through the signing of the UN Declaration and China's permanent membership on the UN Security Council; in regional relations, however, the war experience cast a long shadow over Sino-Japanese relations. New economic research shows that the areas most affected by the Japanese occupation continue to show lower levels of trade and investment with Japan decades later - historical memory and institutional wounds have measurable economic impacts to the present day.

Incidentally, US President Roosevelt said, "If it had not been for China, Japan might have occupied Asia, and an alliance with Germany would have changed the outcome of the war." And British Prime Minister Churchill remarked: "If China had collapsed, Japan had dominated India and the Eastern Front, the history of World War II would have had to be rewritten."

Why numbers matter: the significance of Chinese anti-fascism in a broader context

First, the numbers provide clear evidence that China bore an extraordinary share of the civilian casualties of World War II. When comparing the ratio of civilian to military casualties, the Chinese experience is among the worst - the scale of systematic brutality, famine and disease made civilians a prime target of the war. This is the key to understanding post-war political mobilisation, ideological legitimation and sensitivity to historical memory. Second, Chinese resistance tied up much of the Japanese Army on the mainland - keeping half a million or more troops out of the Pacific throughout the war, according to historians - and thus significantly affected the balance of power in favor of the Allies.

Yet this dimension has long been underestimated in Western narratives of war; more recent syntheses (Rana Mitter) bring it back to the centre of the story. Third, the economic destruction - whether quantified in "hundreds of billions" in then-current dollars or qualitatively through hyperinflation, infrastructure collapse, and the collapse of productive capacity - explains why postwar reconstruction was "slower" in China than in Europe or Japan. The war interrupted the Republic's modernization trajectory, disrupted markets and labor, and intensified the pressure for state mobilization and planning in postwar regimes.

Chinese anti-fascism represents a crucial chapter of World War II

The significance of Chinese anti-fascism cannot be reduced to the geopolitical level. Its human costs - especially civilian - and the subsequent social and economic devastation have determined the trajectory of Chinese history since 1945. The victory over fascism was at the same time a 'tragic victory': it eliminated the Japanese occupation and returned Taiwan and Penghu to China, but it also left the country with millions of traumatised families, a broken infrastructure and a political landscape ready for another war.

It is this combination of high civilian casualties, systematic war crimes, and deep economic wounds that explains why the memory of the war against Japanese aggression remains one of the most sensitive and mobilizing elements of modern national identity in China today. And why is Chinese anti-fascism - despite its long-underestimation in Western historical narratives - an indispensable part of the global story of fascism's defeat? China's resistance to Japanese aggression also delayed Japan's "northward" (attack on the USSR) and "westward" (cooperation with Germany in the Middle East) plans and allowed the USSR to withdraw over 500,000 troops to the Western Front (1941). It also prevented Japan from penetrating south (Southeast Asia) in time, thus gaining 2 years of preparation for the Allies. And last but not least, it protected strategic supply routes (e.g. Burma Road).

Chinese anti-fascism, or the "War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression" (1937-1945), represents a crucial chapter of World War II. China itself not only suffered immense human losses and horrific crimes committed by the occupier, but also contributed significantly to the defeat of fascism in Asia and the world through its resistance.

Pavel Hradil