An in-depth look at the past, present, and future of China's military.When Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949, China was a poor and wrecked society after years of continuous wars. For centuries, in fact, China had been seen as a sort of plunder-zone to be invaded, and then a backwater until the late 1980s—when domestic policy brought about monumental changes. The result is that China has grown to be the second largest economy in the world,...

In March 1969 the two giants of the Communist world – the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – came to blows over the control of a remote and uninhabited island on their mutual border in a conflict that risked barely controlled escalation, and in which the USSR gave consideration to the use of nuclear weapons.In 2021, Helion & Company published two books by Harold Orenstein and Dmitry Ryabushkin: The Sino-Soviet Border War of 1969 Volume 1: T...

This book describes and illustrates the ground forces of the Republic of Korea and its United Nations allies during the Korean War, as well as the UN medical contingents in the conflict.The North Korean invasion of the Republic of Korea (ROK) in June 1950 prompted an enormous international response, as first the United States and then a host of allied countries contributed combat troops or medical personnel to the United Nations effort to support the South Koreans....

Featuring full-color artwork, this book describes and illustrates the Chinese and North Korean troops who fought US and UN forces in Korea during 1950–53.In June 1950, North Korean forces armed and equipped by the Soviet Union invaded South Korea, forcing back the US and South Korean troops facing them and threatening them with complete defeat. After the US and UN forces mounted a series of counter-offensives, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army crossed into the Ko...

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest army in the world.China is predicted to be on the brink of overtaking the USA as the world's largest economy, and China's military capabilities and global ambitions are the single greatest long-term pre-occupation of Western governments. The PLA has progressed steadily – if slowly – since its creation in 1949, from a mass army of unsophisticated infantry limited to 'human wave' tactics into a highly sophisti...

The 1894–95 war between China and Japan, known in the West as the First Sino-Japanese War, lasted only nine months, but its impact resonates today.The Chinese Beiyang (Northern) Fleet was led by her flagship, Dingyuan, and her sister ship*, Zhenyuan*, which were the biggest in Asia; German-built armoured turret ships, they were armed with four 12in guns and two 6in guns, plus six smaller guns and three torpedo tubes. For their part the Japanese fleet, incl...

This study tells the epic story of how a routed group of Chinese Communists marched tens of thousands of miles with Mao on a journey that would lead to their eventual triumph and rule of the whole of China.Every nation has its founding myth, and for modern China it is the Long March. In the autumn of 1934, the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek routed the Chinese Communists and some 80,000 men, women and children left their homes to walk with Mao Zedong int...

The invasion and conquest of Hong Kong formed part of the staggering series of Japanese conquests across the Far East in late 1941 and early 1942.On 8th December 1941, as part of the simultaneous combined attack against Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia and the British colony of Hong Kong. After only 18 days of battle the defenders, a weak, undermanned brigade, were overwhelmed by a superior force of two b...

A detailed account of the bloody capture of Shanghai and Nanjing by Japan in the early days of World War II in the East.From 1931, China and Japan had been embroiled in a number of small-scale conflicts that had seen vast swathes of territory being occupied by the Japanese. On 7 July 1937, the Japanese engineered the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which led to the fall of Beijing and Tianjin and the start of a de facto state of war between the two countries. This forc...

In July 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident sparked a bloody conflict between Chinese and Japanese forces that would rage across China and beyond for more than eight years.The two sides' forces brought very different strengths and limitations to the conflict. In 1937 China was divided into factions, each controlled by warlords with independent forces, and there was no unified Chinese army. In order to fight the Japanese Chiang Kai-shek, the nominal leader of Natio...

The New York Times bestseller that inspired the documentary Shanghai 1937: Where World War II Began on Public Television.At its height, the Battle of Shanghai involved nearly a million Chinese and Japanese soldiers while sucking in three million civilians as unwilling spectators—and often victims. It turned what had been a Japanese imperialist adventure in China into a general war between the two oldest and proudest civilizations of the Far East. U...

This new history of China's pivotal wars from 1894 to 1949 explains how China was transformed from a isolated and ramshackle medieval empire into a fledgling new world power.China is one of the great powers of the modern world. Yet in the late 19th century China was a ramshackle and isolated medieval empire upon whom the European colonial powers could impose their wishes at will.China's Wars describes the series of conflicts from 1894 to 1949 that ...