ABSTRACT
The chairman of the political council was General Sung Cheh-yuan, who was at the same time in command of the Twenty-ninth Army, which at the outbreak of hostilities formed the Chinese garrison in the Peking district. At the outbreak of war Japanese and Chinese posts around Peking were so intermixed that the defenders could not form a united front, and therefore their defence soon collapsed before the superior mechanical equipment and victorious offensive spirit of the Japanese. One of China's best younger generals, Fu Tso-yi led the defence with success and inflicted a decisive defeat on the invaders at Pailingmiao. Mobile Chinese corps had made an advance through Changpei far to the eastward against Jehol, where part of the Manchukuo troops watched their opportunity to revolt against the Japanese. The weakness of the Chinese aerial defence armies exposed on the treeless plains, as for instance around Shanghai, have suffered cruelly under the mass bombardment of Japanese planes over their positions.
