{"id":16555,"date":"2023-12-14T21:24:45","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T19:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=16555"},"modified":"2023-12-14T21:24:45","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T19:24:45","slug":"the-art-of-%e5%9c%b0%e9%81%93%e6%88%98-war-of-tunnels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=16555","title":{"rendered":"The Art of “\u5730\u9053\u6218” (War of Tunnels)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Perhaps few in the West know what the writing “\u5730\u9053\u6218” means. This is the Chinese term “war of the tunnels” which was first used by the meters of the genre\u2026 Chinese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the disorganized Chinese warlords of the 1930s came up against Asia’s most modern army, the Japanese, they surely realized how unprepared they were. Japanese generals were skilled, outgunned in all weapons, and ruthless in waging an all-out war without restraint or respect for regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So solutions were needed that would deliver quickly without the need for sophisticated technology. In the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) it seems that the Chinese needed surprise tactics, without their troops being detected to strike the outnumbered Japanese army and disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What they had in abundance was labor. So they recruited millions of villagers to build systems\u2026 tunnels quickly and easily, allowing small forces to strike and disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A particular tunnel network called the “Ranzhuang Tunnel” was developed during the resistance to Japanese counter-insurgency operations in Hebei Province. It was even called “the underground Great Wall”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work on the tunnels began in 1943, as reported in The National, and initially consisted of a small section with room for a few people. The tunnels are said to have been built under the direction of the local communist party. It is said that there were even women and children who volunteered to fight in the tunnels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBack then, they had little choice but to dig the tunnels by hand. You can imagine how painstaking this work was and how much time it took to build the tunnels,\u201d said a tour guide. \u201cMost of the people were just farmers. In many cases it was just ordinary civilians [who fought the Japanese from the tunnels] if the Chinese army was unable to put up any resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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The main disadvantage of tunnel warfare was that usually the Japanese could fill the holes or pour water to drown the soldiers inside the tunnels. This proved to be a major problem, but was later solved by installing filters that would consume the water and poisonous gases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entrances were usually hidden under a thatch inside a house or under a well. This allowed for flexible maneuvers or exits. To camouflage the entrances the Chinese used everything from piglets to cupboards, stables and even trees. Sniper positions were made in everyday village buildings or objects, such as millstones used to grind corn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the following years, the tunnels expanded to a tremendous extent and are said to have eventually connected every house in the village and extended to three neighboring villages. The 11.5 km long complex included traps for Japanese troops, weapons caches, hidden stores and command posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was widespread guerrilla warfare involving Chinese villages, especially in northern China, to fight against the Japanese. Chinese peasants provided critical support to the Communists in terms of shelter and food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This support was considered a patriotic duty and that the villagers were compensated for everything they gave to the Chinese forces. He added, however, that the potential cost to villagers of supporting Chinese troops would be “enormous” because of, for example, the risk of reprisals from the Japanese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vietnam War: How to defeat such an opponent?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few years after the Chinese victory over the Japanese, another Asian army much further south began to develop similar plans. When Vietnam became a French colony again after World War II, the Viet Minh Communists began digging tunnels near Saigon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the French crash at Dien Bien Phu and the withdrawal of the French army the tunnels were preserved in preparation for a possible war with South Vietnam that would begin.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A death trap in North Vietnam’s tunnel system<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Ho Chi Minh, leader of North Vietnam, ordered the expansion of the tunnels after the Americans entered the war between North and South. To sustain a full-scale guerrilla war in South Vietnam, camouflaged bases capable of supplying the insurgents for a long time were used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tunnel systems were not immediately taken over for military purposes, but began to house entire villages that lived permanently underground. Unlike today’s Hamas tunnels, the network built by the Vietnamese was designed to accommodate entire cities, providing kitchens, hospitals, laboratories, sleeping quarters, communications, ammunition storage, and even forms of entertainment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout South Vietnam, there were secret underground bases that were operating successfully. There are reports that each villager was required to dig 90 million tunnels per day. The largest underground base was the Ku Chi tunnels with a total length of 320 km.<\/p>\n\n\n

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American officer checks the entrance to a Vietnamese tunnel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The great advantage of these tunnels was not so much that they acted as formidable hideouts, but that because of their length they afforded an impressive “range” to the Vietcong weapons, as they could be moved many kilometers south, and hit the South Vietnamese as their underground they extended under the opponent’s territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most effective measure the Americans could use were greyhounds. Initially, some doors and vents were detected by sniffer dogs because dogs can smell human breath. However, the Vietnamese found the solution, which was very simple: they used American soap to place it at the tunnel entrances and ventilation doors so that the dogs could not detect them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Americans discovered a tunnel entrance, they would drop toxic gas or send scouts down to lay mines. In large-scale raids with heavy firepower, the collapse of shallow tunnel sections also caused loss of life on both sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These tactics were also used against the Chinese during the Sino-Vietnamese War.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps few in the West know what the writing “\u5730\u9053\u6218” means. This is the Chinese term “war of the tunnels” which was first used…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,2845,7],"tags":[161,252,4984,4985,4983,4248,1976],"class_list":["post-16555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-science","category-military-strategy-doctrines","category-research","tag-china","tag-japan","tag-second-sino-japanese-war","tag-sino-vietnamese-war","tag-the-art-of-war-tunnels","tag-vietnam-war","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16555"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16562,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16555\/revisions\/16562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}