Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c4.s2.143

v1.c4.s2.143

During World War II, when Japan occupied almost all of eastern China, India became of great strategic importance to China as a supply and communication route for the Nationalist Government headed by Chiang Kai-shek which had to shift its headquarters from Nanjing to Chongqing in western China. This was particularly so after the Japanese invasion of Burma in mid-1942 cut off the supply routes to southwestern China through that country. For the rest of the war, the Stilwell Road from Ledo in Assam to Yunnan, the Calcutta-Kunming oil pipeline and the “Hump” air route which saw hundreds of planes carrying goods and passengers between airfields in eastern India and southwest China, played a very important role in the so-called “China-Burma-India” (CBI) theatre of war. The route from Kalimpong in north Bengal to Tibet and Yunnan was also used to transport civilian goods. During the War, thousands of Chinese soldiers also received training to fight Japanese forces in Burma in India at Ramgarh in the present-day state of Jharkhand.