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| 1941, Jan. 7–13 |
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| Nationalist troops ambushed the New Fourth Army, killing some 3,000 Communist soldiers; this was later known as the New Fourth Army Incident. | 1 |
| The Japanese forces committed acts of appalling brutality in China, with a policy of “three-alls”: kill all, burn all, destroy all. The populations of entire villages, frequently numbering in the thousands, were on many occasions exterminated in mass slaughters, their homes burned to the ground, and often all farm animals put to death. Such a policy was meant to deter people from aiding either the Communists or the GMD. | 2 |
| The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war against Japan, opening a second front of sorts in the Pacific. The U.S. soon awarded China $630 million in lend-lease, followed by another $500 million loan—all to the Chongqing regime. | 3 |
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| 1942, March 8 |
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| The governments of Great Britain and the United States, to check the serious inflation in China, provided credits of £50 million and U.S.$500 million. | 4 |
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| April |
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| After tough fighting with the Japanese in Burma, Chinese and British troops withdrew, and the Burma Road closed. | 5 |
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| Oct. 9 |
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| Great Britain and the U.S. announced their relinquishment of extraterritorial rights and special privileges in China (ratified by treaties, Jan. 11, 1943). | 6 |
| During the fighting, thousands of Chinese flocked to Yan'an and the Communists, and in 1942 the Party tried to weed out less than completely dedicated revolutionaries with a “Rectification Campaign.” Certain persons were severely criticized and drummed out of the Party, with some committing suicide; Mao's position was thus further secured. The writer Ding Ling (1904–86) was one such object of criticism; her stories frequently singled out male Communists for mistreating women, views now deemed bourgeois feminism. | 7 |
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| May |
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| Mao called the Yan'an Forum on Art and Literature and laid down strict literary guidelines for socialist art and literature. | 8 |
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