After Japan launched an all-out war of aggression against China in 1937, the successive fall of North China, South China and East China made seaports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai and the land passage from Vietnam to Guangxi completely cut off by the Japanese Army. So since the second half of 1937, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the construction of a road from Yunnan to Burma, so that China can continue to receive aid from britain and the United States and other countries in the Indian Ocean at the worst time, which is the famous "Yunnan Burma Highway".
One of the winding roads of the Burma Highway
The starting point of the Yunnan Burma Highway is located in Kunming, Yunnan, and the end point is the southern Burmese city of Lashio, a total of 1453 kilometers, a total of 959 kilometers in China at that time, 603 kilometers after leaving the China-Myanmar border port, that is, Lashio, and then by taking the central railway in Myanmar, you can directly reach the Yangon seaport. Everything that followed proved that the construction of the Burma Highway was a very correct choice, because it effectively supported the first and middle periods of China's War of Resistance Against Japan.
Today, the Chinese section of the Burma Highway has become National Highway 320
At the end of 1937, the Chinese Nationalist Government began to bid international tenders for the construction of the Burma Highway, and at that time, about a number of large international construction companies were interested in it, saying that if China provided advanced equipment to the construction party, the Burma Highway could be opened smoothly within six or seven years. But this is simply nonsense, because at that time China was still fighting the Japanese invaders, the coastline was lost, the external support that could be obtained was already very small, coupled with the backwardness of technology, China could not be able to provide advanced construction equipment, and China did not have six to seven years to delay, so after weighing, China chose to build this extremely difficult road across the jungle.
In January 1938, the General Engineering Office of the Burma Highway was established, and the early survey work of construction was officially carried out in an extremely difficult environment. Due to the lack of trained professional surveying and mapping personnel in China at that time, the General Engineering Office of the Yunnan Burma Highway specially sought out a group of aspiring young people who were not afraid of hardship or tiredness, and through the hand-to-hand teaching of the only few foreign technicians who stayed in the west, they were taught the measurement technology, and these young people grew rapidly in their later work, and also became the technical backbone of the Yunnan Burma Highway, and even the national pillars after New China.
If you want to talk about the miracle in the history of construction, it is the Burma Highway, about 200,000 laborers began in 1938 in the absence of construction machinery "freehand", in the tropical rainforest full of poisonous insects, the environment is harsh, many difficult work is done by women and children. The construction period of about seven years, which was originally estimated by foreign construction companies, took less than seven months for the Chinese side to open to traffic in August 1938. Subsequently, the transport business was fully responsible for the Yunnan Burma Highway Administration under the Ministry of Communications established by the National Government, and was later renamed the China-Myanmar General Transport Administration.
Chinese laborers are building the Burma Highway
With the surrender of France to Germany in June 1940, the mode of transport on the Chinese border began to deteriorate: due to the defeated agreement signed between the French Vichy government and Germany, Japan, which was also an Axis power, began to send troops to Vietnam and French Indochina, and completely blocked the Yunnan-Vietnam Highway, and the Burma Highway became the "last hope" of the Nationalist government.
In June 1940, Japanese Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita formally issued an ultimatum to the British government, demanding that the British immediately close the Burma Road in British Burma and carry out armament combat exercises in Hong Kong with 5,000 troops. In the case of a blatant threat to Hong Kong's defense and security, Britain and the United States could only press China to unanimously demand the closure of the Burma Highway, also known as "Munich in the Far East". Facts have proved that Britain and the United States have not seen through Japan's ambitions, and this kind of "drinking and quenching thirst" behavior will undoubtedly only weaken allies and fuel Japan's arrogance.
The Chinese Expeditionary Force fighting in Burma
However, after the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, China and Britain and the United States once again reached an agreement, in order to defend the rear, so the defense of the Burma Highway was once again put on the agenda, so the famous Chinese Expeditionary Force went to Burma to fight.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Yunnan Burma Highway was one of the longest-running and most trafficked international passages in southwest China, and it was also a key factor in determining China's tenacious resistance to the Japanese army in the War of Resistance Against Japan. After the Burma Road was frequently attacked by Japanese bombers, the "Hump Route" launched by the United States to fly over the Himalayas also became a new transportation channel.