At the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Chinese army was mainly infantry, so the rifles, light machine guns and heavy machine guns most needed in front-line operations.
In October 1937, the Ministry of Military Affairs of the Nationalist Government formulated the "Plan for The Purchase of Additional Ammunition" based on 60 infantry divisions, which accounted for 20,000 light machine guns, 4,500 heavy machine guns and 1.1 billion rounds of 79 rounds to maintain the War of Resistance. Germany, which had previously relied on supplying munitions, was unable to sell ready-made machine guns and ammunition to China because it was expanding its own army and preparing to devour Europe.
At this time, although the Soviet Union could provide munitions, the Soviet rifle machine gun used 7.62 × 54mm bullets, while the Chinese rifle used The German 7.92×57mm bullets, only to buy Soviet aircraft and artillery, the gap between the 79 guns was huge.
In April 1937, Chiang Kai-shek visited European countries with Kong Xiangxi as a special envoy to find sources of arms outside Germany, and successively negotiated with Belgium and France for arms negotiations. Purchased 11.55 million Rounds of Mauser and 3,000 Light Machine Guns from the Belgian National Arsenal, 150 81 mortars from the French company Blounders, Anti-Aircraft Machine Guns from Hatches, and 120 75 mm Field Guns from Schneider. Unfortunately, after the Qiqi Lugou Bridge Incident, reports of defeat in the War of Resistance against Japan were frequently reported, and Japan took advantage of the situation to exert strong pressure on European and American countries, and China's arms orders were blocked by the Fa-Belgian government. Only 1.55 million rounds of ammunition were shipped before the Protests in Japan.
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese Battle of Songhu on August 13, 1937, European and American countries gradually released China's arms orders.
At that time, the five major arms producing countries in the world, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, could not receive arms orders from China. The United States, Britain, and France were worried about Japan's invasion of the colonies in East Asia, Germany was expanding its armaments, and Italy was allied with Japan. However, with the strong and bitter support of the Battle of Songhu, countries gradually despised Japan. The United States, Britain, and France, which have direct conflicts of interest with Japan, secretly sell arms, while a number of small countries that do not have direct conflicts with Japan have generously accepted Arms Orders from China. Foreign arms imports have basically stabilized the arms needs of 60 infantry divisions on the front line.
At that time, the purchase and sale of arms was mainly based on foreign exchange. China's foreign exchange reserves mainly come from the sale of silver to the United States in exchange for dollars.
In 1937, the foreign exchange reserve was about $252 million. Based on the exchange rate at the time of the war, about 850 million yuan is legal. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, international trade was extinguished, domestic funds fled, and Japan fought a currency war to absorb China's foreign exchange, and the cost of buying arms became less and less. The total amount of urgent orders in the two years before the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was nearly 300 million yuan, equivalent to 35% of the total foreign exchange before the war.
The only way to buy arms for a long time was to rely on barter in exchange for arms, but at that time only Germany and the Soviet Union were willing to provide barter loans. Germany had limited availability of weapons, and the Soviet Union's barter loans were a thrilling step.1. In March 1938, the Soviet Union issued the first bill for arms sales, and in the name of "packaging fee", "assembly fee", "loading and unloading fee", "land transportation fee", "car fee" and "car driver fee", it issued a "C bill", demanding that China pay more than 9.85 million US dollars, equivalent to 4% of China's pre-war foreign exchange reserves. Chiang Kai-shek firmly denied this strange account, and the pen and ink lawsuit lasted for two months.
In the summer of 1938, Wuhan fell, Guangzhou fell, and China's foreign exchange also bottomed out. The Chongqing government could not afford belgian machine guns, so it could only use Sino-Soviet barter loans to buy machine guns from the Soviet Union. Actual combat proved that the three light and heavy machine guns purchased by China from the Soviet Union were too bulky for Chinese soldiers, and the guns were old and unstable, and could only be allocated to the rear school organs and miscellaneous troops.
China's arms procurement has become unsustainable. But at the same time, Japan can't hold out.
Japan's foreign exchange is also limited, and it has to buy fuel oil, scrap iron and rubber from Europe and the United States to fight a war, so it has to sell gold reserves to support the war of aggression against China. At the end of the Battle of Wuhan, Japan's 388 tons of gold reserves were only 25 tons, becoming a problem customer with bad credit in the international market. As a result, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression became a protracted confrontational war of partial warfare since 1939. It was not until Japan launched the Pacific War and went down to the South China Sea to loot combat resources that it could fight a big war.