Peng Dehuai, commander of the 100-Regiment Campaign

　　In north china, behind enemy lines, as the people's armed forces and the anti-Japanese base areas were rapidly expanding, from August 20 to the beginning of December 1940 the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army launched large-scale offensive against the Japanese troops. As more than 100 regiments of the Eighth Route Army with a total of more than 200,000 men took part in these operations, they were called the 100-Regiment Campaign.

　　The 100-Regiment Campaign has two active attacking and one against "mopping-up" stages.

　　In the first stage of the 100-Regiment Campaign (from August 20 to September 10, 1940) transportation lines were sabotaged.

　　In the second stage (from September 22 to early October), the Eighth Route Army continued to launch surprise attacks on both sides of railways, destroyed Japanese fortified points in the base areas and attacked the county seats of Yushe, Liaoxian, Laiyuan and Lingqiu.

　　The last stage is from early October, the Japanese dispatched all the 20,000 troops that it could concentrate in north China, in addition to a large number of puppet troops, to carry out desperate retaliatory "mopping-up operations." The army and people in the base areas fought valiantly against them.

　　During the 100-Regiment Campaign the officers and men of the Eighth Route Army fought the enemy courageously. By the beginning of December, they had fought 1,824 battles, large and small, killed or wounded more than 25,000 Japanese and puppet troops and captured more than 280 Japanese troops and 18,000 puppet troops, as well as guns, artillery and other materiel. The campaign dealt a heavy blow to the "prisoners' cages" policy that was designed to carve up the armed units and people in the anti-Japanese base areas into isolated groups. The campaign also pinned down many Japanese troops and deflated their aggressive arrogance. It not only tempered the people's armed forces and enhanced the prestige of the Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army, but also inspired the nation at a time when the War of Resistance was at low ebb. The fact that the Communist Party has persevered for so long in resisting Japan behind enemy lines and had launched the 100-regiment Campaign was a convincing refutation of the view, held by some, that in the War of Resistance the Party's guerrilla warfare consisted of just moving around without fighting.