Strategic and Tactical Assessment

From the Desk of General Qiang Guo. Written by hand, translated from Chinese.

Not for general circulation.

It behoves me to jot down a few notes on persons of note in the Chongqing area as I start my campaign for the region, as an aide-mémoire if you will, and help me sort out in my own mind the potential firm allies from the potential allies-of-convenience, from the useful idiots, from the enemies of my enemy from the just plain enemies and so-on.

In no particular order.

Ancheng 'Blind' Minh.
Being the leader of a crime syndicate, ordinarily I'd say she's the kind of person that China could well do without, however in these turbulent times one cannot turn away a potential ally so easily. She has many men (well, bandit dogs at least) at her command, and my own force lacks numbers. Additionally, she is a very attractive young woman, and I would be lying if I said that I was unmoved by her beauty. Perhaps if we can achieve a personal union then our forces might be combined? Even bandits can be shaped into good soldiers with sufficient discipline and training.

Ho Sun.
A blight on the land as much as any gwailo. He seeks nothing but plunder and bloodshed. He is to be purged at the earliest convenient opportunity. I have nothing more to say on the matter.

Zhong Guangming.
Clearly a lunatic, but apparently a charismatic lunatic. He has a force of both modern style troops and the old-fashioned bannermen, as he seems to appeal to the common folk. I hear he also has set about reforming the primitive agricultural practices of the rural areas, and has had some success at it by all accounts. If he is content to mess about with farms and keep the peasants happy with his religious nonsense then I see no reason to disturb him. The modern China will need feeding just as much as the old one did, after all.

The Yellow Emperor.
A lunatic of an altogether more malevolent sort. The madness and carnage of this so-called 'Emperor' must be opposed. His force is held together by nothing more than intimidation and his own force of will, if it is possible to kill the man then the rabble of scum who follow him will dissipate, I am sure of that. His force also lacks big guns, armour, or anything else besides infantry, and that of mostly poor quality apart from some foreign mercenaries. I think I can manage any threat he might pose.

Señor Valentino Aezús so-on and so-forth.
The first gwailo on this list, but sadly not the last. They are every one of them a pox on this land, although apparently this one thinks he's here to help. If he really wants to help China the best thing he can do is fuck off back to America or wherever he comes from and take all the other foreign pigs with him. He has a lot of cavalry, but I have tanks and machine guns and I have learned the lessons of the recent European war very well. He can leave or he can be buried here, his choice.

Zheng Lian.
Another flower of Chinese womanhood tangled up in organised crime. Woe to the middle kingdom that its beautiful young women should be forced to resort to such activities, but of course we know who is to blame for that and all our other recent misfortunes, don't we? Once the foreign menace has been driven back into the darkness beyond our borders where they belong we can set about restoring China to its former glory, but I digress. This young lady seems to be mostly confined to the waterways, so I doubt I'll come into much conflict with her, but if I could perhaps come to some sort of arrangement with her then it would certainly make crossing the rivers of the region much easier.

David Lee.
A foreigner who thinks that having a few drops of Chinese blood in his veins entitles him to interfere in our affairs. I shall disabuse him of this notion; mongrels such as he will cast out just like the white devils who whelped them. His equipment, however, I shall keep if I can. He lacks manpower even more than I do, and if I can attack with sufficient swiftness I may be able to take most of his machines intact.

Brigadier General John Stewardson.
Ah, the gwailo in his simplest, nakedest, form. Nothing more than a marauding bandit with equipment well above his station, more brigand than brigadier if you ask me. I will admit that this 'Brigadier General' has a formidable force of highly competent fighting men and is a threat to be taken very seriously indeed, but I am also convinced that I will have little trouble persuading the loyal sons of China of join me in my efforts to exterminate the presence of him and all those like him.

'Father' Jin.
I can't say I'm very enthused about the proliferation of the gwailo religion in China. Between this senile old fool and that Zhong Guangming buffoon I begin to worry about the peasants falling under the sway of the unhealthy influence of this 'Christianity'. The last thing I would want is to unite China only to see it become dominated by foreign priests and such. As far as 'Father' Jin goes, his army is large, but ill-disciplined, relying on guerilla fighters to disrupt the enemy in order to avoid having to fight a well-organised foe. As with the Yellow Emperor, if Jin himself should perish then his force will disperse fairly quickly.

Master Wang.
A very encouraging sight; the peasantry rising up to cast out the invader! Although his forces may be mostly little better than armed volunteers they have an admirable fervour. I will certainly work towards some sort of alliance with Master Wang if at all possible.

Su Sheng.
Now this is more like it! Like Master Wang he rises up against the gwailo interloper, but Su Sheng has a force of trained and disciplined soldiers backed up by machine guns and motorised with trucks and an armoured train! I shall make every effort to link up with Sheng to form a united front with our forces. Forward for China!

General Ma Hongxing.
I have some reservations about General Hongxing. On the one hand he certainly seems to be dedicated to expelling the foreigners from China, but on the other is it really a good idea to be giving the Hui positions of power like this? Still, he may be useful as long as he remembers his place in the grand scheme of things. His force is entirely infantry; well trained and fierce as they may be they will struggle against any well-dug-in opposition with machine guns and / or artillery, and especially against tanks and armoured cars.

Fredrick Antov.
The so-called 'Demon King' he is, in reality, nothing more than another foreign mercenary pig gorging at the trough of war, fed on the bodies of China's loyal sons and daughters. Apparently he is an expert at defensive tactics, so luring him out on the attack will be the optimum strategy, I think. His men are well-equipped and well-trained but few in number, even relative to my own forces, so hopefully I will be able to bring to bear superior numbers, especially since I fully expect to have allies, whereas I severely doubt he will. It will be a bloody conflict, though.

Hungry Man Jack.
A coward and a lunatic this maniac is destroying the very land itself; burning farms and salting the earth. I have no idea why he would do such a thing, but he must be stopped. He flees before any serious resistance, so bringing him to bay will be the hard part, although, of course, it would probably be a simple matter to merely chase him out of China altogether. Still, I will kill him if I can.

The White Magistrate.
Speaking of people to kill if possible, this bizarre freak is clearly some sort of rabid dog to be put down at the first opportunity. His force is small, but well-equipped and highly motivated (mostly by fear of him, it seems), this fellow is the Yellow Emperor writ small, and likely to be much harder to eliminate because of his smaller disposition; it is much harder to smash a tiny diamond than an enormous lump of coal.

Edit Report
Pub: 09 Oct 2024 18:41 UTC
Edit: 09 Oct 2024 18:43 UTC
Views: 145