Burma Road

Burma Road, supply route 565 km. (350 mi.) long for Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist forces which connected Burma with China (see Map 19). Built by 200,000 Chinese labourers, it was completed in 1938, and ran from Kunming in Yunnan province to Wanting in China where it joined the road that ran from there, through Lashio, to Mandalay and Rangoon. After Japan had captured most of China's coastline in 1938 (see China incident), and then closed the Haiphong–Yunnan railway (see French Indo-China) in 1940—when Stalin also closed the one from the USSR—it was Chiang's principal supply route. Japanese diplomatic pressure on the British stopped it being used from July to October 1940; when it reopened they conspired with nationalist Burmans (see Thakin) to close it again, and they launched their invasion of Burma in December 1941 partly to ensure its closure. Allied supplies for China then had to be flown from India by an air route known as the Hump, until the Japanese were cleared from northern Burma and the Ledo Road was connected to it in January 1945. See also logistics.