(Go easy; this is my first post)

After reading a book on the Chinese response to the Pacific War, a question kept nagging me: What if the Chinese Nationalists and Communists didn't join forces against Japan?

Looking at this, it sounds like the Nationalist Party and Chiang Kai-shek didn't really try to strike back at Japan, and that the whole regime was just corrupt. The only counter-offensive I saw with the Chinese in the whole war was against Burma (Am I right?), which was commanded by an American general, but the whole operation was slow, and by that time, British paratroopers were liberating behing enemy lines. The Communists, meanwhile, were having a tremendous effect on Manchuria and the Chinese morale with their guerilla tactics.

I think that if they hadn't of joined forces, the Nationalists would have had increased tension with the Communists, maybe even to the point where the Communists began small, guerilla tactics on them as well as Japan. Civil war sounds a bit too extreme, because it sounds like if one falls, they both fall.

I can't wait to hear your response.