The command center in Guangzhou is located in the Third Theater of Operations, which has three group armies and seven mountain divisions, with a total strength of 990,000 troops, a total of 1,100 tanks and armored vehicles, 1,900 aircraft, and 13,000 artillery pieces. Because the target of the war was Southeast Asia and South Asia, which are located in tropical and subtropical rainforest regions, the Third Theater of Operations reduced the number of heavy equipment and strengthened the number of elite infantry. For example, seven of the 10 mountain divisions in China belong to the Third Theater, and the 1st Mountain Division, the 2nd Mountain Division, the 5th Mountain Division, and the two Taiwan Mountain Divisions, which are the most elite and have experienced the tempering of the Japanese battlefield, are all here, and they will become the vanguard of the Third Theater.

It was not the two million colonial troops mobilized by the Entente that hindered the Third Theater of Operations, but the dense tropical jungle and extremely inconvenient transport conditions. The Third Theater has been conducting adaptive training in the tropical jungles of the Philippines for more than half a year, and the provision of special drugs and jungle combat equipment developed for the tropical jungles in the rear has become the standard equipment of the soldiers of the Third Theater. In addition, in Southeast Asia, trucks and other motor vehicles are not necessarily better than military motorcycles and military bicycles, so more than 50,000 military motorcycles and 200,000 military bicycles are equipped with front-line troops.

In addition, among the more than 10,000 artillery pieces equipped in the Third Theater, there are basically no heavy artillery guns with a caliber of more than 150 mm, the terrain here is complicated, and the heavy artillery transportation is inconvenient, and the Allied colonial armies do not have permanent fortifications of reinforced concrete, so they do not need to be equipped with too many heavy weapons. Lightweight infantry guns, mortars, and bazookas are the most suitable means of fire projection in the Third Theater.

The Fourth Theater facing the Americas is the latest theater to be established, with a command center in Tokyo, Japan, and troops scattered across the Japanese archipelago, the Korean Peninsula, the Hawaiian Islands, and Guam.

On the day that China declared war with the Allies, the French Provisional Government in exile in London transferred the Indochina Fleet stationed in Cam Ranh Bay back to Singapore, and several old warships of the Dutch Provisional Government in Indonesia were also put into combat readiness. Also moving in the South China Sea direction is the Thai Navy, with three of their torpedo boats and several other small warships following the movements of the Entente and entering combat readiness.

On the land side, French Indochina had already mobilized 630,000 colonial troops, of which 100,000 were sent to the Middle East and North Africa to help defend the security of the Allied colonies, and 300,000 were deployed in the border areas between China and French Indochina, becoming the first line of defense to prevent China from moving south. The British Burma colonies also mobilized 300,000 troops, but as the Burmese Independence Army increased in scope and frequency again, northern Burma was once again showing signs of breaking away from British control. The semi-colonial state of Thailand acted strangely, and the king of Thailand actually announced that he would join the Entente and resolutely resist the Chinese invaders, a decision that became the main reason why the Thais regretted it for a hundred years in the future. British Malaysia also mobilized 300,000 troops to focus on defending the Straits of Malacca and near Kuala Lumpur. The Dutch, who wore the same pants as the British, mobilized 500,000 troops in Indonesia on the condition that Indonesia be allowed to become independent after the war. These nearly two million colonial armies have the same characteristics, that is, the soldiers are untrained, the weapons and ammunition are extremely lacking, and the discipline and obedience are equal to zero, but because they are familiar with the rainforest environment, they have a little combat effectiveness.

The order for general mobilization in British Australia and New Zealand has also been issued, and South Asia has also entered a state of general mobilization. The Entente did not expect Southeast Asia to hold off China for long, and their greatest hope was to buy time for war preparations in Australia and South Asia, and at the same time to contain China's forces so that it could not divide its forces to attack the United States mainland.

Ten minutes after the declaration of war, the third theater of the Chinese army launched a full-scale offensive throughout Southeast Asia. The Chinese soldiers who had been preparing for a long time had already sailed on transport ships in the South China Sea, and the Chinese South China Sea Fleet, consisting of two fleet aircraft carriers, five escort aircraft carriers, five light aircraft carriers, two Wuyue-class battleships, three Imperial-class battle cruisers, and more than 60 cruisers and destroyers, escorted the Chinese transport ships. Hundreds of ocean-going submarines cruised around the South China Sea, searching for Allied warships and transport ships. Unfortunately, it was difficult for them to achieve results, and all the combat ships had already taken refuge in Singapore in the Strait of Malacca, where they were waiting for the final judgment under the protection of shore-based aircraft. Here the Allies had fifteen warships, one of which was a former dreadnought-type battleship, and the British transferred most of the warships back to the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the mainland, and they were not capable of fighting a decisive battle with the powerful Chinese fleet in the South China Sea, so they had to endure it. As a result, the waters of Southeast Asia, including the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, the Sulawesi Sea, and the Java Sea, have become the backyard of the Chinese army.

The offensive of the Chinese army was carried out simultaneously in three directions. On land, the infantry of the 1st Mountain Division, the 2nd Mountain Division, plus four other divisions, crossed the border and launched an offensive against the defensive line established by the French Indochinese army. Soon the French officers learned that numbers were of little use to the elite Chinese army, that they were colonial officers who had lost their homeland, and that although they had declared their allegiance to the Provisional Government, the soldier's persistence had long since disappeared without a trace. Since the surrender of France, these colonial officers have become drunk and dying, and they are more capable of making money than before. At the front, the colonial soldiers were only urged to hold or storm the fortified positions of the Chinese army, and the defensive line was broken through.

These colonial soldiers were not the jungle warriors who would later be very difficult to deal with, they did not fight the French for decades, they did not fight the Americans, and they had no experience in jungle warfare. Moreover, they were asked by French officers to engage in positional warfare and large-scale field battles with the Chinese army, and they suffered numerous casualties at once. On the fifth day of the war, the mountain defense line north of Hanoi was completely lost, and more than 200,000 colonial soldiers were either annihilated or taken prisoner by the Chinese army.

The French army retreated to the front line of Hanoi, where 150,000 remnants of troops were gathered, and before they could build fortifications, the troops of two divisions of the Chinese army drilled out of the northern mountains and quickly appeared on the outskirts of Hanoi using jeeps, motorcycles and other mobile vehicles. The battle at Hanoi did not last long, as the frightened colonial troops fled the line as soon as the Chinese artillery fire began to be test-fired, and their French officers fled faster, abandoning Hanoi and heading south in an attempt to rebuild the line in the narrow area near Hue.

Another mountain division and two infantry divisions appeared in the weakly defended Laos area of the French and conquered Vientiane in one week, annihilating more than 30,000 enemy troops. The main reason for the week-long attack was the tropical jungle, which was denser than in the mountains of northern Vietnam.

The second direction of the attack was in Malaysia on the island of Kalimantan, which had good oil reserves and Indonesia in the south, and the British and Dutch had exploited a number of oil fields, which would be a powerful supplement to China's oil sources. Two infantry corps and a mountain division of Chinese troops set out from Manila and landed on Kalimantan Island without incident, where the British and colonial armies were almost at the touch of a touch, unlike the expected fierce fighting. The outnumbered forces quickly translated into prisoners of the Chinese army, and the British officers detailed the reasons for the rapid rout in a telegram to the commander in Singapore - the Chinese were outnumbered, completely overwhelmed by the British, advanced at such a rapid pace, often using the tactics of interspersing a large area, dividing the British into disconnected points and then encroaching on the center. They used bicycles, motorcycles, etc. to maneuver in the jungle, and this tool was very suitable for the path in the bush, and sometimes the Chinese soldiers even carried bicycles through the jungle without roads, and suddenly appeared in the rear of our army.

A large number of colonial soldiers fled into the jungle, shedding their uniforms and weapons to become harmless natives, and the British officers eventually led only more than 30,000 people to retreat to the southwest, of which more than 3,000 were native soldiers. In fact, the description of the defeat of the British army was only partially consistent with the situation of the battle, and after the battle began, the British officers saw that the situation was unfavorable and immediately fled, otherwise they would not have taken with them more than 3,000 native soldiers. It has become an instinct for the British to sell their teammates, not to mention these colonial armies, even the French army, and they have no psychological burden to do such things, but there are a lot of reasons to make themselves feel at ease. (Well, the author Jun is obsessed with what happened to the Chinese expeditionary force, and the British must be written in stink!) ）

The battle in the third direction took place in the Malay Peninsula, where the Chinese landing fleet sent more than 100,000 people to the narrow Malay Peninsula, where the fighting became the fiercest part of the battle in Southeast Asia. The British swore to guard the security of the Strait of Malacca, set up a command center in Kuala Lumpur, and put more than 30,000 British native soldiers and more than 10,000 Dutch soldiers on the front line, as well as more than 400,000 colonial soldiers. Most importantly, the British were well prepared, they built strong fortifications on the Malay Peninsula and stockpiled enough ammunition and food for consumption.

The Chinese offensive was unfavorable, the lack of heavy firepower was unmistakable, and the advance did not exceed 10 kilometers after more than 1,000 casualties, which was a great shame for the invincible Chinese army. The Third Theater quickly changed its tactics by dropping larger ammunition and troops. The 25th Tank Division of the 9th Panzer Corps, which was part of the 3rd Theater of Operations, was sent to the Malay Peninsula, along with more than 200 guns of 150 mm caliber and a large amount of ammunition. In addition, Chinese military engineers quickly built field airfields on the Malay Peninsula, providing take-off and landing sites for more than 70 fighters, 200 bombers, and more than 40 other aircraft of various types.

Surprisingly, the British prepared more than 100 tanks here, most of which were the latest Matilda V tanks, which absorbed the most advanced technology of the Entente countries and were being produced in the United States, Canada, Britain and other places, the Americans named it the Sherman medium tank, and the support to the Russians was called the Nikola tank, but the name was different. (To be continued.) )