WWII: Chinese and Japanese army size 1938
In 1938, the first full year of the Second Sino-Japanese War (the Chinese theater of the Second World War), the combined armed forces of China was almost double the size of the invading Japanese force. However, while China had the numerical advantage, Japanese soldiers were better trained, better equipped, and had stronger supply networks. An additional factor was that control of the Japanese Army was much more centralized than the Chinese forces, who suffered greatly from internal division and sometimes even conflict. China had been in the midst of a civil war between various nationalist, communist, and warlord-led factions before Japan's invasion in 1937, but hostilities were paused in order to defend against the foreign invasion. As the war progressed, disunity and miscommunication between the Chinese forces intensified, to the detriment of the Chinese war effort.