Irrespective of its success in mobilizing support, however, the party typically failed to translate that support into sustainable political strength. The party eventually found that the key to survival lay in seeking out and occupying the interstices of power in the mountainous regions between provinces where no other forces held sway, in desolate arts of north China, or where foreign occupation of cities and transport lines (the Japanese in north China during World War 2 and the Russians in northeast China form 1945 to 1946) created a Barnum of power in the countryside. Form the 1920s to the late 1940s virtually wherever the CCP faced the GMD head on, the CCP suffered dealt