however, most of these former nationalists turned japanese puppet regime forces were not from chiang kai-shek’s own clique, but instead, they were mainly consisted of troops of warlords who were only nominally under the chiang kai-shek’s before world war ii, since they were nationalists in name only and mostly maintained their independent and semi-independent status. these warlords were only interested in keeping their own power and defected to the japanese side when japanese invaders offered to let them keep their power in exchange for their collaborations. after world war ii, these forces of former japanese puppet regimes once again returned to the nationalist camp for the same reason they defected to the japanese invaders. obviously, it was difficult for chiang to immediately get rid of these warlords for good as soon as they surrendered to chiang and rejoined nationalists, because such move would alienate other factions within the nationalist ranks, and these former japanese puppet regime's warlords could still help the nationalists to gain more territories by holding on to what was under their control until chiang completed the deployment of his own troops to take over. chiang kai-shek’s objective was to simultaneously solve the warlord problem that had plagued china for so long and the problem of the extermination of communism together, which proved to be an extremely fatal mistake for him and his nationalist regime later on, as shown in this conflict.