[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by nuyt

I think no MH's were shipped to China. They never left the US and were rejected by Chinese officials IN the US (well, that's how I understood it and it may be wrong of course)

I found some more information on this subject in CHAPTER I: The Military Missions of The Ordnance Department: on beachhead and battlefront. This publication paints a picture of the Chinese not being entirely ready to receive and use tanks (my bold):

In General Magruder's advance party, which left by air for China on 18 September 1941, was his chief of staff, Col. Edward E. MacMorland, an Ordnance officer. Stopping at Honolulu, Midway, and Wake, which MacMorland found "in a fever of defense preparations," and at Guam—"practically defenseless"—the party spent several days in Manila conferring with General Douglas MacArthur before flying via Hong Kong to Chungking. Arriving in much-bombed Chungking on 9 October, the members of the mission were surprised to find no blackout—electric lights were blazing. They were given a fine brick building for their headquarters and living quarters, with a pleasant garden and a huge staff of servants, and were immediately engulfed in a round of receptions and elaborate, fourteen-course dinners.35

On MacMorland's recommendation, the two Ordnance members of the China Mission were a specialist on arsenals and production, Lt. Col. Walter H. Soderholm, and a specialist on maintenance, 1st Lt. Eugene P. Laybourn. Soderholm came in by air on 23 October. Laybourn was the last to arrive, having stayed behind to participate in conferences on the 7-ton Marmon-Herrington tank that seemed the most practical tank to furnish the Chinese, since it was in production and could be used on the primitive Chinese road net. With Lt. Col. John R. Francis, the mission's tank expert, and four or five other members of the mission, including officers concerned with the Burma Road, he arrived at the port of Rangoon on the Silver Dawn the second week of November and traveled up the Burma Road, making firsthand observations on a problem that had received a good deal of study—how to transport the tanks from Lashio, the railhead, to Chungking. ( See Map 1)

Soderholm conferred with Maj. Gen. Yu Ta-wei, the Chinese Army's Chief of Ordnance, and visited Chinese arsenals. What he found in the twenty arsenals was not encouraging. There were about a million rifles. There was a heterogeneous assortment of artillery from the arsenals of Europe and Japan, about 800 pieces, but spare parts and ammunition, especially for the artillery brought from the Soviet Union, were almost exhausted. The Chinese arsenals could make field artillery, mortars, machine guns, rifles, and ammunition, but for several months had been operating at one-fourth capacity because of shortages of raw materials. Powder and metal for ammunition were almost nonexistent. The most pressing need seemed to be for arsenal metals, explosives, and machinery, and for finished small arms ammunition. Next in importance were infantry weapons and artillery. Members of AMMISCA learned that most of General Yu's needs for procurement had already been submitted by T. V. Soong, head of China Defense Supplies, Inc., the purchasing authority in the United States; and that Mr. Soong's estimates had been based on thirty Chinese divisions, a strength that had not been finally approved by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Until it was approved, General Magruder radioed Secretary of War Stimson, little more could be done on matériel. In any case it seemed impossible to obtain from the Chinese definite data on what was most needed.

Vagueness and procrastination on the part of Chinese military leaders also hampered the Ordnance officers in making plans for training Chinese soldiers in the use of lend-lease arms. They learned that the Generalissimo contemplated establishing two training centers, one near Kunming, the other near Kweiyang, but the Chinese National Military Council hesitated to locate the centers or name their commanders. On the all-important subject of tanks, it was not until 27 November that Lt. Gen. Shueh Ting-Yao, in charge of mechanized training, asked Colonel MacMorland what buildings and grounds would be needed for an armored force training school. Plans for the organization and use of tank and scout car units had not gone beyond the most rudimentary stage.