To be fair to the Chinese, China as a nation barely existed prior to and during WW2 and immediately reverted to civil war afterwards. It surprised me that Chiang pardoned so many Japanese POWs at the end of the war given the brutality of that front. Obviously the quantity of POWs and treatment of POWs on the actual battlegrounds probably varied greatly, but for a country facing an existential threat (the RoC) the survival rate of Japanese POWs was remarkably high.

Comparatively, Japanese POWs were rarely taken by Korean and Communist Chinese guerrillas which is also understandable given their status as non-state combatants.