Giggerty
I'd dispute the Nationalists avoided a major fight with the Japanese as it had a lot to do with unity and individual armies being run by war lords and the fact their conventional army structures often disintegrated quickly in battle with the Japanese.
I'm no apologists for the Nationalists either. Their atrocities are remarkably well forgotten- Nanjing evacuation and blowing the dykes on the Yellow River which they tried to blame on the Japanese and killed between half a million and one million of their own people! The Yellow River flooding was a major success for the Communists in recruiting disaffected peasants in the north.
There's some pretty sweeping interpretations of history above and I highly recommend further reading if you live in this part of the world. Not a bad idea to reinforce how quickly you need to get families out of here in any social breakdown event in China.
For a start, this is an excellent overview and if interest sparked, you virtually have to be an amateur historian to find good accounts of Chinese history during the period.
Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 - Amazon.com