One thing that is apparent, but hasn’t been discussed in the series is the different standards that China faced when receiving lend lease aid relative to the other allies.
For example, Stilwell was in charge of lend lease to China, but none of the US generals/representatives in the UK or the USSR had similar authority. There the US sent the aid and trusted the locals to use it.
Similarly, there were contemporary accusations that the Chinese hadn’t shown their willingness to fight Japan. By contrast, French forces, many of which had actually surrendered to the Germany, ended up receiving about the same amount of lend lease as the Chinese.
It seems like the Chinese were given no credit for not surrendering for the four years that they fought without help.
That’s the word right there – “trust”. The US government didn’t trust Chiang as far as they could throw him, so they wanted a trustworthy hand to ensure that the aid sent to China didn’t get funnelled off to cronies to be sold for whatever it would bring (as we currently hear some significant portion of the aid sent to Ukraine may not reach the troops in the field …)
Mind you, the US had good reasons not to trust Chiang and the KMT. The communists under Mao made a big stink about the corruption of the KMT and its army. It was one of the (if not the only) piece of Maoist propaganda that was entirely the truth.