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By retreating closer to the Soviet Union they were closer to their source of supply & support.

The Soviet Union supplied almost nothing to Mao's forces during WW II, and very little afterward. That was because Mao refused to toe the Comintern line decreed by Stalin. Stalin hated Mao because he could not control him as he did other communist factions worldwide, and that was the genesis of the Soviet-Red Chinese schism that existed as long as the Soviet union was in existence.

However after the KMT betrayed and them destroyed a communist field army in 1941 the communists ended most of their involvement in the war against the Japanese. From then on they were content to let the KMT weaken itself fighting the Japanese, while they stockpiled strength & supplies for the civil war that would follow victory over the Japanese.

The Chinese communists continued their intermittent guerrilla war against the Japanese well into 1944, in order to maintain control of at least some Chinese territory as a political symbol. Once the United States entered the war and demonstrated that Japan was doomed in 1942, the KMT and the Chinese communists, both began looking to the future when they would fight a civil war to determine who controlled China. Neither side gave priority to fighting the Japanese and there was a virtual unwritten truce between the KMT and the Japanese for long periods between 1942 and 1945. Most of the US military aid that was sent to the KMT ended up being used against the communists.

You are confusing later Mao-Stalin tensions with the reality in this period. The Soviets did help the Chinese communists in their most desparate hours after the long marches (epsecially before Mao rose to be the unrivaled leader of the Chinese Communists) even though Mao and Stalin did not always agree on things.

No, Mao was labeled a "deviationist" by Stalin's Comintern in 1931 for taking a pragmatic approach to land redistribution and the wealthier peasants in Jiangxi Province. This was before the beginning of Mao's "Long March" in 1932, during which he consolidated his power as leader of the main branch of the Chinese Communist Party. From that time forward, Stalin refused to aid Mao or his followers in any way. Stalin was negotiating with Chiang in 1935 for a cooperative effort against the Japanese, even while Chiang was pursuing military operations against Mao's communists; Stalin never once made an issue of the anti-Chinese communist (actually anti-Mao) stance of Chiang Kai Shek.

Even as late as 1945, the Soviets cooperated with Chiang's Nationalists forces by handing over to them certain key locations in Manchuria, rather than let Mao's forces take control there. It wasn't until 1947, when it was becoming obvious that the Communist Chinese, led by Mao, were winning the civil war, that Stalin began to mend his fences with the Chinese communists. But Stalin and Mao never completely reconciled their differences.