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		THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

.JAPAN AND CHINA, TO 1936

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PATRIOTIC EXPANSIONISTS,
EMPEROR HIROHITO AND OTHER MODERATES

Japan needed to sell goods abroad in order to buy food and to buy raw materials for manufacturing. Between 1929 and 1931, decline in sales to the United States brought decline to two of Japan's rural enterprises: its silk industry and rice growing. Japan's rice farmers and much of the nation suffered. The depression was deep in Japan. Children were begging in the streets. Distress in the countryside was moving people into sympathy with a Rightist political movement, and many were finding new recourse in Japan's Shinto religion. Disappointed farmers found blame with big-city capitalism, and they wished for rigid government control over the economy. Many people in rural areas looked with disdain upon the ways of city people, including the popularity of democracy there -- as opposed to Japan's authoritarian past. Rural people -- nearly two-thirds of the population -- favored benefits for Japan at the expense of international accommodations. They had an affinity with Japan's semi-secret societies, which for some time had been preaching "national reconstruction," militarism and authoritarian.

Most of Japan's young military officers and enlisted men came from rural areas. They too were displeased by conditions in rural Japan, and they too tended to dislike businessmen from the cities -- a rival elite whom they saw as self-indulgent rather than as servants, like themselves, for the good of their country. And they tended to dislike foreigners, especially westerners. And some among them dreamed of Japan creating a new order in all of Asia -- an Asia free of Western influences, an Asia for Asians.

The Rightists held a traditional view of their emperor, Hirohito. They believed he was a god, while Hirohito remained at odds with their attitudes about Japan's future. Emperor Hirohito -- who had ascended the throne in 1926 at the age of twenty-five -- favored maintaining peace and cooperation with foreign powers. Supporting the emperor in this was the political party in power, the Democratic (Minseito) Party. The prime minister, Osachi Hamaguchi, wanted to limit government spending for the military, and in January, 1930, representatives of his government met in London and agreed with Great Britain and the United States in new limitations in naval construction. Emperor Hirohito supported the agreements, while newspapers were divided and the navy high command grumbled and mentioned that it had a constitutional right to veto the plan.

A Rightist who was angry about the London agreements shot and severely wounded Prime Minister Osachi Hamaguchi, and by the end of the year the Prime Minister was dead. Succeeding Hamaguchi was Reijiro Wakatsuki, also of the Democratic Party, who feared more violence from the Right, especially violence aimed at him. And Wakatsuki chose to appease the Rightists and to ignore their lawlessness.

Trouble over Manchuria

Japan was facing increased defiance in Korea, but Japan's foremost foreign policy concern was China in regards to Japan's position in southern Manchuria. In the summer of 1927, during Chiang Kai-shek's visit to Japan, Japan's government had reached an understanding with Chiang. Chiang had recognized Japan's "rights and interests" in Manchuria, and Japan in turn had recognized Chiang's Guomindang regime as the authority in China -- with the proviso that the Guomindang disassociate itself from the Communists, which Chiang had done that spring. By 1931, however, in Manchuria the Chinese were annoying the Japanese by building rail lines parallel to Japanese rail lines. The Japanese saw this as overly aggressive competition in Manchuria, and the Japanese believed hat the Chinese had designs on Manchuria. Manchuria was peopled to a great extent by Chinese, in addition to Manchu and Mongol peoples, and the Japanese were concerned about Chinese nationalism there. And among Japan's militarists and strategic thinkers was the belief that China responded only to threats of force or actual force.

The Japanese saw Manchuria as vital to their nation's well-being. From Manchuria the Japanese acquired oil, coal and iron, and it acquired soybeans, forty percent of which it sold to Europe for much needed foreign exchange. Also from Manchuria, Japan acquired tobacco, and there Japanese industries spun silk and cotton. And in Manchuria were nearly eight hundred Japanese-owned factories. Strategic thinkers in Japan believed that without Manchuria the population of Japan would suffer more hunger and deprivation. Japanese analysts believed that Japan's control over Manchuria had to be made secure. And Japan's military leaders saw a secure Manchuria as necessary if Japan's military was to compete with technologically advancing militaries. Japan's strategic and military thinkers worried about Chinese nationalism and also about a vastly improved Russian Army on the north side of Manchuria's border.

To make its position more secure in Manchuria, Japan invited Koreans and Japanese there, giving them low interest loans with which to buy land. Few Japanese responded to the invitation, but thousands of Koreans did, and Manchurians and Chinese rioted against the growing Korean presence.

Another incident occurred in June 1931. This began with a Japanese military man, Captain Nakamura, being shot while travelling in an area on the near the western border of Manchuria. Japan's army in Manchuria, the Kwantung army, was in charge of law and order in southern Manchuria, and it demanded an apology from the Chinese and a promise that such an incident would not happen again. Japan's government sought a peaceful settlement with China regarding this and other incidents, and it was willing to put aside the military's demands. To the military this was more weakness and another outrage by their government, reminiscent of the concessions it had made at the London naval conference.

Rather than cave in to what they saw as Chinese stubbornness, some Japanese military leaders believed that it was time to take matters into their own hands. They were aware of the military weakness of China's army in Manchuria, the army of Zhang Xueliang (son and successor of the murdered warlord, Zhang Zuolin). And on the night of September 18, 1931, members of Japan's Kwantung army launched an effort to expand their power in Manchuria. They blew up a section of railway just north of the city of Mukden and blamed it on Chinese subversives. Then, using its authority to respond immediately without waiting for approval from higher authorities, the Kwantung army drove the provincial government, headed by Zhang Xueliang, out of Mukden and occupied a number of strategic points, including all Chinese towns within a radius of 200 miles north of Mukden, which they accomplished in four days, facing only a token Chinese force.

The Kwantung army described its operation in Manchuria as saving Manchuria from Soviet Russia. It wanted reinforcements sent from Korea, and the army's chief of staff in Tokyo made a formal request for this move. The Emperor ordered the army chief of staff to prevent the expansion of "the Manchurian incident," but later that same day Prime Minister Wakatsuki reported to the emperor that the cabinet had no alternative but to approve the move of reinforcements from Korea because the transfer of reinforcements was already under way. And out of respect for the authority of the prime minister, the emperor gave his approval to the army, but Emperor Hirohito told the army chief of staff that the Kwantung army must exercise the utmost restraint.

More Expansion and International Opposition

The move by Japan's military won support in the press, and the military won the support from a good portion of the public, whose impulse was the same as the people of other nations in that it gave support to "our boys" in Manchuria. There were large public rallies, and common people donated money for the building of warplanes.

Members of the army's general staff in Tokyo were outspoken in their opinion that it was unwise to restrain the activities of their officers in Manchuria. A month into the crisis, the Emperor Hirohito was angry over the commander of the Kwantung army, Honjo Shigeru, declaring his intention to pacify all of Manchuria and Mongolia. According to Japan's constitution, the military was responsible to the emperor, and Emperor Hirohito was disturbed by what appeared to be his lack of control over the military.  The military was not responsible to parliament, but Hirohito was disturbed also by what appeared to be the government's loss of control over foreign policy. He spoke to a palace official about being unable to sleep at nights and about his belief in international justice and his desire to preserve world peace. He spoke of his worry about intervention by the Western powers and of Japan and its people being destroyed. He rejected the suggestion of his brother, Prince Chichibu -- one year younger than he -- that he, Hirohito, take control of the government and suspend the Constitution if necessary. Hirohito responded to his brother's suggestion by telling him that he, Hirohito, would never do anything that would "besmirch the honor of his ancestors."

The world had been stunned by Japan's aggressions in Manchuria. China appealed to the League of Nations, and the United States attacked Japan verbally.  Japan's move in Manchuria was in violation of the League of Nations covenant against making war, and its making war was a violation of Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 -- to which Japan was a party. But at the League, Japan claimed that it was not making war, that it was involved only in "police operations" to protect Japanese lives and property.   Other members of the League refused to accept this, and on October 24, 1931, the League passed a resolution demanding that Japan withdraw from areas it had conquered.  Japan voted against the resolution, and because such resolutions required unanimity, Japan interpreted it as not binding.

By mid-November, the Kwantung army was in control of the sparsely populated northern portion of Manchuria.  Then on December 24 it began an offensive southward along coastal territory towards China's Great Wall, using bomber aircraft. Chiang Kai-shek responded by ordering Zhang Xueliang to stop the Japanese advance, but Zhang Xueliang's demoralized army made no determined stand, and the Japanese army's advance dismayed members of Chiang's government. The Japanese overran the cities of Chinchow on December 28, and, advancing along the coast, on January 4, 1932, it reached the town of Shanhaikwan, where the Great Wall meets the sea.

In December 1931, the nervous Wakatsuki had resigned as Japan's prime minister -- his Democratic Party largely discredited by its lack of enthusiastic support for the military. Rising in popularity and forming a new government was the Constitution (Seiyukai) Party, a party with roots in rural areas, a party that favored cooperation with the military.

In January 1932, the United States sent a note to Japan proclaiming that it would not recognize any territory taken in violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Then late in January the trouble in Manchuria spread to Shanghai. A rise in hostility toward the Japanese among the Chinese had resulted in some incidents in Shanghai, including an attack of five Japanese persons, two of them Buddhist priests, one of whom died. The Japanese consul-general in Shanghai demanded reparations, and Japan's navy, encouraged by the success of the army in Manchuria, sent ships and over a thousand marines to Shanghai to backup the consul-general, with the international community in Shanghai welcoming the Japanese force as agents of law and order. The army sent reinforcements to Shanghai and started a drive from the city's International Settlement against one of China's armies. In the West, criticism of Japan swelled. Emperor Hirohito was again concerned that the Western Powers might intervene, and he ordered a speedy conclusion to fighting around Shanghai, while hostilities around Shanghai were deteriorating into brutalities and atrocities. The international community was shocked by the ferocity of the fighting, which lasted one month, the Japanese using their navy guns, aircraft, incendiary bombs and bombing China's capital, Nanjing.

In February, Japan announced that it was making Manchuria an independent country, including Jehol and Inner Mongolia, areas the Kwantung army did not yet control. The Japanese renamed Manchuria, calling it Manchoukuo, and its capital was to be Changchun. The official government of Manchoukuo was to be an advisory council consisting of one Manchu, one Mongol, three Chinese and three Japanese -- subordinate in reality to Japan's military.

Encouraged Rightists and the end of Parliamentary Government

Japan's army officers were aware of their emperor's unhappiness with their aggressiveness, and they, in turn, were dissatisfied with their emperor. Some of them called Hirohito a mediocre sovereign and complained that he spent too much time playing mahjong instead of attending to his duties while the army was fighting a sacred war. But, exercising humanity's capacity for rationalization, they maintained their devotion to the emperor as an abstract ideal and as a god.

Back in October, 1932, a plot to overthrow the government had been thwarted and the plotters arrested. The plotters had planned to murder Emperor Hirohito's entire cabinet and to move Hirohito to accept a military government. Involved in the plot was Dr. Shumei Okawa, a rightwing Chinese language scholar, intellectual, spy, and friend of persons at the royal court, including the Emperor's brother, Chichibu. Dr. Okawa (who was to be hanged as a war criminal after World War II) was a great talker and brilliant in debate. He was an admirer of the anti-industrial ideas of Charles Maurras of Action Française, and he had become Japan's leading advocate of fascistic ideas. Hirohito's brother, Prince Chichibu, was implicated in the plot. The plotters, but not Prince Chichibu, were arrested, but they were released almost immediately. Okawa was held for twenty days in a comfortable cell and then released. And none of them was tried.

One rightwing activist who continued worshiping the emperor and believed the emperor to be divine was a fundamentalist, born-again, Shinto priest and super-nationalist by the name of Nissho Inoue. He was leader of a small secret society called the Blood Brotherhood (Ketsumeidan), and he believed that assassination was a just means in fighting for an ideal Japan. He was a friend of Dr. Okawa, who gave him guns and ammunition. In early February, one of Inoue's followers, a student, shot the government's finance minister -- who had been outspokenly opposed to increased military spending. Then the assassin surrendered to police.

In early March, on the day of the arrival of a committee from the League of Nations, another assassin shot down a Japanese banker and prominent supporter of the League of Nations -- much to the embarrassment of the emperor. Another plot was hatched involving Dr. Okawa. Okawa took his group to Manchuria where they received a pep talk from the Kwantung army commandant, General Shigeru Honjo. In mid-May, they made their assault in Tokyo. Their plan was to occupy a power station, banks and government ministries. One of the assault teams, consisting of civilians, naval officers and military cadets, had as their target the prime minister and leader of the Constitution Party, Takeshi Inukai. The conservative Inukai had approved of the military's move into Shanghai and the creation of Manchoukuo, but he had tried to put limits on further military activities, which had infuriated the super-patriots and had caused the prime minister to be included as a target of the assault times. And an assault team invaded the prime minister's home and assassinated him.

But the coup failed to overpower government forces. And, in defeat, Dr. Okawa stood with others in another trial in a court of law, and as usual the defendants were allowed to make patriotic speeches. Killing for political motives was considered a crime of passion, and assassins had been getting light sentences because of their patriotic motives -- similar to what had happened in Germany in the early twenties. Fifty-four of the coup participants were sentenced, and by 1935 all would be free except for six, who would be free by 1940.

The Constitution (Seiyukai) Party withdrew from power, and Emperor Hirohito requested a government that would oppose fascism, uphold the constitution and work for peace. Rather than form a government from the political parties in parliament, the emperor accepted a recommendation that he make a retired admiral, Makoto Saito, head of a new government. Saito's new government claimed to be non-partisan and a national unity coalition, but it was dominated by military men. Parliamentary government by political parties had come to an end, with the emperor believing that he had not besmirched the honor of his ancestors.

With extreme Rightists who believed in terror and assassination still thriving, being at the head of the government was still dangerous, and in August 1932 police aborted a plot to assassinate the new prime minister, Saito. The leader of the plot was a close friend of Dr. Okawa, and he received a suspended sentence. And in September, the police aborted a plot to kill the last living former prime minister of the Democratic Party, the fearful Wakatsuki.

By July 1933 another plot to overthrow the government was underway. The police arrested forty-four men from secret societies who were conspiring to kill members of the government's cabinet, other politicians and some people around the emperor. The police were aware that an army group was behind the plotters and intended to place Prince Chichibu on the throne in place of Hirohito -- facts that were not made public knowledge. The greater scandal was avoided, and the conspirators received suspended sentences on the grounds that they all had been motivated by love of country.

More Aggression against China

The Kwantung army became preoccupied with fighting armed Chinese guerrillas who had sprung up in various areas in Manchuria. The guerrillas made quick raids on a number of cities, including Mukden. By the end of 1932 these guerrilla attacks subsided, and the Kwantung army believed that it could turn its attention to bringing Jehol under its control as a part of Manchoukuo. The Kwantung army invaded Jehol in early January, 1933, beginning its slow move through mountainous terrain. And in February, the army's chief of staff requested Emperor Hirohito's sanction for a "strategic operation" against Chinese forces in Jehol. Hoping that it was the last of the army's operations in the area and that it would bring an end to the Manchurian matter, the Emperor approved, while stating that the army was not go beyond China's Great Wall.

In the League of Nations, the Assembly began discussing Japan's move into Jehol, while Chinese forces were making only a half-hearted effort to defend Jehol -- the Chinese aware of the superiority of the Japanese forces and afraid of head-on battles. In late February, the League of Nations Assembly voted on penalizing Japan by not recognizing Manchuokuo. Forty-two of the forty-four nations represented in the Assembly voted for the resolution. Thailand abstained, and Japan voted no. By mid-March, Jehol was under Japanese control, and on March 27 Japan's military-oriented government announced its intentions to withdraw from the League in two years. The emperor felt helpless and called the withdrawal "very regrettable" and stated his hope that cooperation and friendship could still be maintained with "other powers."

From March 1933 through 1934, the Japanese tried to consolidate their position vis-à-vis China. The Kwantung army seized the passes through the Great Wall -- an understandable move that was ordinary defensive strategy. The Japanese linked Inner Mongolia with Manchuria, and the Japanese tried without success to win over Mongolians by promising local autonomy and support to the Lama priesthood. In 1934, Japan's new foreign minister, Hirota Koki, told parliament that the government was watching with misgivings the activities of China's Communist Party and the Communist armies. And in the months that followed, Japan announced to the world that it had "special responsibilities in East Asia." Japan announced what it called its Monroe Doctrine for East Asia and declared its opposition to China seeking help from Western powers in order to resist Japan. Japan's ambassador to the United States announced that the Japanese knew China better than any other nation, that Japan had an "ardent desire" to see peace and order re-established, and he requested that Japan be consulted concerning any important transactions with China are concluded. Japan was declaring China to be its preserve in trade and influence just as it believed Latin America was the preserve of the United States.

In 1934, Pu-yi, China's former boy-emperor (of Last Emperor fame) was officially crowned as monarch of Manchoukuo -- while Manchoukuo remained recognized only by Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, a few rightist Latin American regimes and the Vatican. Japan, meanwhile, was extending its rail lines in Manchuria, opening more land for development and making a better connection between Manchuria and Korea. The Soviet Union, wishing to eliminate a source of friction between it and Japan, sold to Japan its interest in the Chinese Eastern Railway -- a left over from tsarist times -- eliminating the last trace of Russian influence in Manchuria. And Japan watched as the United States Congress in 1934 passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act guaranteeing the Philippines independence in ten years. And the year,1934, ended with Japan announcing that in 1936 it would withdraw from the Washington and London agreements concerning naval limitations.

Japan, meanwhile, was increasing its military expenditures -- to 43.7 of the nation's budget in the fiscal year 1934-35, up from 28 percent in the fiscal year 1930-31. In actual money this was more than twice the amount spent up to 1931 (442.8 million yen versus 937.3 million yen).^note  By now, rumors were rife in Japan that the United States was preparing for war against Japan. And Dr. Okawa , in one of his books, predicted such a war and called upon the Japanese to prepare themselves for that "heavenly call."

Emperor Hirohito Asserts Himself

An issue taken up by the extreme Right was the proper place of the emperor in government. Their target was a leading academic on constitutional law at Tokyo Imperial University and a member of the House of Peers, Tatsukichi Minobe. Among Japan's academic elite, Minobe was the leading opponent of the military expanding into government. In opposing Minobe's views on constitutional law, the Rightists saw the divinity of the emperor at stake, and they accused Minobe of supporting democracy and committing treason. Among these Rightists were Japan's Military Reserve Association and its Army Officers' Association.

The Army turned the debate into an attack on moderates in general, with Hirohito quietly trying to support Minobe's position. But Emperor Hirohito did nothing to influence the public or the military by showing support for Minobe, and in September 1935 Minobe was forced to resign from the House of Peers. Minobe's critics repeatedly invited him to commit suicide. The government gave Minobe police protection after two attempts to kill him Minobe failed. Then, in February 1936 Minobe was wounded, and the Rightists made his assailant a hero.

Hate and a fanatical love of conformity to militarist virtues was very much alive in Japan. Lyrics to Japan's most popular song, written by a navy lieutenant, spoke of those in power being "swollen with pride," the rich flaunting their wealth and caring nothing for the welfare of Japan. It spoke of "brave warriors united in justice, cherry blossoms and a day when "our swords will gleam with the blood of purification."

Elections were called by the new prime minister, another retired admiral, Keisuke Okada, and small Leftist parties and the larger of the moderate parties, the Democratic Party, gained seats in Japan's House of Representatives. The Rightist parties lost seats. Rightists despised parliamentary democracy, and some of their supporters may have stayed away from the polls, holding elections in contempt. Japan's House of Representatives, at any rate, had little influence. Only a minority in the new membership in the House of Representatives was opposed to military men dominating the government's cabinet and against continuing military aggressions, but Rightists were excitable people and they became alarmed. They saw great danger in the loss of seats by their fellow Rightists and gains by others in the House of Representatives, and some of them decided that it was time to act to save Japan.

In late February, 1936, came the biggest attempt by the Right to take over the government. It began with a Shinto fundamentalist, Lieutenant Colonel Saburo Aizawa, killing with his sword the chief of the Military Affairs Bureau -- because the director of military education whom Aizawa admired had been dismissed from his position. Aizawa stood trial for the killing, and firebrand defense lawyers turned the trail into a spectacle, with the courtroom filled with off-duty army men supporting Aizawa.

In Tokyo, young army officers who were about to be transferred to Manchuria believed that their transfer was a plot to remove them from Tokyo during Aizawa's trial. These officers responded by leading about 1,500 soldiers in an attempt to overthrow the government. In Tokyo, in the early morning hours of a snowy day, they took control of the streets around the royal palace and capital buildings, with leaflets to distribute that spoke of the divinity of Japan being grounded "in the fact that the nation is destined to expand." The leaflet spoke of a "blood brotherhood of martyrs" and of Colonel Aizawa's "flashing sword" having no effect on "evil imperial advisers." Their leaflet spoke of self-seeking men encroaching "on the royal prerogative" and obstructing the true growth of the people, people who had been driven to the utmost depths of misery, making Japan an "object of contempt." The leaflet spoke of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States wishing to crush "our ancestral land." And it concluded with the purpose of the coup: to "remove the villains who surround the Throne."

The soldiers murdered several persons including the former prime minister, Saito, filling his body with forty-seven bullet holes and then giving three cheers for the emperor. They believed they had also killed the prime minister, Okada, but they had killed his brother-in-law instead, with Okada continuing to hide under a pile of laundry for a couple of days. They burned down one building, turned a hotel into a command post and occupied various other buildings. They sent a note to General Shigeru Honjo, the army's aide-de-camp to the emperor, announcing their coup and requesting reinforcements, and General Honjo learned that one of the coup leaders was his son-in-law.

The Emperor learned of the plot soon after sunrise. Enraged, he told General Honjo that the coup had to be crushed as quickly as possible. Hirohito dressed in his military uniform, and he ordered the navy to mobilize the fleet. He summoned the minister of war, and the minister of war angered the emperor by reading him the rebel's leaflet, as he had promised the rebels he would do. Hirohito summoned his family to join him in the palace, including Prince Chichibu, who had been friends with some of those now leading the coup, and he exacted a pledge of loyalty from his entire family. And at the end of the day, Hirohito began sleeping dressed in his military uniform, on his camp cot in his office.

The rebels stayed in the streets into the second and third days of the coup, and in meeting with Hirohito, General Honjo presented the army's point of view, referring to the rebels as "activists" and speaking of them as acting "for the good of the nation." And he told the emperor that in his opinion the "activists" should not be condemned. Hirohito would have none of it. He called the "activists" brutal criminals and reminded Honjo that they had murdered aged and venerable men.

On the third day of the crisis, after waiting for dithering generals to act, Hirohito issued an edict ordering the rebels to "speedily withdraw." He told General Honjo that if they did not withdraw he would personally lead the Imperial Guard Division against them. Facing what they perceived to be their failure, some of the rebel officers wished to commit suicide in the presence of an official representing the emperor. Hirohito refused. "If they want to kill themselves," he said, "let them do as they please."

Coup leaders surrendered, some of them hoping for more show trials at which they could make speeches and win leniency.  Coup participants were immediately taken to an army jail, and Hirohito was determined to make examples of those who had led the coup. There were to be no public trials and no speeches. Over one hundred officers and under-officers were charged with treason and tried in a series of courts martial secluded from public view. Fifteen were executed by firing squad.  No dates were given for the executions, and no ashes were returned to their relatives. And with the coup over, Hirohito's relatives looked upon him with a new respect.

Hirohito's strong move against the coup leaders brought shame on that faction in Japan's army that was wedded to the Rightist dream of spiritual reformation and restoring a pre-industrial and non-Westernized Japan. It was this faction, called the Kodoha, consisting mainly of younger officers, that believed that a war against the Soviet Union was imminent. A rival faction to the Kodoha now became dominate in the army. This faction consisted of older and more sober men who saw that industrialism was needed in making the military strong, leaders who were willing to work with government bureaucrats and leading industrialists.  Among them was General Hedeki Tojo, destined to become Japan's wartime prime minister.

As Hirohito saw it, the military had been chastised, and he wished to demonstrate to the military that he was kind to them as he was to all his subjects.  In demonstrating his kindness, Emperor Hirohito would now allow the military to pursue the goal of Japan's leadership in East Asia.
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MAO, CHINA AND RUSSIA AGAINST JAPAN

In 1929, two years after Chiang Kai-shek's crackdown against China's Communists, his government moved against the Soviet Union owning the Chinese Eastern Railroad -- a railway across Manchuria and an ownership from tsarist times. On May 27, the Chinese arrested everyone at the Soviet consulate at Harbin, a city on the rail line in Manchuria. In July, Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Xueliang agreed to seize the rail line, and, from August to October, border clashes occurred between Soviet and Chinese troops. In November, Soviet Forces, supported by air, drove the Chinese into a rout and occupied the Manchurian city of Hailar, near the Soviet border. The Chinese then settled with the Soviet Union, agreeing to the restoration of Soviet control over the railroad and  Soviet employees returning to their duties on the rail line, China agreeing also to the release of all Soviet citizens that had been arrested and to the resumption of normal trade between China and the Soviet Union. And Chiang Kai-shek summed up the matter by describing Soviet Russia as having continued tsarist Russia's aggressive policy toward China.

Communists remained underground in China's cities, hunted by Chiang's police, who believed it was better to kill an innocent person than to miss killing a Communist.  Quietly, Communists were organizing in factories, where people, many of them children, were working under turn-of-the-century conditions.  Many of the overworked found hope in the messages of Communist organizers, and they saw the Communists as friends and kept silent.

Communists were still gathered in a number of remote areas in central China, where they joined poor peasants in revolt and promoted taking land from landlords and giving it to those who did the actual farming. Chiang Kai-shek saw himself at war with the Communists, and on December 29, 1930, his regime sent its military against those Communists in southern Jiangxi Province -- where Mao Zedong was located. In the first couple of days, the 100,000-man Guomindang force penetrated deep into Communist territory and found no resistance and no Communist troops. The Communist force in the area was inferior in numbers and equipment, but they took advantage of familiar terrain and were more mobile. When the Guomindang's army lines were stretched thin, the Communists ambushed them at points of their choosing. In a little more than one week the Guomindang force retreated from the area, having lost something like 9,000 men and quantities of supplies.

On April 1, 1931, Chiang sent another offensive into Jiangxi, a force of 200,000 men, and this second campaign ended in June with more heavy losses in men and arms for Chiang. A third campaign was attempted into Jiangxi, and it came to a standstill in September 1931, when Japan began expanding in Manchuria. Most Guomindang divisions in southern Jiangxi were withdrawn, leaving government troops guarding a few outposts on the fringes of the Communist held territory.

With the failure to prevent the Kwantung army's expansion, Chiang resorted to diplomacy with Japan. China's students camped outside government buildings in Chiang's capital, Nanjing, and they continued their passionate call for war against Japan.  But Chiang believed it was better that he  allow himself to be vilified by some Chinese than to take China into an all-out war with Japan, and his government cracked down and banned all student demonstrations.  Then again, Chiang turned his attention to the Communists.

Japan interferes again with Chiang's Anti-Communist Offensive

The Communists in Jiangxi were melded with peasants there in what Mao Zedong described as fish in the sea tactics -- the fish being the Communists, the sea being the peasants. The Communists had  found that peasants would not commit themselves to change if  they felt that matters were hopeless, and the peasants believed that matters were hopeless if their revolution could not defend itself militarily. The Communists had organized a Red Army that gave revolutionary peasants confidence. And with the Guomindang government distracted, the Communists in southern Jiangxi had expanded, and in November 1931 they declared their area in Jiangxi a Soviet republic.

The Communist Party line, originating in Moscow, was that in China's soviet territories a resolute class struggle should be waged against rich peasants -- China's kulaks. But in Jiangxi, Mao Zedong was deviating from the Party line. For the sake of maintaining the economy in his area he and others had initiated a policy of allowing the more wealthy peasants to produce and to sell their grain to merchants in areas under Guomindang control. Mao believed that an attempt at self-sufficiency would have meant disaster, and because Mao ignored the Party line, he came under attack within the Party, which labeled him as a deviationist.

In May 1932, a couple of months after the short war against the Japanese around Shanghai had ended, Chiang began the first phase of his fourth "Communist suppression" expedition. This began first against the biggest of the Communist forces: near the northern border of Hunan Province. Within three months, most of the Communists in this area were routed, many escaping into more mountainous areas, some fleeing north and some west. Then Chiang moved again against Mao's  forces in Jiangxi Province. Rather than rushing into Communist held territory as before, Chiang's plan was for encircling the region and advancing slowly inward, stopping after each short advance to build secure defensive positions, with trenches and block-houses.  The block-houses were impregnable because the Communist forces had no artillery.  And each step inward by Chiang's forces was to be made after the area had been militarily secured -- a campaign designed to take months.

Chiang's plans against Mao's forces were disrupted again by the Japanese, as it appeared to  Chiang that Japan was about to invade Jehol. The war he did not want with Japan seemed closer as he concluded that Japan's aim was to bring the whole of China under its domination. The Japanese -- so vocal in their opposition to Communism in Japan -- was harming Chiang's efforts. Chiang's troops in Jiangxi began to withdraw to north China, and the Communists in Jiangxi mounted an offensive and succeeded in annihilating two of Chiang's divisions.

It was on January 3, 1933 that Japan began its push into Jehol Province. They Japanese moved through the mountainous province in two to three months. They occupied the three major passes in the Great Wall just north of Beijing. Then they called a truce. China's military had failed again. There was no question of Japan having a superior military machine. And in late May, Chiang chose to settle what he could with the Japanese. Chinese civilians were passionate in their desire to resist the Japanese intrusions.  People organized and demonstrated, to no avail.  Chiang wanted more time rather than war.  Chiang established an agreement with the Japanese: China's far north, including the capital province, was to be demilitarized, and Chinese police in the north were to maintain order among civilians.

The Long March and a New Base

Having settled with the Japanese, Chiang planned a campaign against the Communists in Jiangxi Province, which began in May 1934. It was another encircling action.  Slowly it tightened around the Communist positions.  The Communists in Jiangxi had come under the leadership of a Comintern agent, Otto Braun, who had convinced the Communists that the glorious age of guerrilla warfare was over and that it was time to fight regular battles.  Mao disagreed and removed himself from military planning meetings, making himself a common soldier.  The Communists also tried using block-houses, but their tactics failed, Chiang's forces having airplanes as well as artillery.  Communist held territory shrank, and the Party's turn to zealous class warfare further diminished enthusiasm among those who had supported the Communists.

In October the Communists were forced to flee from Jiangxi.  Those who remained in Jiangxi were pursued and many rounded up, tortured and sent to a concentration camp.  Others began what was to become known as the Long March. They numbered around 87,000, including 50 women, the  families of Red Army men and entire peasant households. With them they hauled small printing presses, duplicating machines, sewing machines and other home-industry tools. They stopped in towns and made their own clothing and shoes.

For almost year the marchers zigzagged across eighteen mountains, deserts, rivers and swamplands, from the south of China, westward and then north, chased by Chiang's forces and by warlord armies. Some froze to death. Some starved. Mao's third wife, He Zizhen, was wounded in a dive bombing attack, with shrapnel in her body and a piece in her head that was too danterous to remove. She had to ride in a cart or strapped to a mule.

After trekking 6,000 miles the marchers had dwindled to about 7,000, less than one-tenth their original size. They arrived at an arid and agriculturally unproductive location in the far north, at Yenan, about 300 miles west of Beijing, a more impoverished area than Jiangxi, and more sparsely populated.  It was a propitious location -- closer to the Russians and the Japanese.  There a few Communists had already established themselves, and more were trickling in, running from Guomindang forces. Another long march, in November 1935, was just beginning from central China, by a Red army titled the Second Front Army. And with this army, other Red army units were to arrive at Yenan the following year.

At Yenan, Mao had time to relax and think. He stayed in his room for days, meditating. Like some others in or emerging from pain and suffering he dreamed.  He dreamed of remaking the whole of China and setting the world on the course of new organization. He worked through his Marxist ideology -- what he believed to be scientific socialism -- and he emerged convinced of the validity of class struggle and Lenin's hypothesis that imperialism was the end part of dying capitalism. The transition from capitalism to socialism was, he believed, inevitable -- aside from the struggle and violence needed to bring it about. His knowledge of the world outside of China came mostly from Communist publications, from which he had learned that moderate socialists -- the Social Democrats -- were opportunists, that in seeking gains for themselves they had forsaken the building of real socialism and that they would always betray real revolutionaries. And he believed that Western democracies were imperialist and in essence bourgeois dictatorships.

The Guomindang Renews its Alliance with Moscow and the Communists

By the time that Mao and his Long March colleagues had settled in Yenan, Stalin and his Politburo were well into their new foreign policy, seeking good relations and coalition politics with those powers that might stand against Hitler. In September 1934 the Soviet Union had joined the League of Nations. In May 1935 -- two months after Hitler announced Germany's rearmament -- the Soviet Union signed an alliance with France and Czechoslovakia. In July and August, 1935, the Comintern announced that an "anti-imperialist front" should be launched worldwide -- an alliance with all those it had recently been calling social fascists and capitalist tools. The Chinese delegation to Moscow, led by Wang Ming, accepted the new directives. And the Communist forces in and around Yenan adopted the title "The Chinese Anti-Japanese Red Army."

The Soviet Union in 1935 feared Japan's expansion toward their borders. Moscow had an alliance with the Chinese warlord in Sinkiang, China's most western land, a desert region just east of the Soviet Union's Kazakhstan. The warlord in Sinkiang, Sheng Shicai, had invited the Soviet Union to intervene against forces in the area that he was fighting -- forces believed to be supported by the Japanese. In exchange for Soviet help, Sheng Shicai promised the Soviet Union peaceful relations and a market for Soviet manufactured goods. Germany, Japan and Britain objected to Siankiang's new Soviet orientation, but Sheng remained undeterred.

The Soviet Union's fear of Japanese expansion included Japan's threats to the Soviet Union's client state, the People's Republic of Mongolia. Japan was attempting to win an agreement from Mongolia to accept Japanese military observers in their country and to allow Japan to station a military telegraph station there. When Mongolia rejected these requests, the Japanese press in Manchoukuo, expressing the views of Japanese expansionists, began calling Mongolia a "dangerous country" and writing that Manchoukuo intended to regulate all issues and settle all disputes by force of arms as it saw fit.

Worried about the Soviet Union's activities, in late 1935, the Guomindang government conveyed to the Japanese proposals for improving relations. The Japanese responded with three "principles" on which improvement would need to be based: China would have to give up maneuvering Western countries against Japan, it would have to recognize Manchoukuo and recognize Japanese interests in northern China, and it would need to take joint action with Japan against "the anti-Japanese Communist movement" in China. Chinese nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment was boiling, and Chiang and his Guomindang did not wish to go so far as to recognize Manchoukuo.  No further agreement between China and Japan was made.

The Japanese pushed on with their attempt to dominate China, and they were pushing China back into the arms of the Soviet Union. In 1936, the Japanese announced their intention to open a consulate at the capital of Sichuan province: Chengtu. When the Japanese arrived at Chengtu, Chinese there rioted, and two Japanese were killed by a mob. On September 3, 1936, a Japanese owner of a drugstore in Guangdong province was murdered. And there were other incidents, including scuffles between Japanese and Chinese soldiers near Beijing. Fearing the Japanese, Chiang tried to discourage such incidents, while the Japanese were growing more irritated.

Japan's hardline was as successful as Germany's diplomacy before World War I. It placed too much confidence in military prowess and too little on hearts and minds. Japan presented China with seven demands, which were made public: that China allow Japan to combine its forces with Chinese troops in a campaign against the Communists, that China allow the placement of Japanese advisers in all offices of China's government, that China grant autonomy for China's five northern provinces, and that China reduce tariffs on Japanese products to their 1928 levels. Chiang's forces fighting alongside Japanese soldiers against Chinese would not have looked good in the eyes of the Chinese. But, no matter -- it was not to be.  And with the Chinese, the demands that the Japanese were making were no more popular than their Twenty-one Demands back in 1915.

Chiang's government continued talking with the Japanese, while students and others were in renewed passion and again calling for war. Chiang had been suppressing demonstrations for resistance against the Japanese.  And again Chiang did not wish to surrender to the passions of the masses for war.  He wished to hold off war as long as possible. He had only recently emerged from his struggle for unity, by convincing warlord armies to place themselves under a Guomindang command. Recently, China had been making economic gains, and Chiang had been trying to build China as an economically viable nation. In 1936 China had 115,000 kilometers of motor highways, up from 1,000 kilometers in 1925. It had 13,000 kilometers of rail lines, up from 8,000 in 1927. Elementary and secondary education was growing rapidly. Credit societies were being established, including an Agricultural Credit Administration, designed to improve conditions in rural areas. Chiang believed that China had to be stronger before taking on Japan.  And he was trying to strengthen China --  which took time.

Pursuing Moscow's strategy of a united front against imperialism, the Communists around Yennan, in May 1936, announced a cease-fire against Guomindang forces, stating that battles between the two would delight only the Japanese imperialists. Mao wrote a letter to his "brothers" in the Guomindang requesting that they unite against the Japanese.

Chiang and the Guomindang had other ideas. They still wanted to annihilate the Communists. In December, 1936, Chiang was preparing another assault against the Communists, while the Guomindang was negotiating with the Soviet Union.  There, Stalin was not making the survival of China's Communists an issue. What was important to Stalin was the Soviet Union's security, not the fate of China's Communists.

It was mass opinion in China that would deter Chiang from another offensive against the Communists. The passion among the Chinese against the Japanese had become too much for Chiang's plans. Soldiers in Guomindang armies shared in the passion against the Japanese, and some of them did not wish to see Chiang divert the nation's military against their fellow Chinese. Among them was Zhang Xueliang, the deputy commander-in-chief of the Guomindang armies. While Chiang was visiting his troops in Sian, the capital of Shaanxi province, Zhang and a force under his command kidnapped Chiang and demanded that Chiang direct his energies in fighting the Japanese. Military units in the area wished to try Chiang as a traitor, and a few politicians in the Guomindang were inspired by the prospect of Chiang's death in their hope that they would rise in his place.

Chiang gave in, perhaps trying to save his life.  He promised the Communist representative that had gathered around him, Zhou Enlai, that his war against the Communists was over. According to Mme Chiang Kai-shek, who had come north to be with her husband, it was Zhou Enlai and other Communists who persuaded the Guomindang military not to execute Chiang. For the Communists it was an example of the benefits of policy that put aside passion.  (Zhou Enlai considered Chiang the murderer of his wife and sister.)  It is said, however, that it was Stalin who ordered that Chiang be spared. Moscow was afraid of elements in the Guomindang who were more likely than Chiang to ally China with Japan and the other anti-Comintern nations: Germany and Italy. Instead, Moscow wanted someone with Chiang's prestige to lead China against Japan.

Chiang returned to Nanjing, while Japan charged that the Soviet Union was behind his having been  kidnapped. The Soviet newspaper Pravda, on the other hand, charged that the kidnapping was a Japanese sponsored affair. Chiang denied that he had made any promises as a condition for his release, but this was apparently for the benefit of the public and the Japanese. Chiang kept the promise he had made with Zhou Enlai. The drive against the Communists was called off. Zhang Xueliang, the man who released Chiang, was arrested and was to serve twenty-four years in prison -- two years for each of the twelve days that he held Chiang prisoner. Zhang's Manchurian armies were dispersed, leaving the Communists without a rival Chinese army nearby and relatively free to develop their power.

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Copyright © 1998 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
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Note:

This figure is from Keiji Furuya, Chiang Kai-shek, His Life and Times, 1981, p. 463. RETURN