Reversal of the Power Balance in Japan-China Relations

From Equal to Unequal

Generally speaking, the modern period of Japan-China relations opens with the Sino-Japanese Amity Treaty of 1871. It is called an equal treaty, mutually recognizing limited consular jurisdiction (in contrast to extraterritoriality). Whether from the arguments made in the negotiation process or from Article 6 stipulating that communication between the two countries would be written in Chinese (a Chinese translation was required for any documents sent in Japanese), you could conclude that the Qing held the advantage (Okamoto and Kawashima 2009).

“Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War, an East Asian confrontation between the Qing dynasty, an aging, waning power, and Japan, a newly developed power under the Meiji Restoration.” While not mistaken, this perspective found in Mutsu Munemitsu’s Kenkenroku, inter alia, is incapable of capturing the complexity of Japan-China relations in the late nineteenth century. The Qing were in a superior position on the Korean Peninsula in the 1880s, even militarily, following the Imo Incident and Gapsin Coup, having dispatched Yuan Shikai there as a resident military and political advisor. Even as it maintained tributary relations with the Joseon, the Qing strengthened its control over the kingdom. In the latter half of that decade, the Qing augmented its Beiyang Navy, purchasing large-scale warships from Europe, and ordered it to patrol the eastern side of the Korean Peninsula in the Sea of Japan from its naval bases on the Shandong and Liaodong peninsulas starting in 1886. Qing China was not simply an old power wasting away in its decrepitude.

Japan did beat the Qing in the First Sino-Japanese War; equipment and training are credited as the primary factors for its victory. Under the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), Japan not only obtained Taiwan to colonize and an indemnity of 200 million taels of silver, the Qing also agreed to accord Japan the same status as the Western Great Powers. More specifically, Japan acquired unilateral extraterritoriality and most favored nation status, and the Qing lost tariff autonomy with respect to Japan, too. This did not result in an immediate shift in the power balance between the two nor did it mean the worsening of bilateral ties. Chinese intellectuals, such as those involved with the Hundred Days of Reform (Wuxu Reforms), showed a willingness to learn from Japan.

The Boxer Rebellion and Great Power Cooperation

During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the Qing had formally declared war on the Western Great Powers as a domestic measure and so, after losing to the Eight-Nation Alliance, it signed the Beijing Protocol (Xinchou Treaty). Under the treaty, the Western Great Powers gained 450 million taels of silver in reparations (the Boxer Indemnities) and the right to place guards in the Legation Quarter and station troops in the area from the coast to Beijing. The treaty also stipulated that the Qing would set up a Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the organization to conduct its diplomacy. Behind this treaty, the most comprehensive between the Qing and the Western Great Powers since the Treaty of Tianjin (1858), lay the Western Great Powers’ principles of the Open Door and maintaining China’s integrity, their support for the Qing’s construction of a modern nation, and their cooperation with respect to extending loans to China. Japan became truly incorporated into the Great Power relationship toward China through its participation in the Beijing Protocol.

Under the name of [Emperor] Guangxu’s New Policies, the Qing undertook reforms to build a modern state with the support of the Western Great Powers. Modern systems and institutions for law, education, and the military (primarily army) were introduced. Imperial civil service examinations were abolished in 1905 and an academic record under the new school system became a condition for civil service employment. For that reason, many young Chinese men attended universities in Japan, the least costly and most convenient place to obtain a degree. From Japan, they learned about Western (more than Japanese) law and state institutions. Even so, the time spent in Japan became their personal experience with a modern state.

The Formation of Chinese Nationalism

After the First Sino-Japanese War, the Western Great Powers gained leased territories along the Chinese coast and constructed naval bases there as a center for their spheres of influence. This carving up of China by the Western Great Powers, conduct that went hand-in-hand with Social Darwinist thinking, greatly alarmed Chinese intellectuals and spurred a rapid growth in patriotic spirit. The first decade of the twentieth century is the period when we begin to see the shape of China emerge, as the Qing rule gradually became unified and centralized over areas that had been separate until that point: Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang (Xinjiang Province was established in the 1880s), and the provinces where the majority of residents were of Han ethnicity. As it rapidly built a modern state in this space, the Qing tried to extend its control over these societies more than it had previously. Burdened by heavy indemnities, the Qing faced many problems on the financial front, so it had no option but to proceed with modern state building by either depending on foreign loans or shifting the financial burden onto these societies. Such financial limitations arising out of the construction of a modern state became one of the causes of the Xinhai Revolution.

The opening of the twentieth century is also known as the period for nurturing the consciousness of “China” and “Chinese people.” It is said that Chinese nationalism manifested through several incidents, including exclusionary US immigration acts, the Humankind Pavilion incident in Japan (the problematic incident at the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition in Osaka (1903) where Ainu, Korean, and Ryūkyū people were exhibited in a human zoo designated the “Anthropological Pavilion”), and the Anti-Russian Movement (1903) against Russia’s continued occupation of Manchuria. Certainly, the Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace) had been destroyed and the capital pillaged during the Second Opium War (Arrow War) with Britain and France, yet there had not been a large reaction then. Beginning in the early 1900s, in contrast, Chinese who had studied abroad and urban residents would protest vigorously against even diplomatic proceedings (Yoshizawa 2003). At the same time, a relative perspective was spreading that saw the world as a group of nations, side by side, and designated the Qing Empire as one country in that world (Kawashima 2004).

The Russo-Japanese War and South Manchuria Interests

Russia did not withdraw its troops from Manchuria after the war against the Boxers, nor did it withdraw all of them after having talks about their withdrawal. This (in)action not only upset the Chinese public, it stoked growing criticism from the Western Great Powers on the principle of their cooperation with respect to the Qing Empire. In the Japanese historical context, after the (Russian-led) Triple Intervention, the slogan “enduring unspeakable hardships for the sake of revenge” was part of the fabric leading up to the Russo-Japanese War. In contrast, one of the causes of that war in the view of Chinese history was the fact that Russia had smashed the Western Great Powers’ cooperation regarding the Qing and continued to do so even after the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed. Russia was the first to disrupt this Great Power cooperation.

The Qing Empire was neutral for the Russo-Japanese War, but the Chinese initially leaned somewhat toward Japan’s side. It was possible to regard Japan, in opposing the Russian occupation of Manchuria, as an ally from the Qing’s perspective. After the war’s conclusion, the Japanese government bestowed honors and awards on many Qing bureaucrats, in fact. Once the realization sank in that Japan had just acquired the interests in Manchuria in place of Russia after all, it fueled a backlash against Japan.

The Russo-Japanese War resulted in Japan paying a cost of many lives lost for a gain of the South Manchurian interests, without any indemnity. Moreover, the lease period for the Guandong (Kantō) Leased Territory including Lüshun and Dalian was 25 years starting in 1898, and many other interests were time limited, including the railroad. Subsequently, Japan sought to extend the leases of its interests in South Manchuria to make them more secure, an objective that became a source of confrontation for Japan with China as well as with the Western Great Powers.

The Western Great Powers had strengthened their cooperative relations around the time of the Russo-Japanese War, recognizing each other’s special interests in China. From China’s standpoint, however, this stronger Great Power cooperation over China meant greater difficulty in revising the unequal treaties and recovering its national rights.

Situation at the Time of the Xinhai Revolution

The Xinhai Revolution began October 10, 1911 in Wuchang in Hubei Province. Subsequent developments from the destruction of the Qing Empire to the foundation of the Republic of China (ROC) continued until 1913, when countries recognized the ROC government. The Qing dynasty, which had relied on foreign loans to implement its policy of nationalizing the railroads and had entrusted their management to foreigners, faced a strong pushback over the low purchase price from the powerbrokers who had originally provided the funds to construct the railroads in the regional societies. A movement protesting railroad nationalization happened in Sichuan Province and the army in Hubei Province left to go suppress it. While it was away, a revolution arose in Hubei Province, which declared its autonomy from the Qing dynasty. Thereafter, all provinces south of the Yangtze River Basin declared their autonomy and their representatives organized a government: the Republic of China, founded in Nanjing on January 1, 1912, with Sun Yat-sen as its provisional president. As the Qing court still existed in Beijing at that time, there was a standoff between two governments, one in the north and one in the south. Britain served as a mediator between the two.

Irrespective of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japan tried its own approach to the situation in China, heedless of British intentions, as it now felt it had become a “first-class power” through its war victories against the Qing and Russian empires. Britain carried out its good offices between the Nanjing and Beijing governments without sufficient coordination with Japan, too.

Although the north-south conference resulted in the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the emperor continued to reside in the Forbidden City after his abdication, and Yuan Shikai established a government based on the Qing’s civil service and military. This government succeeded to the various treaties the Qing Empire had entered into. The Republic of China was revolutionary: the republican state, established after the Qing dynasty had been rejected, was a repudiation of imperial institutions. On the other hand, as a state that inherited the Qing dynasty’s foundations, it had an aspect of the historical virtuous successor to a Chinese emperor who abdicated rather than leave the throne to an heir. Japan opened diplomatic relations with the new state in the autumn of 1913. Continuing to cooperate, the Great Powers supported Yuan Shikai, whom they called “the strongman.”

Turning Point: The Twenty-One Demands

China and World War I

World War I was the first international issue Yuan encountered, even as he maneuvered to increase his own authority by defanging the institutions of China’s assembly-led republican state. China declared neutrality, lacking the military might to fight the Great Powers and fearing that its own lands might become battlefields because of the presence of German, British, and Japanese forces. After consultations with neutral China, Japan, having entered the war, jointly attacked Germany’s base in Jiaozhou Bay with the British and occupied the Shandong Peninsula. Japan justified its action by saying it would return these German interests to China, but it continued to rule Shandong until 1922. World War I presented new turning points for Japan-China relations and for relations among the Great Powers with respect to China. The Twenty-One Demands presented January 18, 1915 was one of the most serious.

What Was the Twenty-One Demands?

The Twenty-One Demands was 21 demands/requests that Japan gave to President Yuan Shikai of the ROC government in Beijing. At the time, Ōkuma Shigenobu was Japan’s prime minister, Katō Takaaki was foreign minister, and Hioki Eki was minister to China. The Twenty-One Demands is deeply etched in modern Chinese history as a display of Japanese aggression against China that exploited the opportunity of European nations’ inattention to Asia because of their all-consuming focus on World War I, as well as a display of the traitorous nature of the Yuan government, which caved to the Japanese government and accepted its demands in hopes of getting its agreement to support Yuan to become emperor (Tang 2010). In Japan, the Demands, especially the handling of the Group 5 items mentioned below, is spoken of as one example of a mistake in Japanese diplomacy (Naraoka 2015).

The demands/requests were categorized into five groups. Group 1 concerned Japan’s taking over German interests on the Shandong Peninsula that Japan now occupied; Group 2 concerned the interests in South Manchuria that Japan had gained from the Russo-Japanese War, the extension of lease periods as well as the enlargement into eastern Mongolia; Group 3 dealt with the Hanyeping Iron & Coal Co. Ltd.; and Group 4 dealt with the territorial integrity of China. Foreign Minister Katō had given the Great Powers advance notice of Groups 1–4, but not Group 5, which comprised the Chinese government’s employment of Japanese political, financial, and military advisors, the creation of a joint Sino-Japanese police force, and other items.

Japan dropped the Group 5 items from the January 18 version of its 21 demands, reworked it into 24 articles, and presented that on April 26, 1915; it issued an ultimatum on May 5, which the Yuan government accepted on May 9. These 24 articles were the basis for the two treaties signed and 13 diplomatic notes exchanged on May 25. (These are known as the “Min 4 treaties” in Chinese history; Min 4 is the fourth year of the Republic, or 1915.)

Why Was the Twenty-One Demands a Turning Point?

We might call the Twenty-One Demands something that shows Japan’s view or attitude toward China, a post-Russo-Japanese War sense of superiority, a first-class power mentality, the development of a China policy unbound by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In other words, while the Europeans were too busy with World War I to pay attention to Asia, Japan pressed China (a neutral in that war) on the Shandong Peninsula. Japan, having used the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as the rationale to join the war against Germany, occupied that peninsula under the pretext of returning these interests to China but had not. Instead, it sought to retain them, conditioning their return on the extension of the leases on its South Manchurian interests gained in the Russo-Japanese War (i.e., the Guandong Leased Territory including Lüshun and Dalian had a 25-year period, and had to be returned to China in 1923).

In addition, there is the matter of the Group 5 items that Japan did not disclose in its briefings to the Great Powers. Japan’s actions were recognized as disrupting Great Power cooperation. That is perhaps why Great Power cooperation vis-à-vis China was reaffirmed at the Washington Conference held from 1921 to 1922. Researchers of Japanese diplomatic history, therefore, emphasize that the Twenty-One Demands would not have been such a major issue if Japan had not included the Group 5 items. Yet, the Twenty-One Demands left deep scars in the Japan-China bilateral relationship, and subsequently being friendly toward Japan become taboo in China; even in relations among the Great Powers over China, Japan came to be viewed as a problem.

Furthermore, there are various explanations for why Japan presented the Group 5 items, such as they were bargaining terms, or they were actually “requests” (not “demands”), or both. Those in charge of China’s diplomacy at the time, notably Cao Rulin and others who had studied in Japan, explained that these Group 5 items were bargaining terms frequently employed in Japanese diplomacy and so their approach in the talks was to completely ignore them, which is what they did in fact. Thus, the Group 5 content was not included among the 24 articles that Yuan accepted on May 9, 1915.

The Problem of Yuan Shikai’s Diplomacy

Aside from not discussing the Group 5 items, the Chinese government’s negotiating plans for the Twenty-One Demands assumed that China would have to accept the items regarding the interests on the Shandong Peninsula (Group 1) and those in South Manchuria, which were Japan’s core Group 2 demands. Lacking the military power to resist the Japanese military, China decided to try to use its standing as a neutral country to regain these interests in the peace treaty after the end of the Great War in Europe. Moreover, it presumed that, by appealing to the Great Powers after the war, the treatment of the South Manchuria interests would revert to that in the original treaty. The ROC negotiating plan as well as the actual talks were careful and thorough, and consistent with the international environment and national abilities at the time.

In point of fact, research on the Twenty-One Demands negotiating process remains insufficient. One argument in Japanese academia, strongly influenced by the memoirs of Paul Samuel Reinsch, US minister to China at the time, holds that Yuan Shikai’s government had conducted talks with Japan under America’s influence. But there is hardly any evidence indicative of that to be found in China’s diplomatic archives. Yet, contemporaneous diplomatic assessments and books written in the early 1930s (for instance, Wang, 1932–1934) paint a relatively more positive picture of the Yuan administration’s diplomacy related to the Twenty-One Demands. When the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party later criticized Yuan, his Twenty-One Demands diplomacy also came under criticism.

China Enters World War I

Negative sentiment toward Japan grew in China in conjunction with the Twenty-One Demands. Meanwhile, there was a textbook controversy around the time of Japan’s occupation of Shandong, and the Japanese government protested to the Chinese government that Chinese textbooks were anti-Japanese. A boycott of Japanese products, mainly in urban areas, also happened during this period.

Japan made attempts to improve its deteriorating ties with China, of course. President Li Yuanhong and Premier of the State Council Duan Qirui led the ROC government after the 1916 death of Yuan Shikai, who had fumbled around with efforts to revive the imperial system in his later years. Duan, who had inherited control from Yuan over everything military related, was the one Japan approached. Japan sought to improve relations with Duan in stages by providing a huge amount of loans. Since all government loans to the Chinese government were undertaken by cooperation among the Great Powers, Japan constantly referred to it as lending by private citizens. These were the Nishihara loans, extended in the name of Nishihara Kamezō. Duan certainly succeeded in strengthening his own base of support with these loans, and his subordinates, such as Xu Shuzheng, reoccupied Outer Mongolia and some of his troops even joined the Siberia Intervention.

For the ROC, 1917 was a decisive year. It entered World War I as a member of the Entente, declaring war on Germany and Austria on August 14. The ROC had already lodged a protest and severed diplomatic relations, but there had been a debate domestically whether to enter the war. Joining the war did not mean sending troops to European battlefields, because there were still fears that China would again become the battleground or be invaded if it were to get embroiled in the war.

President Li, cautious about entering the war, and Duan, a member of the pro-entry faction, argued repeatedly in the first half of 1917, and ultimately Duan won the advantage and Feng Guozhang became president. The international community, particularly the United States, hoped that China would enter the war, and even Japan gradually came to support China’s entry. Entry into the war meant for Duan that he could further bolster his support base with additional loans from Japan and other foreign countries, but it also held several merits for Beijing.

First, it meant the possibility of revising China’s unequal treaties with Germany and Austria. Second, it meant that, by participating in the postwar peace talks as one of the victors, Beijing could make the issue of the Twenty-One Demands and Chinese recovery of the Japanese-occupied Shandong Peninsula a focus of that venue. Third, it would be able to join the postwar League of Nations as a founding member state, very important in terms of elevating its international status. Fourth, by declaring war, China could at least stop paying the Boxer Indemnity to Germany, which was paid the largest amount, which was the most urgent matter for Beijing. Japan, Britain, and all the Great Powers had said that, were China to declare war, they would defer its payment of the Boxer Indemnities for 5 years beginning December 1917. By entering the war, China had hoped that it might obtain new loans in addition to the temporary relief from its financial burden, paying the Boxer Indemnities.

The Merits of Entering the War

China became a victor by entering the war. It was its first win against a great power since the Opium War. It meant the possibility of joining the League of Nations as a founding member state. However, the prospects seemed rather dim regarding the elimination of the various treaties and notes exchanged that implemented the Twenty-One Demands, including the extension of the South Manchurian lease periods, and the recovery of Germany’s Shandong interests.

China had sent plenipotentiary representatives to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference; as the peace conference approached, anti-Japanese movements were growing at home. Also, in part owing to the influence of US President Woodrow Wilson’s principle of national self-determination, China had expectations for “truth” and “justice” at the Paris Peace Conference and in the League of Nations, that is, rectifying the unequal treaties and the Great Powers’ heavy-handed conduct and realizing a more ideal world order.

However, even the support that Wilson had initially pledged to China was impossible because Britain, France, and Japan had reconciled their mutual interests. The ROC delegation was suddenly faced with the possibility it would walk away empty-handed. Against that backdrop, the May Fourth Movement occurred in Beijing on May 4, 1919. It is very easy to understand the basic question the demonstrators had: why was a victorious China unable to recover the loser Germany’s special interests in China? During this period, a suspicion already lurked among the students who had started the protest that the governments of Yuan Shikai, and both Li Yuanhong and Feng Guozhang with Duan Qirui had been engaged in a traitorous diplomacy with Japan, so they began to denounce those responsible for the Chinese government’s negotiations with Japan on an individual basis. Certainly, the “Japan School,” the cadre of Japan hands who had studied in Japan, gradually lost their positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs throughout the 1910s.

Many of the men who formed the core of China’s delegation at the Paris Peace Conference had studied in the United States. That is true of V.K. Wellington Koo (Gu Weijun), Alfred Sao-ke Sze (Shi Zhaoji), and Chengting Thomas (C.T.) Wang (Wang Zhengting). Delegation head Lou Tseng-Tsiang (Lu Zhengxiang) had been a civil servant since the Qing dynasty.

Once they understood that the Shandong interests were to be transferred from Germany to Japan in the Treaty of Versailles, the peace treaty with Germany, they investigated ways to sign the treaty while making a reservation regarding just that article. They were worried about Article 1 of the treaty, that signatories to the treaty became founding members of the League of Nations. The problem for the diplomats in Paris was whether not signing the Treaty of Versailles meant that China would be ineligible to join the League of Nations. Faced with the May Fourth Movement, Beijing instructed them to sign in the end, even if the treaty were to include the Shandong clause and that the Shandong interests would go to Japan. Discovering that the first article of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye with Austria contained the same language regarding League of Nations founding membership, however, the Paris delegation confirmed that China could join the League by signing this peace treaty and so decided not to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

China and Germany concluded a bilateral peace treaty in 1921. China recovered German concessions and its public property within China, and the payment of the Boxer Indemnity to Germany was terminated, of course. Germany and China established a relationship based on equality.

China’s decision not to sign the Treaty of Versailles meant that Japan directly took over the German interests in Shandong Province. The transfer contributed to a rise in anti-Japanese criticism in China. Japan at this time was pursuing a policy of cooperative diplomacy, handed down from Hara Takashi to Shidehara Kijūrō, that aimed to be conciliatory toward nationalist emotions by developing cultural programs toward China and eschewing the use of military force against China, but these trial efforts did not produce enough positive results in China. From the perspective of Japanese history, Japan embraced the contemporary global trends of anti-colonialism and forswearing war, and it tried to restore cooperation in its foreign policies concerning China. From China’s perspective, these efforts are usually regarded as a continuation of Japanese aggression against China primarily in economic and cultural terms.

To understand Japan-China relations, it is necessary to separate their bilateral relationship from that of the Great Power relations concerning China. The situation was now that bilateral ties showed hardly any signs of improvement even when Great Power cooperation was good. Indeed, after the Nine-Power Treaty (discussed below) the anti-Japanese protests in the first half of 1923 had just about wound down and an active movement to aid Japan started up in China after the Great Kantō Earthquake later that year. However, subsequent revelations of the murder of Wang Xitian and the massacre of Chinese laborers in the Tokyo area meant that Japan-China relations did not return to the status before the Twenty-One Demands.

The Washington System and Its Problems: The Chinese Perspective

China and the Nine-Power Treaty

The Washington Conference was held in 1921–1922 to discuss various matters including Great Power cooperation that World War I had thrown into disarray, the extension of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and naval arms reduction. The conclusion of the Nine-Power Treaty restored Great Power cooperation over China, and institutionalized cooperation between Japan, the United States, and Britain on the issue of naval arms reduction. This cooperative framework is called the Washington System. As Akira Iriye has brought up, there is an aspect of this framework that set the stage for the argument explaining how Japan resorted to war when this framework collapsed (Iriye 1965). The Nine-Power Treaty, which once again stipulated Great Power cooperation with respect to China and China’s territorial integrity, was the third comprehensive treaty concerning China after the Treaty of Tianjin (1858) and the Beijing Protocol (1901).

The important difference is that China did not take part in this treaty as a defeated belligerent. At the Washington Conference, China presented Ten Principles outlining a path for revising the unequal treaties, some of which were reflected in the Nine-Power Treaty. In contrast to the emphasis placed on renewed cooperation among the Great Powers on China, this treaty neither provided a security framework for the ROC government in Beijing nor did it establish a path for treaty revision.

The Chinese government was confronting new financial problems. It was obvious that ROC government finances would fall into a precarious state if China’s repayment of the Boxer Indemnities, temporarily deferred when China entered World War I, were to restart in December 1922. Neither Beijing nor the Great Powers heralding China’s integrity did anything to save the country from fiscal bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the talks in Washington did bring about one concrete blessing for China. Though not a part of the Washington Conference, Japan and China signed a Treaty for the Settlement of Outstanding Questions Relative to Shandong, returning the leasehold territory and other interests to China and, for the moment, settling the Shandong question that had been pending since the Twenty-One Demands in 1915.

China and the Washington System

If one were to give a lecture in a Chinese academic setting on the relationship between the Washington System and Chinese diplomacy, the difficulty would be determining what to talk about aside from explaining the fact that the Washington System meant cooperation between Japan, Britain, and the United States. The 1920s is the period when the “Nationalist revolution” culminated in the establishment of the Nationalist government in Nanjing: with the decline of the Beijing government, signatory to the Nine-Power Treaty, the Guomindang was in the ascendancy, holding its first party congress in Guangdong in 1924, founding a Nationalist government in 1925, then undertaking the Northern Expedition to unify the country.

Sun Yat-sen and his colleagues had started a military government in Guangdong in 1917, proclaiming it the central government of the ROC. This Guangdong government, however, played no direct part in the Washington System. Also outside of the framework of this system, moreover, was the Soviet Union, which supported the Guomindang, had strong ties to the Zhang Zuolin regime in Manchuria, and had even concluded an agreement with the Beijing government in 1924 (Sakai 1992). Similarly, Germany, which had restarted diplomatic relations on an equal basis with China in 1921, was outside this Washington System.

When the government in Beijing collapsed in 1928, Zhang Zuolin (then the head of that government) fled to Mukden (Fengtian) by rail, where he was assassinated by a bomb placed by Japan’s Kwantung (Kantō) Army. Succeeding to his father’s power base upon his death, Zhang Xueliang chose to subordinate himself to the Nationalist government in Nanjing at the end of 1928 with the Northeast Flag Replacement (the December 29 announcement replacing all national flags in Manchuria with the “Blue Sky, White Sun” flag of the Nationalist government), marking the end of the Northern Expedition and the reunification of China. The Soviet Union had been the main foreign influence supporting the forces of the Northern Expedition.

Meanwhile, the Nine-Power Treaty signatories, who had recognized the Beijing government, had not established close ties to the government in Guangdong and yet had done little to help the government in Beijing to survive. For instance, after the Beijing government resumed paying out the Boxer Indemnities at the end of 1922, France demanded that it pay in gold francs, refusing to accept payment in francs, which had depreciated since France left the gold standard. Until Beijing accepted that condition, France did not attend talks aimed at restoring China’s tariff autonomy. Ratification of the Nine-Power Treaty, signed in February 1922, finally occurred in August 1925. A conference to discuss restoring tariff autonomy began 2 months later, which meant that when China actually recovered this right at the end of the decade, it was the Nationalist government in Nanjing that obtained it, rather than the Beijing government, by then defunct.

The Northern Expedition and Revolutionary Diplomacy

Sun Yat-sen opened the first National Congress of the Guomindang in Guangdong in 1924; as he tolerated the Communist Party, Chinese Communist Party members who became Guomindang party members also attended the Congress. After Sun’s death in 1925, the May 30th incident occurred in Shanghai. Originating as a labor strike at a Japanese cotton mill in Shanghai, things came to a head when a British policeman in the international settlement, confronting the mass of protestors on May 30, fired shots which killed several protestors. This incident precipitated an anti-imperialist movement. It also provided impetus for the Northern Expedition, carried out by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) led by Chiang Kai-Shek, starting in 1926. In the course of the Northern Expedition, however, Chiang staged a coup on April 12, 1927 in Shanghai and purged the Communist Party members from the Guomindang and NRA ranks.

The diplomatic slogan the NRA trumpeted throughout the execution of its Northern Expedition was “revolutionary diplomacy.” Properly speaking, revolutionary diplomacy meant instantly making null and void all the unequal treaties and agreements signed by previous governments in order to construct new, equal relations. But, in the case of China during that period, it meant the movement, linked to the NRA’s Northern Expedition, for recovering rights China lost through those agreements. Founded in 1927 and achieving national unification the following year, the Nationalist government in Nanjing had succeeded to the treaties signed by the Qing Empire and the Beijing government. Not only was it unable to implement revolutionary diplomacy, even when opportunities for treaty revision arose, the government followed a daoqi xiuyue concept of amending a treaty’s terms a little at a time when it comes up for renewal, an approach that produced some results after the Nationalist government assumed the Beijing government’s seat in negotiations on such issues as tariff autonomy.

Japan apparently felt the slogan was a threat to its special interests in Manchuria and mainland China. Revolutionary diplomacy’s primary target was not Japan, but Britain, which possessed the most interests in China. When the NRA demanded the return of concessions, Britain returned those in Jiujiang and Hankou (part of Wuhan now) along the Yangtze River, and later, even the leased territory of Weihaiwei on the northeast coast. Bearing the brunt of nationalist fervor in the May 30 incident, Britain showed a relatively conciliatory posture toward the Northern Expedition.

In contrast, Japan stuck fast to its harsh stance, decisively going through with three Shandong Expeditions. It signified a policy reversal, away from Shidehara diplomacy of cooperation with Britain and the United States and avoiding the use of military force in China, inviting Chinese nationalism to train its sights on Japan. We can surmise the psychological impact this had on China, particularly after the Jinan Incident in 1928 (in which Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) troops clashed with the NRA in Jinan, Shandong Province over Japan’s expeditionary forces dispatched to Shandong), from the anecdote that Chiang Kai-Shek started writing xuechi (cleanse the humiliation through revenge) in his journal every day. Such events as the NRA attack on the Japanese consulate general in Nanjing (the Nanjing incident of 1927) caused national sentiment to worsen on the Japanese side, too. Public opinion in each country, to a greater extent that ever seen before, became an important driver in the policymaking of both governments.

Nationalist Government in Nanjing

At the time of the ROC’s founding in 1912, the aim was a republican system based on parliamentary democracy. Successive great presidents starting with Yuan Shikai, however, shirked the push to make it a true republic with a strong legislative authority. In the 1920s, Sun Yat-sen expounded upon his three-stage political system—military government; political tutelage; then constitutional government—saying that the time was not ripe for realizing a republican system. The “Nationalist government” designation indicates that this was the period of political tutelage under the political guidance of the Guomindang, and the head of government was no longer called the “president” but the chairman of the Nationalist government.

The government was strongly influenced by the Soviet Union: the party guided the state and excelled at using propaganda, mobilization campaigns, and other related methods. If the Beijing government was a nineteenth century-style administration inherited from the Qing dynasty, the Nationalist government was a twentieth century-style administration. The bureaucracy was composed of both civil servants carried over from the Beijing government and Guomindang bureaucrats; the military was made up of forces under the government’s direct control, based on the NRA, and regional military forces. The business world, represented by Jiangsu-Zhejiang financial interests, was also a major class of support.

The Great Powers sought to maintain their cooperation with respect to this Nationalist government in Nanjing, but they remained cautious, particularly about moving their legations to the capital, Nanjing. Yet, Germany, which had inked an equal treaty with China, and the Soviet Union had already set off on different paths from the other Great Powers, and as China itself was gaining in national power. Perhaps the Nine-Power Treaty had already ceased to function as the framework for Great Power cooperation as it had been. The ROC government successfully strengthened coordination with the League of Nations and several of the League’s cooperative projects were started in China.

The Nationalist government in Nanjing finally succeed in recovering tariff autonomy in 1928–1929. Taking over these negotiations started by the previous Beijing government resulted in a stronger financial base and brought with it the Great Powers’ recognition of the government. The 3-year period starting 1928 was rare one, as the ROC government was able to exert its control over almost all the areas it claimed as its own territory. Yet, the regional military powers and the Communist Party were still going strong within the country, and there was a leadership struggle within the Guomindang. The financial market crashes in 1929 and the Great Depression that ensued also affected East Asia, but the region recovered quickly compared to the United States and Europe. As the 1930s opened, Japan and China were headed for all-out conflict and Great Power cooperation over China was crumbling, too.

The Manchurian Incident and the Collapse of Great Power Cooperation

The Manchurian Incident happened on September 18, 1931. In a very short period, the Kwantung Army went on to capture nearly the whole of Manchuria. Confronted with this development, Zhang Xueliang, then absent from Mukden quelling unrest in the countryside, avoided war with the Kwantung Army, in part owing to Chiang Kai-shek’s instructions. Chiang in Nanjing decided to follow a plan of “first internal pacification, then external resistance”—stabilize the home front by wiping out the forces of regional military powers and the Communist Party, and then on that basis confront the foreign threat, i.e., Japan.

The Nationalist government sought to resolve problems at the diplomatic table while avoiding military conflict. One venue was in connection with the Nine-Power Treaty, where China’s territorial integrity was a fundamental stipulation, but the Great Powers were non-responsive. Another was the League of Nations, where Japan was a permanent member and China was a non-permanent member of the Council; China charged Japan with violating the League’s Covenant. The logic of collective security was in China’s favor. After deliberations, a fact-finding body led by Lord Lytton was sent to East Asia. At the League, Japan and China argued over the report that this Lytton Commission had compiled on the entire recent history of East Asia and submitted to the international body. Even though the report had acknowledged Japan’s special interests in Manchuria, it stated sovereignty over the region belonged to China, and proposed putting Manchuria under an international administration, a plan that Japan vociferously rejected. Japan gave notice in March 1933 that it would withdraw from the League of Nations. At the time, there were quite a few countries that had left the League, so Japan’s withdrawal was not an indication that it would be immediately isolated from international society. It was one event that did signify a clear breakdown of Great Power cooperation with respect to China.

During this period of fact-finding, the Japanese and Chinese militaries had clashed in Shanghai in January 1932 (in what is called the (First) Shanghai incident), and Japan founded a new country, Manchukuo, that March. The Manchurian Incident was concluded by the Tanggu Truce that Japan and China signed on May 31, 1933. Yet, Japan continued to make incursions into provinces in North China and Inner Mongolia afterwards.

Second Sino-Japanese War and “The Fourteen-Year War”

Nowadays, China’s national history curriculum teaches the “Fourteen-Year War” concept: that the timeframe of the Second Sino-Japanese War is 1931–1945, which means that it began with the Manchurian Incident. China had long viewed the starting point of the war with Japan as the July 7, 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which contemporaneously was seen as the “Eight-Year War of Resistance,” a view that emphasized the cooperation between the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang following the December 1936 Xi’an Incident (Zhang Xueliang detained Chiang Kai-shek, who had been fixated on wiping out Communist forces, to advocate the end of the civil war between the Guomindang and the Communist Party to resist Japan through national unity). In contrast, the Xi Jinping administration’s aims for recently setting the Manchurian incident as the war’s starting point could be, first of all, to stop emphasizing the Second United Front that entailed cooperation with the Guomindang in Taiwan at present, and second, to refocus its history on nationalism over modernization by prolonging the period of the war of resistance against Japanese aggression.

As a matter of fact, there are considerable challenges and many difficulties to designating this entire period as a war, especially from 1933, when the Tanggu Truce put a stop to the Manchurian Incident, to the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937. Of course, since Japanese incursions into Northern China did continue, if they were an indicator of aggression, it would be possible to consider the Manchurian Incident the starting point. Even allowing that Japan and China were both preparing for war in 1933–1936, you cannot say that they were in a state of war.

The Nationalist government imposed many obligations on the areas ruled by regional military leaders and the Communist Party, reasoning that it ought to rule these regions directly; it implemented currency reform as part of that effort, which resulted in the government amassing currency. The Xi’an Incident came about through the cooperation between Zhang Xueliang (who had moved from Manchuria to Shaanxi Province) and the Communist Party (which had marched to Yan’an in northern Shaanxi) to oppose this Nationalist government pressure on the regional military leaders and Communist Party. It was not as though China started a war with Japan right after the conclusion of the Xi’an Incident. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident happened on July 7 over half a year later. Moreover, it was not right after the incident but toward the end of July that both sides began to have a sense that the war had started. We begin to see full-scale combat start on August 13, 1937 in the Battle of Shanghai (Second Shanghai Incident).

The Second Sino-Japanese War signified a rupture in bilateral relations, yet the two sides held many peace talks. Most ended in failure over the issue of recognition of Manchukuo or the lack of trust in the relationship. Great Power cooperation over China had already collapsed because of the Manchurian Incident, and the existence of Manchukuo became a flashpoint between Japan and the United States, for which no common ground could be found, as evidenced by the 1941 Hull Note (the US proposal for Japan submitted by Secretary of State Cordell Hull at the final stage of Japan-US negotiations).

Bibliography: For Further Reading

Iriye, Akira. 1965. After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931. Harvard University Press.

Kawashima, Shin. 2004. Chūgoku kindai gaikō no keisei (The Formation of Modern Chinese Diplomacy). Nagoya: The University of Nagoya Press.

Naraoka. Sōchi. 2015. Taika nijūikkajō yōkyū towa nandattanoka: daiichiji sekai taisen to nitchū tairitsu no genten (What is the Historical Meaning of the 21 Demands? World War I and the Origin of Sino-Japanese Conflict). Nagoya: The University of Nagoya Press.

Okamoto, Takashi and Kawashima, Shin (eds). 2009. Chūgoku kindai gaikō no taidō [Fomentation of China’s Modern Diplomacy] Tokyo: The University of Tokyo Press, 2009.

Sakai, Tetsuya. 1992. Taishō demokurashī taisei no hōkai: naisei to gaikō (The Collapse of the Taishō Democracy System: Domestic Politics and Diplomacy). Tokyo: The University of Tokyo Press.

Tang, Qihua. 2010. Bei “feichu bupingdeng tiaoyue” zhebide beiyang xiuyue shi (1912–1928) (Treaty Revision Campaign of the Beijing Government, 1912–1928: Out of the Shadow of the “Abrogation of Unequal Treaties”). Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press.

Yoshizawa, Seiichirō. 2003. Aikoku shugi no sōsei: nashonarizumu kara kindai chūgoku o miru (Fomenting Patriotism: Viewing Modern China through Nationalism). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Wang, Yunsheng. 1932–1934. Liushi nian lai zhongguo yu riben (Sixty Years of China and Japan). Da gong bao she.

Additional Bibliography

Hatano, Sumio; Tobe, Ryōichi; Matsumoto, Takashi; Shōji, Jun’ichirō; and Kawashima, Shin. 2018. Ketteiban nitchū sensō (Definitive Edition: The Second Sino-Japanese War). Tokyo: Shinchōsha.

A book on the Second Sino-Japanese War that takes both the Japanese and Chinese perspectives into account. In particular, it depicts Japan’s history from the view of the political, military, and financial histories.

Kawashima, Shin. 2010. Shirīzu chūgoku kingendaishi2 Kindai kokka eno mosaku: 1894–1925 (Series on China’s Modern History (Vol. 2): Groping for a Modern State: 1894–1925). Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho.

A work concerning Chinese history from the end of the nineteenth century to the mid-1920s. I would recommend referencing it together with the third volume of that series by Ishikawa Yoshihiro, Revolution and Nationalism.

Sakurai, Ryōju. 2015. Kahoku chūton nihongun: giwadan kara rokōkyō eno michi (Japan’s North China Army: The Path from the Boxer Rebellion to the Marco Polo Bridge). Tokyo: Iwanami gendai zensho.

A comprehensive book on the Japan’s North China Army in the period between the Boxer Rebellion and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Helps to understand changes in the Imperial Japanese Army in North China.