136-506: [REDACTED] National Revolutionary Army [REDACTED] Imperial Japanese Army The Jinan incident ( simplified Chinese : 济南惨案 ; traditional Chinese : 濟南慘案 ; Japanese : 済南事件 ; formerly romanised Tsinan ) or 3 May Tragedy ( simplified Chinese : 五三惨案 ; traditional Chinese : 五三慘案 ; pinyin : Wǔsān Cǎn'àn ) began as a 3 May 1928 dispute between Chiang Kai-shek 's National Revolutionary Army (NRA) and Japanese soldiers and civilians in Jinan ,
272-459: A full-scale invasion of China. World War II devastated China, leading to enormous loss of life and material destruction. The war between China and Japan continued until the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II in 1945, which led to Taiwan being placed under Chinese administration. In the aftermath of World War II, civil war resumed between the areas liberated by the KMT and those liberated by
408-655: A puppet state controlling limited amounts of territory. The United Front between the Kuomintang and the CCP had salutary effects for the beleaguered CCP, despite Japan's steady territorial gains in northern China, the coastal regions and the rich Yangtze River valley in central China. After 1940, conflicts between the Kuomintang and Communists became more frequent in the areas not under Japanese control . The Communists expanded their influence wherever opportunities presented themselves through mass organizations, administrative reforms and
544-859: A Chinese man in Kobe, Japan in revenge for the Jinan incident and then he committed suicide. Pictures of the corpses of massacred Japanese citizens undergoing autopsy in a Jinan hospital have been used by Chinese publishers such as the Xinhua News Agency as photographs of Japanese Unit 731 conducting biological weapons experiments on Chinese people. They have also appeared in the Jilin provincial museum, and in middle school textbooks. The same pictures have also been mistakenly used in Japan, such as in Kuriya Kentarō's book "The Road to
680-636: A full-scale conflict between the NRA and the Japanese Army. The Japanese reported that NRA soldiers had "run amok", causing mass destruction and a massacre of Japanese civilians, and the British Acting Consul-General reported that he had seen corpses of Japanese males that had been emasculated. In an incident that would provoke Chinese outrage, Japanese soldiers entered a building that the Chinese later said
816-406: A military campaign northwards and reunify the rest of China. Sun's death in 1925 precipitated a power struggle that eventually resulted in the rise of General Chiang Kai-shek to KMT chairmanship . Thanks to strategic alliances with warlords and help from Soviet military advisors, Chiang was able to lead a successful " Northern Expedition " from 1926 to 1928. By 1927, Chiang felt secure enough to end
952-626: A new attempt by the Japanese to seize control of the region, as they had in 1914 during the First World War . NRA troops marched into Jinan over the course of 30 April and 1 May, and took control without trouble. On 2 May, Chiang Kai-shek began negotiations with the Japanese to withdraw their troops, gave assurances to Japanese Major General Ryū Saitō that there would be no disruption in Jinan, and ordered his troops to proceed northward from Jinan with haste, so as to avoid any potential conflict. Following
1088-677: A platform of "protecting nationals on the spot" in the February 1928 election , limiting his ability to moderate the Japanese response. Even before Tanaka had given the order, troops under the command of General Fukuda Hikosuke had begun arriving in Jinan via the Qingdao–Jinan railway , possibly as early as 10 April. This was the first serious case of unilateral action by the post- Meiji Restoration Japanese military. The first substantial group of 475 troops, however, arrived in Jinan from Qingdao on 20 April. They were followed by over 4,000 more troops over
1224-692: A program of massive military and financial aid to the hard-pressed Nationalist Government . In January 1943, both the United States and the United Kingdom led the way in revising their unequal treaties with China from the past. Within a few months a new agreement was signed between the United States and the Republic of China for the stationing of American troops in China as part of the common war effort against Japan. The United States sought unsuccessfully to reconcile
1360-410: A protracted war were staggering. The economy deteriorated, sapped by the military demands of foreign war and internal strife, by spiraling inflation, and by Nationalist profiteering, speculation, and hoarding. Starvation came in the wake of the war, and millions were rendered homeless by floods and unsettled conditions in many parts of the country. On 25 October 1945, following the surrender of Japan ,
1496-413: A republic was established to replace the monarchy . The Qing dynasty that preceded the republic had experienced instability throughout the 19th century and suffered from both internal rebellion and foreign imperialism. A program of institutional reform proved too little and too late. Only the lack of an alternative regime prolonged the monarchy's existence until 1912. The Chinese Republic grew out of
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#17328552004641632-623: A rival national government in Guangzhou . Sun was finally able to take Guangzhou with the help of weapons, funding, and advisors from the Soviet Union . As a condition of Soviet support, the KMT formed the " First United Front " with the Chinese Communist Party. CCP members joined the KMT and the two parties cooperated to build a revolutionary base in Canton. Sun planned to use this base to launch
1768-562: A sense of difference between those areas and the rest of China. On three separate occasions in 1927 and 1928 he sent troops to intervene militarily in Shandong Province to block Chiang Kai-shek 's Northern Expedition to unify China under Kuomintang rule, in what became known as the Jinan Incident . Tanaka came into office even as forces were already beginning to converge that would draw Japan into World War II . In 1928, however,
1904-459: A set of demands to the Chinese, to be met within twelve hours. These were: punishment of responsible Chinese officers, the disarming of responsible Chinese troops before the Japanese army, evacuation of two military barracks near Jinan, prohibition of all anti-Japanese propaganda, and withdrawal of all Chinese troops beyond 20 li on both sides of the Qingdao–Jinan railway. The Japanese knew that
2040-453: A useless and potentially costly clash with the Japanese. Similarly, Japanese prime minister Baron Tanaka Giichi knew that the deployment of troops could result in a conflict with the Chinese, which, rather than protecting Japanese citizens and economic interests, could further endanger them. As it happened, in an attempt to resolve the split between the Wuhan and Nanjing factions of the KMT , Chiang
2176-645: A variety of entities for the international community including the League of Nations along with its successor the United Nations and the Olympic Games . It was hoped by the government that participating in the Olympic Games this could give more legitimacy to the country in the eyes of the international community and "sports could also cultivate modern citizens and a strong nation". The Republic of China sent athletes to
2312-473: A year later, in March 1929, an agreement was reached to share responsibility for the Jinan incident, settle the dispute, and withdraw all Japanese troops from Shandong. If the incident had been an isolated example of Japanese assertion and Chinese resistance, a broader understanding might have been reached. Chiang's troops, however, continued to expand their control in northern China and the Japanese army's distrust of
2448-508: Is at the Tama Cemetery in Fuchū, Tokyo . In 1929, China accused Tanaka of having authored the " Tanaka Memorial Imperialist Conquest Plan," which advocated the conquest of Manchuria, Mongolia, and eventually the whole of China. He was alleged to have presented the plan to the emperor in 1927. The plan was presented as fact in the wartime propaganda film series Why We Fight , which claimed that
2584-606: Is uncertain if he ever actually converted to Christianity. As one of the few Russian experts within the military, he was an invaluable resource to Army planners during the Russo-Japanese War , and served as aide to General Kodama Gentarō in Manchuria . In 1906, Tanaka helped draft a defense plan which was so highly regarded by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff and General Yamagata Aritomo that it
2720-466: The 19 April incident of 1929). On foreign policy, Tanaka differed from his predecessor Shidehara both tactically and strategically. Whereas Shidehara preferred to evacuate Japanese residents where conflicts occurred with local people, Tanaka preferred using military force. While Shidehara theoretically respected China's sovereignty, Tanaka openly pursued a "separation of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia policy" ( 満蒙分離政策 , Man-Mō bunri seisaku ) to create
2856-608: The 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris , 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles , 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin and the 1948 Summer Olympics but no athletes won any medals. For 1928 a single athlete was sent. Although athletes were sent to the 1924 games they did not participate in the games. The Republic of China was a member of the League of Nations and participated until it was dissolved. Those in
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#17328552004642992-449: The Beiyang government -aligned army of Sun Chuanfang withdrew from the area, allowing for the peaceful capture of the city by the NRA. NRA forces initially managed to coexist with Japanese troops stationed around the Japanese consulate and businesses, and Chiang Kai-shek arrived to negotiate their withdrawal on 2 May. This peace was broken the following morning, however, when a dispute between
3128-675: The First Sino-Japanese War . After the end of the war, he was sent as a military attaché to Moscow and Petrograd , and was in Russia at the same time as Takeo Hirose of the Imperial Japanese Navy , with whom he became close friends. Tanaka was fluent in the Russian language , which he learned while attending mass every Sunday at a Russian Orthodox church, which enabled him to practice his Russian at church social events, although it
3264-655: The Kumul Rebellion , the Sino-Tibetan War , and the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang . Large areas of China proper remained under the semi-autonomous rule of local warlords such as Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan , provincial military leaders, or warlord coalitions. Nationalist rule was strongest in the eastern regions around the capital Nanjing. The Central Plains War in 1930, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and
3400-739: The Kuomintang (KMT) reunified the country and ruled it as a one-party state (" Dang Guo ") and made Nanjing the national capital. In 1949, the KMT-led government was defeated in the Chinese Civil War and lost control of the mainland to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP established the People's Republic of China (PRC) while the ROC was forced to retreat to Taiwan and retains control over
3536-468: The Nanjing decade . Sun Yat-sen envisioned three phases for the KMT rebuilding of China – military rule and violent reunification; political tutelage [ zh ] ; and finally a constitutional democracy. In 1930, after seizing power and reunifying China by force, the "tutelage" phase started with the promulgation of a provisional constitution. In an attempt to distant themselves from
3672-568: The Nishihara Loans , the disastrous Nikolayevsk incident and accusations of Army misappropriation of secret funds, and supporting unsavory figures such as White Movement general Roman von Ungern-Sternberg . After suffering from an attack of angina , Tanaka resigned all posts, and retired to his summer home in Oiso, Kanagawa . Tanaka returned as Army Minister in the 2nd Yamamoto administration from September 1923 to January 1924. After retiring from
3808-556: The Republic of China ( 中華民國 ) and Republic of Korea ( 大韓民國 ) are unique in the choice of the term 民國 ('people's country') as an equivalent to "republic" in other languages. The country was in English known at the time as "the Republic of China" or simply "China". In China today, the period from 1912 to 1949 is often called the "Republican Era" ( simplified Chinese : 民国时期 ; traditional Chinese : 民國時期 ), because from
3944-705: The Rikken Seiyukai , the promotion was denied. Tanaka became Prime Minister of Japan on 20 April 1927, during the Shōwa financial crisis , serving simultaneously as the Foreign Affairs Minister . He later added the posts of Home Minister (4 May 1928 to 23 May 1928), and Colonial Affairs Minister (10 June 1929 to 2 July 1929) to his portfolio. On the domestic front, Tanaka attempted to suppress leftists, Communists and suspected Communist sympathizers through widespread arrests (the 15 March incident of 1928, and
4080-567: The Soviet Union , Spain , the United Kingdom , the United States , and the Holy See . The Republic of China was able to maintain most of these diplomatic ties, at least initially following the retreat to Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek had vowed to quickly return and "liberate" the mainland, an assurance that became a cornerstone of the ROC's post 1949 foreign policy. The ROC did try to participate in
4216-887: The Supreme Court , Control Yuan , and the General Academy. With the promulgation of the Organic Law of the Nationalist Government in October 1928, the government was reorganized into five different branches, or yuan , namely the Executive Yuan , Legislative Yuan , Judicial Yuan , Examination Yuan as well as the Control Yuan. The Chairman of the National Government was to be the head-of-state and commander-in-chief of
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4352-1086: The United Nations (including its Security Council seat) where it maintained until 1971, when the PRC took over its membership in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 . It was also a member of the Universal Postal Union and the International Olympic Committee . With a population of 541 million in 1949, it was the world's most populous country . Covering 11.4 million square kilometres (4.4 million square miles) of claimed territory, it de jure consisted of 35 provinces , 1 special administrative region , 2 regions, 12 special municipalities , 14 leagues, and 4 special banners. The Republic of China's first president, Sun Yat-sen , chose Zhōnghuá Mínguó ( 中華民國 ; 'Chinese People's State') as
4488-579: The Wuchang Uprising against the Qing government, on 10 October 1911, which is now celebrated annually as the ROC's national day , also known as " Double Ten Day ". Sun Yat-sen had been actively promoting revolution from his bases in exile. He then returned and on 29 December, Sun Yat-sen was elected president by the Nanjing assembly, which consisted of representatives from seventeen provinces. On 1 January 1912, he
4624-775: The Yalta Conference in February 1945—dismantled and removed more than half the industrial equipment left there by the Japanese. Although the Chinese had not been present at Yalta, they had been consulted and had agreed to have the Soviets enter the war, in the belief that the Soviet Union would deal only with the Kuomintang government. However, the Soviet presence in northeast China enabled the Communists to arm themselves with equipment surrendered by
4760-519: The " Taiwan Area "; the political status of Taiwan remains in dispute to this day. The Republic of China was officially proclaimed on 1 January 1912 by the revolutionaries and Sun Yat-sen , the first provisional president of the new republic, following the success of the Xinhai revolution. Puyi , who had reigned as the Xuantong Emperor of the Qing dynasty, abdicated on 12 February 1912. Sun Yat-sen,
4896-584: The CCP gradually rebuilt its strength by focusing on organizing peasants in the countryside. Warlords who resented Chiang's attempts to take away their autonomy and incorporate their military units into the National Revolutionary Army repeatedly led devastating uprisings, most significantly the Central Plains War . In 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria . They continued a series of smaller territorial encroachments until 1937, when they launched
5032-467: The CCP. The CCP's People's Liberation Army began to gain upper hand in 1948 over a larger and better-armed Republic of China Armed Forces due to better military tactics and internal corruption of the ROC leadership. In 1949, the ROC repeatedly moved its capital to avoid the Communist advance—first to Guangzhou, followed by Chongqing , Chengdu , and lastly to Taipei . In October 1949, the CCP established
5168-577: The Chinese and Japanese resulted in the deaths of 13–16 Japanese civilians. The resulting conflict resulted in thousands of casualties on the NRA side, which fled the area to continue northwards toward Beijing, and left the city under Japanese occupation until March 1929. During the Northern Expedition to reunite China under a Kuomintang (KMT) government, foreign concessions and consulates in Nanjing in March 1927 and Hankou in April 1927 were attacked by
5304-652: The Chinese government's perspective the ROC ceased to exist in 1949. In Taiwan, these years are called the "Mainland period" ( 大陸時期 ; 大陆时期 ), since it was when the ROC was based on the mainland. A republic was formally established on 1 January 1912 following the Xinhai Revolution, which itself began with the Wuchang uprising on 10 October 1911, successfully overthrowing the Qing dynasty and ending over two thousand years of imperial rule in China. From its founding until 1949,
5440-399: The Chinese would not be able to fulfil their demands within the stated timeframe. Instead, their issuance was designed to raise the morale of Japanese troops, cow the Chinese, and demonstrate the "determination" of the Japanese military to foreigners. As expected, the demands were viewed as humiliating and unacceptable by the Chinese. In response, Chiang, who had left the area, sent a courier to
5576-405: The Constitution. This Constitution was promulgated on 25 December 1946 and came into effect on 25 December 1947. Under it, the Central Government was divided into the presidency and the five yuans, each responsible for a part of the government. None was responsible to the other except for certain obligations such as the president appointing the head of the Executive Yuan. Ultimately, the president and
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5712-564: The Fourth Plenary Session of the 2nd Kuomintang National Congress, held in Nanjing, passed the Reorganization of the Nationalist Government Act. This act stipulated that the Nationalist Government was to be directed and regulated under the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, with the Committee of the Nationalist Government being elected by the KMT Central Committee. Under the Nationalist Government were seven ministries—Interior, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Transport, Justice, Agriculture and Mines, and Commerce, in addition to institutions such as
5848-406: The Japanese action, deeming it a violation of Chinese sovereignty. As the NRA launched a pincer attack on Jinan, the railways to Qingdao and Beijing were damaged, preventing warlord-aligned troops from receiving reinforcements. This also brought the NRA in conflict with the Japanese, who were guarding the Qingdao–Jinan railway, though no violence broke out at this stage. On 29 April, chaos erupted as
5984-410: The Japanese garrison, stating that he would meet some, but not all of the stated demands. Fukuda, who deemed that his demands had not been met, launched a full-scale attack on the Chinese in Jinan in the afternoon of 8 May. Fighting was fiercest on the night of 9–10 May, with the Japanese using artillery to bombard the old walled city, where the remaining NRA troops had holed up. The civilian population of
6120-480: The Japanese in the Second United Front , an event now known as the Xi'an Incident . Chinese resistance stiffened after 7 July 1937, when a clash occurred between Chinese and Japanese troops outside Beijing near the Marco Polo Bridge . This skirmish led to open, although undeclared, warfare between China and Japan. Shanghai fell after a three-month battle during which Japan suffered extensive casualties in both its army and navy. Nanjing fell in December 1937, which
6256-406: The Japanese troops, causing the Japanese to return fire. In the Chinese version of events, as recorded by Chiang Kai-shek, a sick Chinese soldier who had attempted to seek treatment at a local Christian hospital with the help of a local labourer was blocked from proceeding down the street to the hospital by Japanese soldiers, sparking a verbal argument. The Japanese then shot and killed the soldier and
6392-467: The Japanese were China's greatest enemy. Justifying his backing down from conflict in Jinan, he added that "before one can settle scores, one must be strong". When Chiang lectured a group of Chinese army cadets on the subject, he urged them to turn their energies to washing away the shame of Jinan, but to conceal their hatred until the last moment. Japanese prime minister Tanaka, who also had hoped to avoid conflict, opened negotiations with Chiang, and close to
6528-444: The Japanese, who considered the province within their sphere of influence , deployed four-thousand troops of the Kwantung Army to the cities of Qingdao and Jinan in what they called the "First Shandong Expedition" ( 第一山東出兵 , Dai-ichi Santō Shuppei ) , ostensibly to protect Japanese civilians in anticipation of an NRA advance. NRA commander Chiang Kai-shek wanted to keep his troops away from Jinan, avoiding what he viewed as
6664-553: The KMT were offered 1,000 pounds . Yuan maintained power locally by sending generals to be provincial governors or by obtaining the allegiance of those already in power. When Yuan died, the parliament of 1913 was reconvened to give legitimacy to a new government. However, the real power passed to military leaders, leading to the warlord period. The impotent government still had its use; when World War I began, several Western powers and Japan wanted China to declare war on Germany, to liquidate German holdings in China. In February 1928,
6800-411: The KMT's National Revolutionary Army (NRA) soldiers and Chinese civilians respectively in what came to be called the Nanking and Hankou incidents. Following these incidents, NRA commander Chiang Kai-shek made repeated statements to the effect that he would not tolerate anti-foreign attacks by his soldiers, and the KMT foreign minister Huang Fu said that they would "protect to their fullest ability
6936-481: The KMT. These elections, though praised by at least one US observer, were poorly received by the Communist Party, which would soon start an open, armed insurrection. Before the Nationalist government was ousted from the mainland, the Republic of China had diplomatic relations with 59 countries , including Australia, Canada, Cuba , Czechoslovakia , Estonia , France , Germany , Guatemala , Honduras , Italy , Japan , Latvia , Lithuania , Norway , Panama , Siam ,
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#17328552004647072-429: The League of Nations, China wanted to see the unequal treaties revised. The ROC thought that by being in the League they could improve their international standing. Under the Charter of the United Nations , the Republic of China was entitled to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC). Though multiple objections were raised that the seat belonged to the lawful government of China, which had to many become
7208-420: The NRA. When the Japanese learned of Sun's failure to defend Shandong, Prime Minister Tanaka, on the counsel of his military advisors, decided to deploy the 6th Division to Jinan on 19 April, in what was called the "Second Shandong Expedition" ( 第二山東出兵 , Dai-ni Santō Shuppei ) . Whilst Tanaka had misgivings about whether it was prudent to launch the expedition, his party, the Rikken Seiyūkai , had run on
7344-411: The Nanjing government nor the earlier Beiyang government succeeded in consolidating governance in rural China. In 1945, at the end of World War II , the Empire of Japan surrendered control of Taiwan and its island groups to the Allies ; and Taiwan was placed under the Republic of China's administrative control. The communist takeover of mainland China in 1949, after the Chinese Civil War, left
7480-405: The National Revolutionary Army. Chiang Kai-shek was appointed as the first chairman, a position he would retain until 1931. The Organic Law also stipulated that the Kuomintang, through its National Congress and Central Executive Committee, would exercise sovereign power during the period of "political tutelage", that the KMT's Political Council would guide and superintend the Nationalist Government in
7616-436: The PRC even arguably prior to the official conclusion of the Chinese Civil War, the ROC retained the permanent seat reserved for China on the UNSC until 1971 when it was supplanted by the PRC. The Republic of China retained hereditary nobility like the Han Chinese nobles Duke Yansheng and Celestial Masters and Tusi chiefdoms like the Chiefdom of Mangshi , Chiefdom of Yongning , who continued possessing their titles in
7752-399: The People's Republic of China . Remnants of the ROC government would hang on in mainland China until late 1951. The KMT dominated ROC politics for 72 years and ruled the island of Taiwan for around 54 years until they lost the presidential election in 2000 to the Taiwanese nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The ROC was a founding member of the League of Nations and later
7888-490: The ROC's founder and provisional president, served only briefly before handing over the presidency to Yuan Shikai , the leader of the Beiyang Army . Yuan quickly became authoritarian and used his military power to control the administration, which consequently became known as the " Beiyang government " (or the First Republic of China ). Yuan even attempted to replace the Republic with his own imperial dynasty until popular unrest forced him to back down. When Yuan died in 1916,
8024-439: The Red Army's Long March in 1934 led to more power for the central government, but there continued to be foot-dragging and even outright defiance, as in the Fujian Rebellion of 1933–1934. Reformers and critics pushed for democracy and human rights, but the task seemed difficult if not impossible. The nation was at war and divided between Communists and Nationalists. Corruption and lack of direction hindered reforms. Chiang told
8160-479: The Republic of China from the previous dynasties. Tanaka Giichi Baron Tanaka Giichi ( 田中 義一 , 22 June 1864 – 29 September 1929) GBE KCMG was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army , politician, cabinet minister, and the Prime Minister of Japan from 1927 to 1929. Tanaka was born as the third son of a low-ranking samurai family in the service of Chōshū Domain in Hagi , Nagato Province (modern day Yamaguchi Prefecture ), Japan. At
8296-502: The Sasaki incident, Major General Tatekawa Yoshitsugu said that it was "necessary for Japan to chastise the lawless Chinese soldiers in order to maintain Japan's national and military prestige". Responding to a request from General Fukuda, Prime Minister Tanaka ordered the despatch of reinforcements from Korea and Manchuria in the "Third Shandong Expedition" ( 第三山東出兵 , Dai-san Santō Shuppei ) , which began arriving in Jinan on 7 May. With his forces bolstered, General Fukuda issued
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#17328552004648432-410: The Soviets, the Chinese government sought assistance from Germany . According to Lloyd Eastman, Chiang Kai-shek was influenced by European fascist movements, and he launched the Blue shirts and the New Life Movement in imitation of them, in an effort to counter the growth of Mao's communism as well as resist both Western and Japanese imperialism. According to Stanley Payne , however, Chiang's KMT
8568-418: The State Council: "Our organization becomes worse and worse... many staff members just sit at their desks and gaze into space, others read newspapers and still others sleep." Few Chinese had any illusions about Japanese desires on China. Hungry for raw materials and pressed by a growing population, Japan initiated the seizure of Manchuria in September 1931, and established the former emperor Puyi as head of
8704-424: The Tokyo Trials" ( Tokyo Saiban e no michi ) and in a TV Asahi program about the horrors of war. Some of these pictures can be viewed below. Republic of China (1912%E2%80%931949) The Republic of China ( ROC ) began as a sovereign state in mainland China on 1 January 1912 following the 1911 Revolution , which overthrew the Manchu -led Qing dynasty and ended China's imperial history . From 1927,
8840-479: The West. In 1919, a student protest against the government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles , considered unfair by Chinese intellectuals, led to the May Fourth movement , whose demonstrations were against the danger of spreading Western influence replacing Chinese culture. It was in this intellectual climate that Marxist thought began to spread. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921. After Sun's death in March 1925, Chiang Kai-shek became
8976-405: The administration of Taiwan and Penghu Islands were handed over from Japan to China. After the end of the war, United States Marines were used to hold Beijing and Tianjin against a possible Soviet incursion, and logistic support was given to Kuomintang forces in north and northeast China. To further this end, on 30 September 1945 the 1st Marine Division , charged with maintaining security in
9112-399: The age of 13, he participated in the Hagi Rebellion . He had an interest in politics from an early age, serving on a village council and as an elementary school teacher. He only joined the Imperial Japanese Army at the age of 20. He graduated from the former 8th class of Imperial Japanese Army Academy and the 8th class of the Army War College in 1892, and served as a junior officer during
9248-417: The allegiance of sections of the population. The United States aided the Nationalists with massive economic loans and weapons but no combat support. Belatedly, the Republic of China government sought to enlist popular support through internal reforms. However, the effort was in vain, because of rampant government corruption and the accompanying political and economic chaos. By late 1948 the Kuomintang position
9384-446: The alliance with the Soviet Union and purged the Communists from the KMT. In 1928, the last major independent warlord pledged allegiance to the KMT's Nationalist government in Nanjing. China was then nominally reunified in 1928 by the Nanking -based government led by Chiang Kai-shek, who after the Northern Expedition ruled the country as a one-party state under the Kuomintang, and subsequently received international recognition as
9520-399: The areas of the Shandong Peninsula and the eastern Hebei , arrived in China. In January 1946, through the mediation of the United States, a military truce between the Kuomintang and the Communists was arranged, but battles soon resumed. Public opinion of the administrative incompetence of the Nationalist government was incited by the Communists during the nationwide student protest against
9656-404: The army, Tanaka was invited to accept the post of party president of the Rikken Seiyūkai political party in 1925 and was made a member of the House of Peers from January 1926. He had been scheduled to be promoted to the rank of Field Marshal at the time of his retirement. However, when news reached the ears of the Army Ministry of a 3 million Yen bonus that Tanaka received on agreeing to join
9792-520: The capital of Shandong province in China , which then escalated into an armed conflict between the NRA and the Imperial Japanese Army . Japanese soldiers had been deployed to Shandong province to protect Japanese commercial interests in the province, which were threatened by the advance of Chiang's Northern Expedition to reunite China under a Kuomintang government. When the NRA approached Jinan,
9928-483: The city, leaving only a small number to keep order. On 4 May, however, the Japanese reported that their chief negotiator, Colonel Sasaki Tōichi , was robbed and nearly beaten to death, and only saved by intervention of one of Chiang's officers. In addition, they claimed that Chiang's promise to remove all Chinese soldiers from the Japanese-inhabited commercial area of the city had not been implemented. Speaking after
10064-432: The clash are contested between the Japanese and Chinese sides. As the Japanese immediately destroyed the Chinese wireless station after the clash began, they were left in control of the only working line of communication out of Jinan, forcing foreign media reports to rely entirely on the Japanese version of the events. According to the official Japanese narrative, as reported by General Fukuda, a group of Chinese soldiers under
10200-523: The coming days. The arrival of the Japanese troops in Jinan, just as the Beiyang-aligned forces had retreated there, prompted suspicions about whether the Beiyang warlords had asked for a Japanese intervention. This was used as propaganda by the Kuomintang, though Beiyang government leader Zhang Zuolin denied doing any such thing. Both the Beiyang government and the KMT government in Nanjing protested against
10336-542: The command of General He Yaozu [ zh ] , reputed to have been responsible for the Nanjing incident, broke into an office of the Japanese Manshū Nippō newspaper, and assaulted its proprietor at 09:30. A group of Japanese soldiers commanded by Captain Yoshiharu Kumekawa patrolling in the area rushed to the scene, and attempted to stop the Chinese soldiers. The Chinese soldiers then opened fire on
10472-544: The complicated nation-building process in China during his time, especially given the wide range of both domestic and foreign challenges it faced on many different concurrent fronts. Several major government institutions were founded during this period, including the Academia Sinica and the Central Bank of China . In 1932, China sent its first team to the Olympic Games . Campaigns were mounted and laws passed to promote
10608-587: The country fragmented between the various local commanders of the Beiyang Army. This began the Warlord Era defined by decentralized conflicts between rival cliques. The most powerful of these cliques, notably the Zhili and Fengtian cliques , at times used their control of Beijing to assert claims to govern the entire Republic. Meanwhile, the nationalist KMT under Sun's leadership attempted multiple times to establish
10744-518: The country's foreign relations were among the most stable of those working in the government in terms of composition. The ROC was a non-permanent member of the League Council for the League of Nations being a non-permanent member of the League Council from: 1921–1923, 1926–1928, 1931–1932, 1934, and 1936. Although the ROC lobbied to be a permanent member of the League Council it never became one. At
10880-690: The country's official Chinese name. The name was derived from the language of the Tongmenghui 's 1905 party manifesto, which proclaimed that the four goals of the Chinese revolution were "to expel the Manchu rulers, revive China ( Zhōnghuá ), establish a people's state ( mínguó ), and distribute land equally among the people." On 15 July 1916, in his welcoming speech to the Cantonese delegates in Shanghai, Sun explained why
11016-425: The deal. On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu signed the abdication decree on behalf of Puyi, ending several millennia of monarchical rule. In 1913, elections were held for provincial assemblies, which would then chose delegates for a new National Assembly. The Kuomintang emerged as the formal political party that replaced the revolutionary organization Tongmenghui , and at the 1913 elections, it won
11152-451: The dispute over Jinan was reached. The period of occupation was defined by oppression, with freedom of the press and assembly proscribed, postal correspondence censored, and residents killed for alleged sympathies with the KMT. Chiang apologised to the Japanese on 10 May and removed He Yaozu from his post. After the incident, Chiang decided he would write one "way to kill the Japanese" each day in his journal, and also wrote that he now thought
11288-646: The execution of important national affairs, and that the Political Council has the power to interpret or amend the Organic Law. Shortly after the Second Sino-Japanese War, a long-delayed constitutional convention was summoned to meet in Nanjing in May 1946. Amidst heated debate, this convention adopted many constitutional amendments demanded by several parties, including the KMT and the Communist Party, into
11424-452: The forces of Chinese nationalism would only grow. According to historian Akira Iriye , the Jinan incident demonstrated the weak nature of the Japanese chain of command, and the powerlessness of civilian government officials to stop unilateral aggression by the military. Japanese army leaders, increasingly outside civilian control, feared that Chiang would respond to patriotic agitation and threaten their interests in southern Manchuria. Following
11560-578: The form of a parallelism : an emperor's country is ruled by only one emperor ( 帝國是以皇帝一人為主 ), a people's country is ruled by all four hundred million people ( 民國是以 四萬萬 人為主 ). Both the " Beiyang government " (from 1912 to 1928), and the " Nationalist government " (from 1928 to 1949) used the name "Republic of China" as their official name. In Chinese, the official name was often shortened to Zhōngguó ( 中國 ; 'Middle Country'), Mínguó ( 民國 ; 'People's Country'), or Zhōnghuá ( 中華 ; 'Middle Huaxia '). The choice of
11696-533: The labourer. Different Chinese sources, however, reported different versions of the events, and this gave the impression that the Chinese were inventing stories to justify their behaviour. The Japanese version, however, is marked by its own association with the later use of disinformation tactics by the Kwantung Army in the Huanggutun and Mukden incidents. Regardless of who started the clash, it quickly resulted in
11832-675: The land- and tax-reform measures favoring the peasants and, the spread of their organizational network, while the Kuomintang attempted to neutralize the spread of Communist influence. Meanwhile, northern China was infiltrated politically by Japanese politicians in Manchukuo using facilities such as the Manchukuo Imperial Palace . After its entry into the Pacific War during World War II, the United States became increasingly involved in Chinese affairs. As an ally, it embarked in late 1941 on
11968-531: The largest share of seats in both houses of the National Assembly and in some provincial assemblies. Song Jiaoren led the Kuomintang Party to electoral victories by fashioning his party's program to appeal to the gentry, landowners, and merchants. Song was assassinated on 20 March 1913, at the behest of Yuan Shikai. Yuan was elected president of the ROC in 1913. He ruled by military power and ignored
12104-417: The leader of the Kuomintang . In 1926, Chiang led the Northern Expedition with the intention of defeating the Beiyang warlords and unifying the country. Chiang received the help of the Soviet Union and the CCP. However, he soon dismissed his Soviet advisers, being convinced that they wanted to get rid of the KMT and take control. Chiang decided to purge the Communists, massacring thousands in Shanghai . At
12240-564: The lives and property of foreigners in China in accordance with international law and usage". Despite these assurances, foreign powers, including the Japanese, remained concerned about the safety of their economic and political interests in China, and resolved that the Nanking incident would not be repeated. When the NRA forced back the Beiyang government -aligned " National Pacification Army " warlord coalition to Shandong province in May–June 1927,
12376-467: The long war with Japan and in-fighting among various generals. They were also losing the propaganda war to the Communists, with a population weary of Kuomintang corruption and yearning for peace. In January 1949, Beiping was taken by the Communists without a fight, and its name changed back to Beijing. Following the capture of Nanjing on 23 April, major cities passed from Kuomintang to Communist control with minimal resistance, through November. In most cases
12512-518: The machinations of the ultranationalist secret societies and the Kwantung Army resulted in a crisis: the assassination of the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin and the failed attempt to seize Manchuria . Tanaka himself was taken by surprise by the assassination plot and argued that the officers responsible should be publicly court-martialed for homicide. The military establishment, from which Tanaka
12648-511: The meeting, Tanaka suggested that the Japanese would support only Chiang in China, and not interfere in Chinese domestic affairs. Chiang responded by saying he "understood" Japanese interest in China. When Tanaka said that Chiang should focus on consolidating his power in the territories under KMT control, rather than advance northward toward the Japanese sphere of influence in Fengtian clique -controlled Shandong and Manchuria , Chiang replied that this
12784-530: The mishandling of the Shen Chong rape case in early 1947 and during another national protest against monetary reforms later that year. The United States—realizing that no American efforts short of large-scale armed intervention could stop the coming war—withdrew Gen. George Marshall's American mission . Thereafter, the Chinese Civil War became more widespread; battles raged not only for territories but also for
12920-455: The negotiations, Saitō decided to begin preparations to withdraw the Japanese troops, and said that all security matters in Jinan would then be entrusted to Chiang. General Fukuda later gave his approval to this decision, and the Japanese troops began withdrawal during the night of 2–3 May. The area remained quiet, though tense, until a clash erupted between Japanese and NRA soldiers during the morning of 3 May. The exact details of what instigated
13056-400: The old city were not warned in advance of the Japanese bombardment, which is thought to have resulted in many casualties. The final group of Chinese soldiers escaped under the cover of night on 10–11 May. By morning, the Japanese had gained full control of Jinan, and took up positions in the walled city. The city would remain under Japanese occupation until March 1929, when an agreement to settle
13192-401: The other hand, said that the building was clearly marked, and that Cai's nose, ears, and tongue were cut off, and his eyes gouged out, before he was executed. The other members of his staff were reported by the Chinese to have been stripped naked, whipped, dragged out to the back lawn and killed with machine guns. In response to these reports, Major General Ryū Saitō wrote that the Chinese account
13328-457: The people. Later on 20 October 1923, at a national conference for youths in Guangzhou, to explain the core idea behind mínguó ( 民國 ; 'people's country'), he pithily compared the phrase "Empire of China" ( 中華帝國 ; Zhōnghuá Dìguó ; 'Chinese Emperor's Country') to "Republic of China" ( 中華民國 ; Zhōnghuá Mínguó ; 'Chinese People's Country') in
13464-466: The plan envisaged the conquest of America after East Asia. In a memoir published in the mid-1950s, a Japanese-born Taiwanese businessman, Tsai Chih-Kan, claimed that he had personally copied the "Plan" from the Imperial Library on the night of 20 June 1928 in a covert action assisted by several of Japan's leading prewar politicians and officers, who were opposed to Tanaka. Today, some historians regard
13600-413: The precedent of General Fukuda's unilateral action in Jinan, a group of officers of the Kwantung Army assassinated the leader of the Beiyang government and ruler of Manchuria Zhang Zuolin on 4 June 1928, setting off a chain of events that created the pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria . According to cables sent from Kobe to Hong Kong, in May 1928, 11 or 7 Japanese were shot to death by
13736-475: The promise to end foreign domination and re-unify the country to buttress his legitimacy. By April 1928, Chiang Kai-shek had once again consolidated power, at which time he resumed the Northern Expedition. The NRA was able to quickly push back the forces of Beiyang-aligned warlord Sun Chuanfang , and advanced into Shandong. Sun retreated to Jinan by railway on 17–18 April, leaving the path to Jinan open to
13872-476: The provincial system; however, this move angered the gentry along with the provincial governors, who were usually military men. Yuan's changes to government caused many provinces to declare independence and become warlord states. Increasingly unpopular and deserted by his supporters, Yuan abdicated in 1916 and died of natural causes shortly thereafter. China then declined into a period of warlordism. Sun, having been forced into exile, returned to Guangdong in
14008-464: The puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932. The loss of Manchuria, and its potential for industrial development and war industries, was a blow to the Kuomintang economy. The League of Nations , established at the end of World War I, was unable to act in the face of Japanese defiance. The Japanese began to push south of the Great Wall into northern China and the coastal provinces. Chinese fury against Japan
14144-464: The representative legitimate from China. The Nationalist government can also be referred as the Second Republic of China . While there was relative prosperity during the following ten years under Chiang Kai-shek, the ROC continued to be destabilized by the Chinese Civil War, revolts by the KMT's warlord allies, and steady territorial encroachments by Japan. Although heavily damaged by the purge,
14280-473: The republic was based on mainland China. Central authority waxed and waned in response to warlordism (1915–1928), a Japanese invasion (1937–1945), and a full-scale civil war (1927–1949), with central authority strongest during the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937), when most of China came under the control of the authoritarian, one-party military dictatorship of the nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT). Neither
14416-474: The republican institutions established by his predecessor, threatening to execute Senate members who disagreed with his decisions. He soon dissolved the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party, banned "secret organizations" (which implicitly included the KMT), and ignored the provisional constitution. Ultimately, Yuan declared himself Emperor of China in 1915. The new ruler of China tried to increase centralization by abolishing
14552-476: The rights of women. In the 1931 Civil Code, women were given equal inheritance rights, banned forced marriage and gave women the right to control their own money and initiate divorce. No nationally unified women's movement could organize until China was unified under the Kuomintang Government in Nanjing in 1928; women's suffrage was finally included in the new Constitution of 1936, although the constitution
14688-548: The rival Kuomintang and Communists, to make for a more effective anti-Japanese war effort. In December 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1880s, and subsequent laws, enacted by the United States Congress to restrict Chinese immigration into the United States were repealed. The wartime policy of the United States was meant to help China become a strong ally and a stabilizing force in postwar East Asia. During
14824-455: The ruling Kuomintang with control over only Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands . With the loss of the mainland, the ROC government retreated to Taiwan and the KMT declared Taipei the provisional capital . Meanwhile, the CCP took over all of mainland China and founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing. In 1912, after over two thousand years of dynastic rule,
14960-497: The same time, other violent conflicts were taking place in China: in the South, where the CCP had superior numbers, Nationalist supporters were being massacred. Chiang Kai-shek pushed the CCP into the interior and established a government, with Nanjing as its capital, in 1927. By 1928, Chiang's army overthrew the Beiyang government and unified the entire nation, at least nominally, beginning
15096-484: The south in 1917 and 1922, with the help of warlords, and set up successive rival governments to the Beiyang government in Beijing, having re-established the KMT in October 1919. Sun's dream was to unify China by launching an expedition against the north. However, he lacked the military support and funding to turn it into a reality. Meanwhile, the Beiyang government struggled to hold onto power, and an open and wide-ranging debate evolved regarding how China should confront
15232-585: The surrounding countryside and small towns had come under Communist influence long before the cities. Finally, on 1 October 1949, Communists led by Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China . Chiang Kai-shek declared martial law in May 1949, whilst a few hundred thousand Nationalist troops and two million refugees, predominantly from the government and business community, fled from mainland China to Taiwan. There remained in China itself only isolated pockets of resistance. On 7 December 1949, Chiang proclaimed Taipei
15368-577: The temporary capital of the Republic of China. During the Chinese Civil War both the Nationalists and Communists carried out mass atrocities, with millions of non-combatants killed by both sides. Benjamin Valentino has estimated atrocities in the civil war resulted in the death of between 1.8 million and 3.5 million people between 1927 and 1949, including deaths from forced conscription and massacres. The first Republic of China national government
15504-526: The term mínguó ( 民國 ; 'people's country') was chosen over the Japanese-derived gònghéguó ( 共和國 ). He associated the label gònghé ( 共和 ) with the limiting and authoritarianism-prone Euro-American models of representative republicanism. What he strived for was a more grass-roots model, which he termed zhíjiē mínquán ( 直接民權 ; ' direct people's rights '), and which he thought would allow more checks and balances by
15640-585: The term mínguó ( 民國 ; 'people's country'; "republic") in 1912, as well as its similar semantic formation to dìguó ( 帝國 ; 'emperor's country'; "empire"), may have influenced the choice of the Korean term minguk ( 민국/民國 ) by the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (founded in 1919 within the Republic of China), which replaced Daehan Jeguk ( 대한제국/大韓帝國 ) with Daehan Minguk ( 대한민국/大韓民國 ). Today,
15776-676: The war, China was one of the Big Four Allies, and later one of the Four Policemen , which was a precursor to China having a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council . In August 1945, with American help, Nationalist troops moved to take the Japanese surrender in North China. The Soviet Union—encouraged to invade Manchuria to hasten the end of the war and allowed a Soviet sphere of influence there as agreed to at
15912-601: The warlord troops began to flee northwards across the Luokou Yellow River Railway Bridge , abandoning Jinan. As they left the city, the warlord forces were reported to have engaged in looting, though Japanese-inhabited areas continued to be protected by Japanese troops. Public dissatisfaction with the presence of the Imperial Japanese Army in Shandong became increasingly evident, their presence viewed as
16048-399: The withdrawing Japanese army. In 1945, after the end of the war, the Nationalist Government moved back to Nanjing. The Republic of China emerged from the war nominally a great military power but actually a nation economically prostrate and on the verge of all-out civil war. The problems of rehabilitating the formerly Japanese-occupied areas and of reconstructing the nation from the ravages of
16184-403: The world, but it is not clear that the group possessed the full qualities of an intrinsic fascist movement....The Blue Shirts probably had some affinity with and for fascism, a common feature of nationalisms in crisis during the 1930s, but it is doubtful that they represented any clear-cut Asian variant of fascism." Still other historians have noted that Chiang and the KMT's exact ideology itself
16320-455: The yuans reported to the National Assembly, which represented the will of the citizens. Under the new constitution the first elections for the National Assembly occurred in January 1948, and the assembly was summoned to meet in March 1948. It elected the president of the republic on 21 March 1948, formally bringing an end to the KMT party rule started in 1928, although the president was a member of
16456-522: Was "normally classified as a multi-class populist or 'nation-building' party but not a fitting candidate for fascism (except by old-line Communists)." He also stated that, "Lloyd Eastman has called the Blue Shirts, whose members admired European fascism and were influenced by it, a Chinese fascist organization. This is probably an exaggeration. The Blue Shirts certainly exhibited some of the characteristics of fascism, as did many nationalist organizations around
16592-414: Was "propaganda", that Cai was simply shot dead during ongoing fighting between the Japanese and Chinese, and that one cannot cut off ears or noses with a bayonet. Negotiations to halt the escalating violence quickly began, with Chiang and Fukuda agreeing to a truce. Chiang, who was not interested in conflict with the Japanese, and wanted to continue the Northern Expedition, agreed to withdraw his troops from
16728-685: Was adopted as basic policy until World War I . He was also awarded the Order of the Golden Kite (3rd class) in April 1906. In 1910, he established a Veterans Association. Tanaka was promoted to major general in 1911, and was made director of the Military Affairs Bureau at the Ministry of the Army , where he recommended an increase in the strength of the standing army by two additional infantry divisions. He
16864-656: Was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure (1st class) in September 1918. He joined the cabinet of Prime Ministers Hara Takashi as Army Minister from September 1918 to June 1921. He was promoted to full general in 1920 and was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun (1st class). He was also elevated to the title of danshaku ( baron ) under the kazoku peerage system. However, the Hara cabinet came under unceasing criticism due to
17000-452: Was bleak. The demoralized and undisciplined National Revolutionary Army proved to be no match for the Communists' motivated and disciplined People's Liberation Army . The Communists were well established in the north and northeast. Although the Kuomintang had an advantage in numbers of men and weapons, controlled a much larger territory and population than their adversaries, and enjoyed considerable international support, they were exhausted by
17136-541: Was by now estranged, insisted on covering up the facts of the incident, which remained an official secret. Bereft of support, and under mounting criticism in the Diet and even from Emperor Hirohito himself, Tanaka and his cabinet resigned en masse on 2 July 1929. Tanaka was succeeded by Hamaguchi Osachi , and died a few months after his resignation. He was awarded the Order of the Paulownia Flowers on his death. His grave
17272-464: Was established on 1 January 1912, in Nanjing, with a constitution stating Three Principles of the People , which state that "[the ROC] shall be a democratic republic of the people, to be governed by the people and for the people." Sun Yat-sen was the provisional president. Delegates from the provinces sent to confirm the government's authority formed the first parliament in 1913. The power of this government
17408-528: Was followed by mass murders and rapes known as the Nanjing Massacre . The national capital was briefly at Wuhan , then removed in an epic retreat to Chongqing, the seat of government until 1945. In 1940, the Japanese set up the collaborationist Wang Jingwei regime , with its capital in Nanjing, which proclaimed itself the legitimate "Republic of China" in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek's government, although its claims were significantly hampered due to its being
17544-514: Was forced to resign from his post of commander of the NRA and halt the Northern Expedition in August 1927, avoiding conflict. With the threat of the NRA advance gone, the Japanese withdrew their troops from Jinan in September 1927. Chiang sought to avoid repetition of such conflicts and further Japanese interference, and on 5 November 1927, while he was nominally retired from leading the Northern Expedition, he met with Japanese prime minister Tanaka. During
17680-499: Was limited, with generals controlling both the central and northern provinces of China , and short-lived. The number of acts passed by the government was few and included the formal abdication of the Qing dynasty and some economic initiatives. The parliament's authority soon became nominal: violations of the Constitution by Yuan were met with half-hearted motions of censure. Kuomintang members of parliament who gave up their membership in
17816-413: Was not implemented until 1947. Addressing social problems, especially in remote villages, was aided by improved communications. The Rural Reconstruction Movement was one of many that took advantage of the new freedom to raise social consciousness. The Nationalist government published a draft constitution on 5 May 1936. Continual wars plagued the government. Those in the western border regions included
17952-410: Was not possible. The discussion, therefore, ended without a clear conclusion, though Tanaka was said to be hopeful for future meetings. Chiang, for his part, considered the meeting a failure, but maintained his approach of attempting to work with the Japanese to reach a solution that was amenable to both parties. Despite this, Chiang had only a tenuous hold on power in China, and relied in large measure on
18088-517: Was officially inaugurated and pledged "to overthrow the despotic government led by the Manchu, consolidate the Republic of China and plan for the welfare of the people". Sun's new government lacked military strength. As a compromise, he negotiated with Yuan Shikai the commander of the Beiyang Army , promising Yuan the presidency of the republic if he were to remove the Qing emperor by force. Yuan agreed to
18224-472: Was predictable, but anger was also directed against Chiang and the Nanjing government, which at the time was more preoccupied with anti-Communist extermination campaigns than with resisting the Japanese invaders. The importance of "internal unity before external danger" was forcefully brought home in December 1936, when Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang and forced to ally with the Communists against
18360-414: Was their negotiation headquarters, and killed Chinese diplomat Cai Gongshi , eight members of his staff, seven NRA soldiers, and one cook. The exact nature of the killing is contested between the Japanese and Chinese sides, with the Japanese claiming they were attacked from the upper floors, and did not know that the building was a government office or that Cai held the position of negotiator. The Chinese, on
18496-555: Was very complex and oscillated over time, with different factions of his government cooperating with both the Soviets and Germans as they saw fit, and that Chiang eventually became disillusioned with the Blue Shirts, which officially disbanded by 1938, something Payne also mentions as "possibly because of competition with the KMT itself." Some have also noted that in contrast to older historians from decades ago, Chiang's efforts have been increasingly seen by newer Western and Chinese historians alike as an arguably necessary if austere part of
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