China incident

China incident (Shina jihen), term employed by the Japanese to refer to the conflict between Japan and China which broke out in July 1937 (see Map 22). The expression remained in use until the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, after which the fighting in China became part of the ‘Greater East Asia War’ (Dai Tōa Sensō); it was rarely used thereafter. The expression provides insight into the mentality with which Japanese leaders viewed their efforts in China and, indirectly, into the policies they chose. The Chinese, whether nationalists or communists, never used it; to them, the war was from the start the ‘War of Resistance Against Japan’ (k'ang-Jih chan-cheng). Westerners, describing this conflict as the Sino-Japanese war, generally mean the eight years of hostilities between the two powers—1937–45—the period covered here.

This was not the first time Japanese had used the word jihen (incident) to characterize events in China. It was employed as early as September 1931, when their Kwantung Army fabricated a pretext to seize Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo. This was the ‘Mukden Incident’, or, as the sphere of Japanese action broadened, the ‘Manchurian Incident’.

Long before these incidents, elements of pan-Asianism had begun to manifest themselves in Japanese strategic thinking. On one level, the notion implied a leadership mission for Japan within Asia, above all in Korea, Manchukuo, and at least parts of China. In this vision, Japan intended to play the same sort of civilizing mission that European imperialist powers had earlier and elsewhere arrogated to themselves. Less altruistically, such a view justified Japanese exploitation of the resources and markets of East Asia. From quite early in the 20th century, most Japanese had come to believe that national interests—prosperity, security, perhaps survival itself—required a strong position on the Asian mainland. How best to protect or extend those interests spawned many serious controversies and conflicts within the Japanese polity, but few disagreed with the underlying premiss.

On another level, pan-Asian thinking gradually took on a racial coloration, an anti-imperialist Asia for the Asians mentality—led by the Japanese, of course. This sentiment grew as Japan advanced on the resource-rich colonial areas of South-East Asia: French Indo-China, the Netherlands East Indies, and (after Pearl Harbor) the Philippines. This thinking crystallized in the notion of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, which became a central feature of Japanese ideology in the late 1930s and 1940s. From an ultra-nationalist Japanese perspective, therefore, what lay below the surface of events was a sense of virtual entitlement: Japan had the right, the duty, the obligation to carry out its will in China and elsewhere.

Six years after the Mukden Incident (see Manchukuo), on the night of 7 July 1937, some shots were fired at a Japanese detachment—commanded by the future Lt-General Yamashita—on manoeuvres near the Marco Polo Bridge, a few kilometres south-west of Peking. No one was injured; one Japanese soldier was initially declared missing, but later returned to his unit. Who fired the shots is not known, even now. This minor skirmish was less serious than many other collisions that had taken place in north China as the Japanese sought to expand their influence in the Peking–Tientsin region. On such occasions, these episodes were usually settled by negotiations in which, after posturing on both sides, the Chinese acquiesced to a modified set of Japanese demands.

On this occasion, hard-liners in the Japanese government, particularly in the army and above all in the aggressive and semi-autonomous Kwantung Army stationed in Manchukuo, and in the units stationed in the Peking–Tientsin region, were determined to force a more comprehensive settlement than they had thus far achieved. Hence, they spoke of the ‘north China incident’ (hokuShi jihen). Such a forward policy was opposed by gradualist leaders, and by navy commanders suspicious of army dominance in policy circles. Within the army itself, a lonely voice of moderation was that of Ishiwara Kanji, head of the General Staff's Operations Division. Ishiwara foresaw the likelihood of a costly and protracted involvement in China, from which it would be impossible to withdraw and which would inflict costs upon Japan far in excess of any advantages gained. He and a few others argued that to get bogged down in China would make it more difficult for Japan to cope with her true adversary, the USSR. In the weeks that followed, Japanese policy toward China see-sawed several times, but generally moved towards greater mobilization and tougher demands.

On the Chinese side, meanwhile, local authorities in the Peking–Tientsin area were sufficiently intimidated to accept Japanese terms, while trying to retain as much room to manoeuvre as possible. But in Nanking the nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, was no longer willing to follow a policy of acquiescence. Although he did not seek a complete rupture with Japan, his patience was growing thin, and he realized that further appeasement might well fatally damage his credibility in the face of an increasingly aroused Chinese nationalism.

On this occasion, therefore, actions on both sides led not to eventual compromise, but to an irregular and not altogether intended escalation. Ishiwara was first ignored, then muffled, and finally silenced by removal from his post. Japanese Navy leaders, recognizing the drift of events, pressed for strong action not in north China, the army's bailiwick, but in the Shanghai region where their influence predominated, and where the flames of Chinese nationalism burned the hottest. In Shanghai itself Japanese residents and Japanese businesses were increasingly at risk; on 9 August, two Japanese marines (a lieutenant and a seaman) were killed by Chinese soldiers. As Japanese mobilization proceeded rapidly, Chinese attitudes also hardened.

On 14 August 1937, the Chinese military undertook what they intended to be a pre-emptive air strike against Japanese warships gathering in the Whangpu river facing the Shanghai waterfront. The Japanese responded at once, and these events marked the true beginning of the Sino-Japanese war. Over the next few weeks, with the battle in Shanghai ferociously joined and Japanese forces fanning out along the railway lines of north China, the Japanese dropped references to ‘the north China Incident’ and began speaking of ‘the China Incident’.

In all these variations, incident had at least three layers of meaning. First, of course, was the euphemistic impulse, the desire to cover a harsh and complex reality with a verbal fig-leaf. Indeed, ‘the China Incident’ has taken its place alongside such other indirections as ‘the Final Solution’ and ‘the Korean police action’ as classic examples of Orwellian rhetoric.

Second, ‘incident’ implied that the Chinese would once again capitulate, as they had often done in the past. Japanese military officers, in particular, were dismissive not only of Chinese military capabilities but also of the willingness of the Chinese people to come together in unified resistance. They believed that a salutary, no-nonsense exercise of military prowess would quickly bring the Chinese to terms. The hard-liners discounted Ishiwara's dire predictions, believing it wholly unlikely that much time or energy would be required to bring the Chinese to heel; for such a quick operation, the word ‘incident’ seemed quite adequate. But as T. V. Soong, a leading Chinese statesman and Chiang Kai-shek's brother-in-law, noted at the time.
The Japanese military still hold to their preconceived ideas about the Chinese Army. They think that if you hit us once, we will surrender and do what you want. The Chinese Army has studied hard since the Manchurian Incident…It knows that it is stronger, and it has the confidence that it won't be beaten this time. So, the Japanese Army underestimates the Chinese Army, and the Chinese Army overestimates itself. Here is where the great danger lies (see Boyle below, p.67).

Third, by referring to the ‘China Incident’ the Japanese avoided legal difficulties that might stem from a formal declaration of war. For example, an incident might be treated in any of a variety of ways—by negotiation, by military pressure, by tacit understanding, by piecemeal arrangement with local authorities—all of which would be more difficult or impossible if a state of war were acknowledged. In the international sphere, a declaration of war might suggest to the international community that it observe strict neutrality and suspend strategic trade with both sides. If the USA were to abide by its own Neutrality Acts, it would have had to cut off a large part of Japan's essential imports, especially oil, iron, and steel.

In dealing first with the ‘north China incident’ and then with the ‘China incident’, Japan in fact tried four approaches: direct military action, negotiation with representatives of Chiang Kai-shek's government, mediation by a third party, and efforts to establish puppet regimes (see also collaboration). All these efforts, including military operations, were bedevilled by inconstancy of purpose and goals, factional differences and rivalries within Japanese policy circles, and the inveterate Japanese habit of humiliating those Chinese whom they sought to enlist as collaborators.

From the Marco Polo Bridge episode onwards, various Japanese actors were in contact with Chinese counterparts. While Chinese authorities in the Peking–Tientsin area were conciliatory, hardline Japanese were convinced that Chiang Kai-shek's government in Nanking had to be made a party to any solution satisfactory to them; they would not be put off by local arrangements that could later be repudiated. Meanwhile, moderate elements were secretly floating a much more generous arrangement before Nanking's eyes. This initiative, known as the Funatsu Plan after the quasi-private Japanese emissary who carried it, never got off the ground: it was not wholly satisfactory to Nanking, and it was pre-empted by more aggressive Japanese moves.

During the heroic and bloody defence of Shanghai, from August until early November 1937, no serious efforts at negotiation were attempted. But when the fall of Shanghai and an offensive thrust aimed at Nanking failed to produce the capitulation upon which Japanese leaders had counted, another effort was made to terminate the conflict. To this end, the Japanese enlisted the assistance of Germany, in the persons of its ambassadors to Japan and China, Herbert von Dirksen and Oskar Trautmann respectively. A mediated solution was congenial to Germany, which had become one of China's principal trading partners (especially for military hardware) and which preferred that Japan pose a threat to the USSR, rather than become distracted in China.

In October, an inner circle of senior Japanese government figures dusted off the Funatsu initiative, under which the territorial and administrative integrity of China proper was more or less affirmed, in return for de jure recognition of Manchukuo, acceptance of a pro-Japanese regime in inner Mongolia, and termination of all anti-Japanese action by the Chinese government and populace. Sino-Japanese relations were to be ‘adjusted’ in ways satisfactory to Japan. Joint anti-communist operations were also dangled before Chinese nationalist eyes. These terms were secretly communicated to Trautmann in early November, and he relayed them to Chiang's government. Chiang delayed his response for about a month, while waiting to see if international pressure would be brought to bear on Japan. When no such pressure was forthcoming, Chiang acknowledged these terms as a basis for negotiation.

Meanwhile, however, the Japanese Army, unaware of this peace initiative, continued to drive toward Nanking. When army authorities learned of it, they immediately insisted on more stringent conditions, which made Chinese acceptance much more difficult and compromised the credibility of both Trautmann and the Japanese who had put the offer together.

If this were not enough, Nanking fell to the victorious Central China Expeditionary Forces on 13 December. The conquering forces then engaged in a days-long orgy of killing, rapine, pillage, and looting that became known as ‘the rape of Nanking’. The combination of increasingly harsh terms and Japanese atrocities assured the failure of negotiations, which nevertheless dragged on until early January 1938.

The failure of the Trautmann mediation effort also marked a change in Japanese policy. Hard-line leaders were now calling the shots and they were infuriated with Chiang Kai-shek for refusing to fulfil their predictions of surrender. On 16 January 1938, the Japanese government issued a statement known for its operative phrase: aite ni sezu (no further dealing) with Chiang. From this point, the Japanese effort was to combine military pressure with the creation of an alternative Chinese regime (or regimes)—puppet governments, in short, which would do as they were told (see China, 3(b)).

In Manchukuo and north China, such regimes already existed but were viewed with contempt by both their Japanese overlords and the Chinese whom they were supposed to govern. In short, the Japanese were unable to resolve the central paradoxes of puppet regimes generally: how to combine obedience with credibility, submission with authority, and dependence with the capacity for effective governance. Japan's most serious effort to create an alternative to Chiang Kai-shek's government was undertaken by the Tokyo and the military authorities in central China. This involved the defection of Wang Ching-wei, a major political figure and rival to Chiang Kai-shek, in late 1938. But the eminence of the collaborator was no proof against the factional infighting and uncertainty of purpose that plagued nearly every Japanese initiative in China.

By the summer of 1940, while negotiations with Wang Ching-wei were still hanging fire—various Japanese factions remained at odds concerning how much authority to delegate to his Reformed Nationalist government, and what resources to place at his disposal—one more overture was made to Chiang Kai-shek. This was Operation KIRI, a series of conversations between covert and unofficial representatives carried on in Hong Kong.

Japanese motivation for Operation KIRI stemmed partly from the assessment that Wang Ching-wei was unlikely to live up to (or be permitted to live up to) the rosily unrealistic expectations that followed his stunning defection from the Chinese side. Further, it was now clear that Ishiwara's predictions had been accurate: Japan was endlessly and expensively bogged down in China, while tensions with the USSR and the USA were growing. According to this reasoning, the only hope for a timely resolution of the China Incident was to deal once again with Chiang.

For his part, Chiang was prepared to listen without committing himself. By the summer of 1940 the war had dragged on for three years, the outbreak of war in Europe meant that no international assistance would be forthcoming from that quarter, the USSR was scaling back its assistance to China, and the USA was only gradually changing its isolationist stance—with greater concern for the UK and Europe than for Asia. Thus, China was in a desperately beleaguered and isolated position. Chiang may also have understood that his conversations with Japan (through surrogates, of course) would compromise further the efforts to create a functioning collaborationist government under Wang Ching-wei.

But the same dynamics that had scuttled earlier efforts spelled defeat for Operation KIRI as well. The Japanese sponsors of this initiative had to keep it secret from hard-liners in the army and elsewhere, knowing the certainty of their opposition. Exposed as they were, they had no room for genuine negotiation with Chiang's representatives; nor could they be sure whether or not Chiang was genuinely interested or was simply on a fishing expedition. KIRI, like its predecessors, was probably never viable; in any case, it died a premature death in the autumn of 1940.

During this initial period of the war, by far the heaviest blows of Japan were directed against Chiang's KMT Army, as Tokyo sought first to force Chiang into a negotiated settlement, then later to replace his government with a more pliable puppet regime. At first with no intention of waging a costly, protracted war of attrition in China, Japan found that once engaged it was impossible to extricate itself.

Chiang's forces, though more numerous than the Japanese, were no match for them. Apart from one notable victory—the battle of Taierhchwang, in April 1938 which delayed a Japanese advance on Hsüchow by about six weeks—the nationalists were in constant retreat. China was soon almost entirely isolated from the outside world, and the nationalist government was forced to move from Nanking to Chungking in the agriculturally rich but socially backward province of Szechwan. By mid-1940, the Japanese advance had lost momentum and the central China Front lapsed into stalemate. The ‘point-and-line’ pattern of Japanese occupation was set during this period: garrison the cities and larger towns, together with the main lines of communication linking them. Neither the Japanese nor their puppet forces could occupy the vast Chinese countryside, though they often campaigned through it in search of guerrillas.

For China's communists (see China, 3(c); 4(b)), this first phase of the war was a period of rapid but rather superficial expansion behind Japanese lines, where they were able to organize or absorb local forces. Territorial bases were established in north China by their Eighth Route Army and began functioning as semi-popular political regimes under the control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which later began such reforms as rent and interest reduction. The situation in central China was more fluid, but by the end of this period, the communist-led New Fourth Army was creating similar base areas in Anhwei and Kiangsu provinces.

At first, United Front relations between the KMT and the CCP enjoyed apparent cordiality, then progressively declined, as the KMT contrasted their own disastrous reverses with the rapid growth in communist influence, growth which far exceeded that which it had authorized.

Between mid-1940 and the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese established the Wang Ching-wei puppet government in Nanking (see China, 3(b)) and continued their military operations. But now these military operations were designed mainly to consolidate and exploit the territories previously occupied. This meant a virtual stalemate along the front with the Chinese nationalists, but tough military actions against the communists, whose main areas of strength lay behind Japanese lines, well within ‘occupied’ territory.

This period of the war was the start of the most difficult years for the CCP, since both the KMT and the Japanese were now vigorously opposing them. By late 1939, the KMT had thrown a tough blockade around the headquarters base area of Shen-Kan-Ning containing the capital town of Fushih. Chilly formality at the top covered bloody conflict in areas contested by the armies of the two parties, as the one sought to continue its expansion, the other to halt it. During the summer and autumn of 1940, these clashes grew more intense, with the CCP defeating nationalist forces in Anhwei and Kiangsu provinces. The following January, KMT armies took revenge by decimating their rival's headquarters unit in what is known as the ‘New Fourth Army Incident’. In the presence of the Japanese threat, both sides pulled back from further large-scale operations, but continued grim tactical operations against each other. Meanwhile, Japanese pressure was an even more critical challenge, as the invaders sought to pacify and economically exploit occupied China. Mopping-up campaigns, which had begun in the spring of 1940, were intensified after the CCP's Hundred Regiments Offensive in August, which attacked the Japanese along their rail and road network of north China. In this, the largest and most prolonged offensive undertaken by the Chinese communists during the war, almost 400,000 Chinese troops were involved in the three-month campaign ( August– December 1940). Most of the battles were designed to disrupt Japanese communications and transport lines, and at the same time to prevent these lines from being fortified and used as the bars of cages confining the communists to ever smaller and more fragmented base areas. After initial communist victories, the Japanese brought up powerful reinforcements and took a heavy toll of their opponents; and, alarmed by the growth of communist power, subsequently set about their cruellest and most thoroughgoing efforts to remove this thorn in their side.

By this time, Japan had military forces numbering more than a million men tied up in China. They were divided into three territorial commands, each of which had considerable autonomy in the field and influence in policy circles back in Tokyo; co-ordination among them was less common than rivalry and independent action. There were the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo; the North China Area Army headquartered in Peking; and the Central China Expeditionary Forces centred on Shanghai. These commands, led by hard-line and narrowly militaristic officers, controlled the puppet regimes functioning in their respective zones. What had been envisioned in 1937 as an operation of quick decision had by 1941 become a massively and divisively institutionalized conflict with no end in sight.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the Sino-Japanese conflict merged fully with the Second World War. In the following two years CCP-controlled territories and populations were cut nearly in half, and very difficult conditions prevailed elsewhere. In May 1942, for example, the Japanese launched a 100,000-strong offensive into the Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces during which they employed biological warfare. The offensive was mounted to avenge the Doolittle raid on Tokyo the previous month, and to capture local airfields. But it was also a punitive expedition of exceptional severity—no fewer than 250,000 Chinese were slaughtered before the Japanese withdrew in September—which Chiang's KMT forces could do nothing to prevent.

Throughout 1942 and 1943 the USA could provide little direct material assistance to China. But the strategic import of American involvement—that Japan would eventually be defeated, mainly by the Americans—was understood with increasing clarity by both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung. Furthermore, the contours of US recognition and support of Chiang and the nationalists as the permanent legal authority in China were emerging more firmly.

From early 1944 the brunt of the war fell on the nationalists again, allowing the CCP to move forward once more, reaching and then exceeding its high-water marks of expansion early in the conflict. Japan was so increasingly drained by its losing struggle against the USA that it could no longer continue costly and ultimately fruitless efforts to eliminate communist influence. Furthermore, its last great offensive of the war (ICHI-GŌ), which took place from April to December 1944, before being called off in May 1945 when Japan itself became threatened, was directed at the nationalists, exposing the continuing weaknesses of their forces and rendering effective anti-communist measures all but impossible. By now, too, CCP action and Japanese mopping-up campaigns had all but obliterated nationalist forces operating behind Japanese lines.

ICHI-GŌ cut a broad swathe southwards across central and south China, opening up a continuous line of communication with French Indo-China, capturing the air bases in the south-east from which US planes were harassing Japanese forces and sinking Japanese ships, and pressing inland towards Chungking. The collapse of nationalist resistance was both complete and revealing. It destroyed the last remnants of hope among China's western allies that the country could play an active role against Japan; China was now seen as important only in its capacity to tie down about a million Japanese troops and possibly as a staging-ground for attacks upon or invasion of the Japanese home islands, the latter perhaps involving a landing somewhere on the north China coast.

By August 1945, then, China had not so much won the war as survived it. Survival was achieved at a staggering cost in human suffering and death on a scale surpassed, perhaps, only by the losses in the Soviet Union, but we will never know how to give accurate measure to this suffering as statistics are unreliable or missing. Chinese military casualties (killed and wounded) can reasonably be estimated at well in excess of five million, counting both nationalists and communists; Japanese military casualties may have been a tenth as many. As the Japanese pioneered the strategy of making total war, later adopted by all combatants, civilian casualties—those directly attributable to both military action and to such indirect causes as starvation and disease—were even larger, perhaps 10–20 million. What had begun with the smallest of skirmishes at the Marco Polo bridge led to eight years of massive and futile carnage.

Lyman P. Van Slyke

Bibliography

Boyle, J. H. , China and Japan at War, 1937–1945: The Politics of Collaboration (Stanford, Calif., 1972).
Duus, P. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 6: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1988).
Morley J. W. (ed.), The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion on the Asian Continent, 1933–1941 (New York, 1983).