Essay: Second Sino-Japanese

For the laymen who is currently unsure about the animosity between the Chinese and the Japanese people, later-mentioned details should illuminate the details about the Second Sino-Japanese War. Due to the understanding that war is not just ignited outright, context is to be provided – not just from the past but also to the current day with the aftereffects from the war and the following war that are still in effect this present day.
Circumstances before the War
The circumstances of war does not simply begin when the war begins. There are tensions that exist before the war can begin and ignite through fiery firestorms that result in causalities. Due to the understanding that war does not simply begin on the date of which the war begins, it is imperative to use the opportunity to explore the circumstances that have led up to the Second Sino-Japanese War that would be responsible for one of the causalities to occur in most recent times.
As aforementioned, this is not the First Sino-Japanese War. The First Sino-Japanese War begun in 1894. The motivations for that war was that the warring nations wanted control over the Korean peninsula. Unexpectedly, the First Sino-Japanese War had become a Japanese victory within eight months. What truly made the Japanese victory quite unexpected was that Japanese armies were immensely outnumbered by the Qing armies. The victory of this first war would also lead into the second war soon enough.
The Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed in April 1895. This laid the conditions for China to give up possession of the Liaodong peninsula that is west of Korea along with the Taiwanese island. Matters did not improve for China after the Boxer Rebellion; and Japan was able to station troops in Eastern Manchuria. Because of this particular position, Japan has a strong military presence in the mainland of China. Matters worsen as the Qing dynasty collapse in 1911, and therefore, was favorable for the Japanese to continue its advancement into China. Further onward, in 1915, Chinese president Yuan Sikai with a set of 21 territorial and concessional demands that China as a whole had to agree and oblige to.1 The only thing missing is the pretext that the Japanese can do to fully take advantage to launch a full military invasion into Manchuria. After the invasion, the puppet state was established in Manchukuo with the last Qing emperor, Puyi in 1931.  “In May 1933 the Nationalist president Jiang Jieshi, who was more concerned with fighting the communists than Japanese imperialists, signed the Tanggu Truce, effectively recognizing the legitimacy of the Manchukuo puppet state.”2 With the evidence fully described, this can be shown as the reason for the environmental and national tensions between the soon-to-be-warring nations at the time.
However, the aforementioned summary of the tensions that exist between Japan and China that spans generations is only just a summary. There are also other incidents that have occurred in the time that has been leading up to the war. The Wanpaoshan Incident, the Mukden Incident, and the “Ho-UMEZU Agreement” which began as having two Chinese journalists killed due to suspected to have pro-Japanese sentiments.3
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1. Alpha History, “The Second Sino-Japanese War,”
2. Ibid
3.  Clancey, “HyperWar: International Military Tribunal for the Far East”
The environment between both the Japanese and the Chinese had been brewing and growing since the end of the previous century. These tensions would continue to rise as each incident would continue to occur: The Hopei Incident, The North Chahar Incident, and February Incident. Various incidents would continue to increase as the Second Sino-Japanese War would erupt with a trigger. News about the trigger would be later mentioned afterwards.
Despite the ongoing triggers that were erupting between the two warring nations, there were also factions of communism that was being to rise at the time. One such faction was the Chinese Communist Party, founded by members and political activists who were involved in the May Fourth Movement. They wanted to find an alternative path for the political development in China. “Inspired by the writings of Karl Marx and the example provided by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia, the Chinese Communist Party would be using their influence to grow and take advantage of the political turmoil that had left China distracted with Japan at the time.”4  In fact, the Chinese Communist Party was seen as “too small” to affect any sort of serious change.
“Just a dozen people attended the party’s first congress in 1921 and by January 1925 its total membership was still less than 1,000 people. During this early period the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology, organization and tactics were determined not by its Chinese members, but by the Communist International in Moscow. In the early 1920s Moscow considered the Chinese Communist Party too weak and underdeveloped to be a revolutionary party in its own right, so, Chinese Communist Party members were directed to join the nationalist Guomindang and support its quest for national reunification.”5
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4. Alpha History, “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)”
5. Ibid
The right-wing Guomindang and the left-wing Chinese Communist Party had a very uneasy alliance, but, it was created in a way in order to secure power in order to reunite Chinese. Earlier, aforementioned, it was stated that the Qing emperor was placed into power by the superior Japanese government. The nationalist president Jiang Jieshi was more concerned with fighting the communists than the Japanese imperialism at the time. This is to speak that these forces of the communist regime and the nationalist regime that had begun an uncomfortable alliance, would soon become bitter enemies later on.
The Trigger
With the tensions effectively explained – especially in regards to the environmental tensions between the two warring nations and the civil war that was being waged against the nationalist regime at the time, the tensions would erupt in a trigger that would usher in the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937. Of course, this is following an incident near the Marco Polo Bridge in Winping with the Japanese troops firing upon soldiers. Despite the fact that a brief ceasefire was negotiated, both Japan and China had increase military presence into the region. In fact, both sides had tried to deescalate the situation but the Chinese people wanted to go to Japan. With the understanding of the national tensions between the two warring nations, it is very understanding to comprehend the reasoning behind this.
One factor that needs to be mentioned is, that the Nationalist armies and the Chinese Communist Party were able to form an uneasy alliance together during this uncertain time for about seven months at the time. The Japanese were industrious and more prepared for the war against the Chinese than the Chinese were for the Japanese assailant parties.
In fact, China was heavily underdeveloped against the Japanese’s technological supremacy. On a technological stance, the Chinese was unable to compete fully against the Japanese armies at all. “The first phase of the war was a blitzkrieg of Japanese victories as their forces moved swiftly along China’s east coast. Almost a half million Japanese troops moved against Shanghai, Nanjing and other locations in mainland China, while Japanese military planes bombarded regions where their foot soldiers could not penetrate. In late 1937, the Nationalist government was forced to retreat from its capital, Nanjing, to Chongqing in western China.”6
The War Itself
The most notable trait about the Second Sino-Japanese was, the Japanese were extremely brutal towards the Chinese populace. The common understanding is that the Japanese soldiers were just brutal, but in reality, especially with context, it is clear to decipher where the disdain had arisen. One signature example of the Japanese brutality during the Sino-Japanese War was the Rape of Nanjing. Where approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians were massacred and slaughtered. “Historian Jonathan Fenby describes the Rape of Nanjing as a uniquely “urban atrocity” because of “the way the Japanese went about their killing, the wanton individual cruelty, the reduction of the city’s inhabitants to the status of sub-humans who could be murdered, tortured and raped at will”.7 There were various differing atrocities that had taken place with citizens being buried alive, gunned by machine, and even using as bayonet practice. “Females were taken and forced into labour as “comfort women” (sex slaves for Japanese officers and soldiers)”.8
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6. Du, “Last Battle on the Great Wall,”
7. Hays, “SECOND SINO-JAPANESE WAR (1937-1945)”
8. Ibid
The atrocities did not halt with just physical and sexual pain. There was also chemical experimentation that occurred in human experimentation in secret bases in China with Unit 731 being in the country’s northeast was the largest biological and chemical warfare testing facility. “Prisoners there were injected with diseases like anthrax, smallpox, cholera, dysentery and typhoid. Other experiments studied the effects of food deprivation and extreme cold; amputation without anesthesia; and the effects of chemical weapons and flamethrowers.”9
While this was occurring, the Nationalists were not receiving as much help as they could have – despite getting assistance from Soviet Russian leader Joseph Stalin. The Chinese were losing the war against the Japanese – even when victorious decisions that could have been made in regards to winning the war against the Japanese. One particular move that had cost China more than the victory itself was that Jian Jieshi had ordered the destruction of the Yellow River Dam to be destroyed to stop the Japanese military advancement. “The strategic value of the flood has been questioned. Japanese troops were out of its range, either to the north and east or to the south.”10 The desperate move had become a successful move but at the expense of 1 million Chinese civilians who were killed with the tenfold becoming homeless and experiencing food shortages because the farmland was destroyed. This move would lead the peasant hatred of Jiang Jieshi and even the Nationalist regime itself.
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9. Ibid
10. Lary, “China and Japan at War: Suffering and Survival, 1937-1945−−1937−1945,”
One factor that had helped China was actually the land itself. Because of its large land size, almost no infrastructure, and scattered pockets of resistance all helped to slow the Japanese advance. This helped bring the Sino-Japanese War into a stalemate. However, in 1940, the Japanese was beginning to gain the advantageous position towards victory with the establishment of the puppet government in Nanjing – ironically under the leadership of Wang Jingwei, a former Guomindang leader who was a political rival to Jiang Jieshi.
Fortunately, following the Pearl Harbor in December 1941, China was able to get foreign help from the United States. “As the United States was drawn into World War II, China became an important theatre in the war against the Japanese. In 1942 US General Joseph Stillwell was sent to China to assist with training, reorganization and equipment. Jiang’s authoritarianism, however, hampered their collaboration. Jiang’s wife Soong Meiling, dubbed ‘Madame Chiang’ by the Western press, proved a more skilled diplomat than her husband; she was instrumental in securing some foreign assistance.”11
With the previous explanations and the descriptions of the horrors occurring in the Chinese mainland that the Japanese armies were just brutal to everyone. However, this is not the complete picture as the Japanese were accepting Jewish refugees from Austria, Poland, and Russia into Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the late 1930s and the early 1940s. This was due to the location being the only location that would accept Jewish people without passports.
During this war, the Chinese Communist Party was beginning to consolidate its political power during the chaos of the war.
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11. Ibid
The Recent Aftermath
Eventually, the Second Sino-Japanese War had ended after the United States had released nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also, with the help of foreign such as Russian troops invading from the north and trapping the Japanese forces in Manchuria while also being ordered to surrender to Jiang Jieshi and the Nationalists. “[The impact of the war] was an extended body blow for a regime already shot through with weaknesses. The length, scale and nature of the conflict had debilitated China and the Nationalists”.12
Another aftermath after the Second Sino-Japanese War was that China was left exhausted on almost all fronts: economically, demographically, and especially politically. However, the Chinese Communist Party had grown in three areas: prestige, popularity, and size. With the war finally over, a civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists can take place. In short, the Chinese Communist Party was placed in a situation where they were able to win the civil war against that Nationalist government – especially in its weakened political position after the immeasurable cost of human life.
______________________________________________________________________________12.  Alpha History, “The Second Sino-Japanese War,”
The civil war against the Chinese Communist Party began, at first, with an uneasy truce that just one-year later would erupt into an unbridled civil war. What had helped the Chinese Communist Party secure power was that it was able to secure grassroots support while the Nationalists had a few cities to be its stronghold. What also helped the Chinese Communist Party achieve victory was the capture of the Japanese weaponry from the previous war to use against the Nationalists. Matters did not improve for the Nationalist Party as it was rotting internally from corruption and mismanagement. Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic of China to be created on October 9, 1949 after the end of civil war that was launched between the communists and the nationalists.
The following years with the rise of the Communist Party in China had not fare the Chinese people well, either.
“Of course, there was also the widespread famine that killed tens of millions during the Great Leap Forward. To be sure, there is no reason to believe that Mao and the other CCP leaders intended to starve these people when they launched the Great Leap Forward. That being said, they continued these policies for years after they realized the disastrous outcomes they were having simply because Mao did not want to admit his failures. Then, of course, the entire country was plunged into chaos once again during the Cultural Revolution, which was Mao’s attempt to ensure his atrocities were not publicly acknowledged by the Party after his death.”13
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13. Clancey, “HyperWar: IMTFE–Annex A-6, Annex “B”,”
The Chinese Communist Party had taken great consideration into ensuring that history cannot look unfavorably upon Mao. To curb that outcome, the history was rewritten as state policy to shine the Communist Party in a more favorable light. This is to avoid the responsibility of debilitating the country to the point of destruction in their years of power.
The Aftereffects of the War into Current Times
History is an odd beast but with proper comprehension, it can be reasoned to understand it. The international relations between the Japanese and Chinese have not improved. Even the local Chinese media prints news about the war: “The Japanese aggression caused 35 million deaths and casualties of Chinese people and US$600 billion of economic losses in China. China won the war eight years later.”14 Other sources also cite, “It aroused the Chinese people, filled them with a common hatred against the enemy, and enhanced their traditional national spirit as never before.”15
China is not the only nation that has tried to avoid responsibility for the past war crimes, either. “Although far too many Japanese leaders have tried to shrink or even deny the crimes of Imperial Japan, including its atrocities in China, successive Japanese governments have acknowledged and apologized for many of these.”16
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14. China Daily, “The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45),”
15. “Victory Day of Anti-Japanese Aggression War_CCTV.com English,
16. Huang, “China is Rewriting Textbooks So Its “eight-year War of Resistance” Against Japan is Now Six Years Longer,”
History about the war is also being revised in current times, as well. “According to the Communist Party’s narrative, it is largely responsible for victory over Japan, downplaying the Nationalists’ heavy contribution. But one account by China historian Rana Mitter, for example, says that while the Nationalists had to take on a highly trained, well-equipped Japanese army in open battle, the Communists barely engaged the Japanese except in scattered guerrilla battles.”17
This revision of history is what is currently keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power to this very power.
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17. Ibid