The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan and its puppet states between 1937 and 1945, following a period of conflict localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia, as the wars became heavily intertwined after Japan attacked the United States. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century.
On 18 September 1931, the Japanese staged the Mukden incident, a false flag event fabricated to justify their invasion of Manchuria and establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo. This is sometimes marked as the beginning of the war. From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan engaged in skirmishes, including in Shanghai and in Northern China. Nationalist and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces, respectively led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, had fought each other in the Chinese Civil War since 1927. In late 1933, Chiang Kai-shek encircled the Chinese Communists in an attempt to finally destroy them, forcing the Communists into the Long March, resulting in the Communists losing around 90% of their men. As a Japanese invasion became imminent, Chiang eventually formed a United Front with the Communists in 1936, a process that was hastened by the Xi'an Incident.
The war is considered to have begun on 7 July 1937 after the Marco Polo Bridge incident near Beijing, which escalated into full-scale Japanese invasion of the rest of China. Following the protracted Battle of Shanghai, the Japanese captured the capital of Nanjing in 1937 and perpetrated the Nanjing Massacre. After failing to stop the Japanese capture of Wuhan in 1938, China's de facto capital at the time, the Nationalist government relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior. After the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Soviet aid bolstered the National Revolutionary Army and Air Force. By 1939, after Chinese victories at Changsha and with Japan's lines of communication stretched deep into the interior, the war reached a stalemate. The Japanese were unable to defeat CCP forces in Shaanxi, who waged a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare. In November 1939, Nationalist forces launched a large scale winter offensive, and in August 1940, CCP forces launched the Hundred Regiments Offensive in central China. In retaliation, Japanese forces implemented massive scorched earth policies in North and Central China, killing millions of civilians.
In April 1941, Soviet aid was halted with the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States and the United Kingdom. The US increased its aid to China under the Lend-Lease Act, becoming its main financial and military supporter. The British Empire supported the Chinese forces against Japan by sending supplies through the Burma Road, linking British colonies in India and Burma to China. Chinese forces also fought with British Empire forces against the Japanese in the Burma campaign to restore Allied usage after the Japanese occupied most of the Burma Road. With Burma cut off, the United States Army Air Forces airlifted material over the Himalayas. In 1944, Japan launched Operation Ichi-Go, the invasion of Henan and Changsha. In 1945, the Chinese Expeditionary Force resumed its advance in Burma and completed the Ledo Road linking India to China. China launched large counteroffensives in South China, repulsed a failed Japanese invasion of West Hunan, and recaptured Japanese occupied regions of Guangxi.
Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Soviet declaration of war and subsequent invasion of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Korea. The war resulted in the deaths of around 20 million people, mostly Chinese civilians. Japan carried out the largest attacks in the history of biological warfare, causing at least 200,000 deaths, and used chemical weapons including lethal blister agents. China was recognized as one of the Big Four Allied powers in World War II and one of the "Four Policemen", which formed the foundation of the United Nations. It regained Taiwan and became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
The Japanese surrender ceremony that ended World War II in China, occurred in Nanjing on 9 September 1945. The forces of the Imperial Japanese Army agreed with the Allies terms to cease all armed conflict in the Pacific. During the 15-minute ceremony, General Yasuji Okamura, Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Expeditionary Force of the Imperial Japanese Army, signed the surrender document which was written in both Japanese and Chinese. The unconditional surrender was overseen and accepted by Kuomintang General He Yingqin, the Chinese representative of Allies of World War II and the commander-in-chief of the Republic of China National Revolutionary Army and British Major-General Eric Hayes.
The Chinese Civil War resumed in 1946, ending with a communist victory and the Proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, while the government of the Republic of China relocated to Taiwan.
The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan and its puppet states between 1937 and 1945, following a period of conflict localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia, as the wars became heavily intertwined after Japan attacked the United States. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century.
On 18 September 1931, the Japanese staged the Mukden incident, a false flag event fabricated to justify their invasion of Manchuria and establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo. This is sometimes marked as the beginning of the war. From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan engaged in skirmishes, including in Shanghai and in Northern China. Nationalist and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces, respectively led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, had fought each other in the Chinese Civil War since 1927. In late 1933, Chiang Kai-shek encircled the Chinese Communists in an attempt to finally destroy them, forcing the Communists into the Long March, resulting in the Communists losing around 90% of their men. As a Japanese invasion became imminent, Chiang eventually formed a United Front with the Communists in 1936, a process that was hastened by the Xi'an Incident.
The war is considered to have begun on 7 July 1937 after the Marco Polo Bridge incident near Beijing, which escalated into full-scale Japanese invasion of the rest of China. Following the protracted Battle of Shanghai, the Japanese captured the capital of Nanjing in 1937 and perpetrated the Nanjing Massacre. After failing to stop the Japanese capture of Wuhan in 1938, China's de facto capital at the time, the Nationalist government relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior. After the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Soviet aid bolstered the National Revolutionary Army and Air Force. By 1939, after Chinese victories at Changsha and with Japan's lines of communication stretched deep into the interior, the war reached a stalemate. The Japanese were unable to defeat CCP forces in Shaanxi, who waged a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare. In November 1939, Nationalist forces launched a large scale winter offensive, and in August 1940, CCP forces launched the Hundred Regiments Offensive in central China. In retaliation, Japanese forces implemented massive scorched earth policies in North and Central China, killing millions of civilians.
In April 1941, Soviet aid was halted with the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States and the United Kingdom. The US increased its aid to China under the Lend-Lease Act, becoming its main financial and military supporter. The British Empire supported the Chinese forces against Japan by sending supplies through the Burma Road, linking British colonies in India and Burma to China. Chinese forces also fought with British Empire forces against the Japanese in the Burma campaign to restore Allied usage after the Japanese occupied most of the Burma Road. With Burma cut off, the United States Army Air Forces airlifted material over the Himalayas. In 1944, Japan launched Operation Ichi-Go, the invasion of Henan and Changsha. In 1945, the Chinese Expeditionary Force resumed its advance in Burma and completed the Ledo Road linking India to China. China launched large counteroffensives in South China, repulsed a failed Japanese invasion of West Hunan, and recaptured Japanese occupied regions of Guangxi.
Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Soviet declaration of war and subsequent invasion of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Korea. The war resulted in the deaths of around 20 million people, mostly Chinese civilians. Japan carried out the largest attacks in the history of biological warfare, causing at least 200,000 deaths, and used chemical weapons including lethal blister agents. China was recognized as one of the Big Four Allied powers in World War II and one of the "Four Policemen", which formed the foundation of the United Nations. It regained Taiwan and became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
The Japanese surrender ceremony that ended World War II in China, occurred in Nanjing on 9 September 1945. The forces of the Imperial Japanese Army agreed with the Allies terms to cease all armed conflict in the Pacific. During the 15-minute ceremony, General Yasuji Okamura, Commander-in-Chief of the China Expeditionary Army of the Imperial Japanese Army, signed the surrender document which was written in both Japanese and Chinese. The unconditional surrender was overseen and accepted by Kuomintang General He Yingqin, the Chinese representative of Allies of World War II and the commander-in-chief of the Republic of China National Revolutionary Army and British Major-General Eric Hayes.
The Chinese Civil War resumed in 1946, ending with a communist victory and the Proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, while the government of the Republic of China relocated to Taiwan.
Names
Chinese
In both China's Mainland and Taiwan, the war is most commonly known as the "War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression" (simplified Chinese: 抗日战争; traditional Chinese: 抗日戰爭), and the name of it is usually shortened to "Resistance against Japanese Aggression" (抗日) or the "War of Resistance" (抗战; 抗戰). The countries also use the term "Eight Years' War of Resistance" (八年抗战; 八年抗戰), a traditional view which dates the war's beginning to the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937.
Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party's official view of Chinese historiography has held the 18 September 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria as the start of the" Fourteen Years' War of Resistance" (十四年抗战; 十四年抗戰). The 1931–1937 period is viewed as the "partial" war, which includes the "Northeast War of Resistance" (东北抗战), while 1937–1945 is viewed as a period of "total" war. This view of a fourteen-year war has political significance because it provides more recognition, internationally as China claims it fought the earliest and longest in a global war, and domestically for the role of northeast China in the War of Resistance. The CCP officially calls the conflict as "Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression" (Chinese: 中国人民抗日战争), while referring to it as part of the "World Anti-Fascist War", an alternate definition of World War II.
Japanese
In contemporary Japan, the name "Japan–China War" (Japanese: 日中戦争, romanized: Nitchū Sensō) is most commonly used because of its perceived objectivity. Dating the beginning of the war may also vary in Japanese context, with one Japanese historiographical view regarding the war as a "Fifteen-Year War" (Jyugonen Sensô), covering the period beginning with the invasion of Manchuria through the atomic bombings, and including both the war in China and the Pacific war.
When the invasion of China proper began in earnest in July 1937 near Beijing, the Empire of Japan used "The North China Incident" (北支事變/華北事變, Hokushi Jihen/Kahoku Jihen), and with the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai the following month, it was changed to "The China Incident" (支那事變, Shina Jihen). The word "incident" (事變, jihen) was used by Japan, as neither country had made a formal declaration of war at the outbreak of hostility. From the Japanese perspective, localizing these conflicts was beneficial in preventing intervention from other countries, particularly the United Kingdom and the United States, which were its primary source of petroleum and steel respectively. A formal expression of these conflicts would potentially lead to an American embargo in accordance with the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. In addition, due to China's fractured political status, Japan often claimed that China was no longer a recognizable political entity on which war could be declared.
In Japanese propaganda, the invasion of China became a holy war (聖戦, seisen), the first step of the "eight corners of the world under one roof" slogan (八紘一宇, Hakkō ichiu). In 1940, Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoe launched the Taisei Yokusankai. When both sides formally declared war in December 1941, the name was replaced by "Greater East Asia War" (大東亞戰爭, Daitōa Sensō).
Although the Japanese government still uses the term "China Incident" in formal documents, the word Shina is considered derogatory by China and therefore the media in Japan often paraphrase with other expressions like "The Japan–China Incident" (日華事變/日支事變, Nikka Jiken/Nisshi Jiken), which were used by media as early as the 1930s. The name "Second Sino-Japanese War" is not commonly used in Japan as the China it fought a war against in 1894 to 1895 was led by the Qing dynasty, and thus is called the Qing-Japanese War (日清戦争, Nisshin–Sensō), rather than the First Sino-Japanese War.
Background
Japanese expansion
The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) concluded with the defeat of China, then under the rule of the Qing dynasty, by Japan. Under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, China was forced to cede Taiwan and recognize the full and complete independence of Korea. Japan also annexed the Senkaku Islands, which Japan claims were uninhabited, in early 1895 as a result of its victory at the end of the war. Japan had also attempted to annex the Liaodong Peninsula following the war, though was forced to return it to China following the Triple Intervention by France, Germany, and Russia.
The Qing dynasty was on the brink of collapse due to internal revolts and the imposition of the unequal treaties, while Japan had emerged as a great power through its efforts to modernize. In 1911, factions of the Qing Army uprose against the government, staging a revolution that swept across China's southern provinces. The Qing responded by appointing Yuan Shikai, commander of the loyalist Beiyang Army, as temporary prime minister in order to subdue the revolution. Yuan, wanting to remain in power, compromised with the revolutionaries, and agreed to abolish the monarchy and establish a new republican government, under the condition he be appointed president of China. The new Beiyang government of China was proclaimed in March 1912, after which Yuan Shikai began to amass power for himself. In 1913, the parliamentary political leader Song Jiaoren was assassinated; it is generally believed Yuan Shikai ordered the assassination.
Yuan Shikai then forced the parliament to pass a bill to strengthen the power of the president and sought to restore the imperial system, becoming the new emperor of China. However, there was little support for an imperial restoration among the general population, and protests and demonstrations soon broke out across the country. Yuan's attempts at restoring the monarchy triggered the National Protection War, and Yuan Shikai was overthrown after only a few months. In the aftermath of Shikai's death in June 1916, control of China fell into the hands of the Beiyang Army leadership.
The Beiyang government was a civilian government in name, but in practice it was a military dictatorship with a different warlord controlling each province of the country. China was reduced to a fractured state. As a result, China's prosperity began to wither and its economy declined. The country remained fragmented under the Beiyang Government and was unable to resist foreign incursions. This instability presented an opportunity for nationalistic politicians in Japan to press for territorial expansion.
Nationalist reunification
For the purpose of unifying China and defeating the regional warlords, the Kuomintang (KMT) in Guangzhou launched the Northern Expedition from 1926 to 1928 with limited assistance from the Soviet Union. The National Revolutionary Army (NRA) formed by the Kuomintang swept through southern and central China until it was checked in Shandong, where confrontations with the Japanese garrison escalated into armed conflict. The conflicts were collectively known as the Jinan incident of 1928, during which time the Japanese military killed several Chinese officials and fired artillery shells into Jinan. According to the investigation results of the Association of the Families of the Victims of the Jinan massacre, it showed that 6,123 Chinese civilians were killed and 1,701 injured. Relations between the Chinese Nationalist government and Japan severely worsened as a result of the Jinan incident.
Zhang Zuolin and his Fengtian clique, despite being supported by Japan, failed to defend against the National Revolutionary Army approaching Beijing. Zhang Zuolin decided to retreat back to Manchuria, where he was assassinated by the Kwantung Army in 1928. His son, Zhang Xueliang, took over as the leader of the Fengtian clique in Manchuria. Later in the same year, Zhang declared his allegiance to the Nationalist government in Nanjing under Chiang Kai-shek, and consequently, China was nominally reunified under one government.
Start of the Chinese Civil War
In 1930, the Central Plains War broke out across China, involving regional commanders who had fought in alliance with the Kuomintang during the Northern Expedition, and the Nanjing government under Chiang. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) previously fought openly against the Nanjing government after the Shanghai massacre of 1927, and they continued to expand during this protracted civil war. The Kuomintang government focused its efforts on suppressing the Chinese Communists instead of opposing the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek reasoned that only a unified command could resist foreign powers, leading to his defensive policy of "first internal pacification, then external resistance" (Chinese: 攘外必先安內), through its encirclement campaigns against the Communists.
Following the 1931 Mukden Incident, Nationalist planners identified critical vulnerabilities in the Kuomintang's urban-centric economic base, particularly the concentration of heavy industry in vulnerable coastal cities. Chiang Kai-shek's policy of 'internal pacification' was not just a military campaign against the communists, but also a major economic reorganization project. Recognizing that China lacked the industrial base for a localized total war in 1930, the Nationalist government sought to consolidate the southwestern interior as a strategic base while attempting to modernize the national currency and military before a full-scale confrontation with Japan became inevitable. To address these weaknesses, the central government initiated projects to modernize and solidify the Kuomintang's control over the national currency and industrial structure, while planning for the eventual redistribution of factories and arsenals to the interior.
Nationalist forces prioritized the destruction of Communist soviets, driving the CCP out of their enclaves and onto the Long March to Yan'an by 1934. On 1 August 1935, the Communist Party issued the August First Declaration. It called for the creation of a United Front of all Chinese parties, organizations, and people of all circles, including overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities, to oppose the Japanese. A December 1936 kidnapping by two Nationalist Generals, the Xi'an Incident, forced Chiang Kai-shek to hasten negotiations for a United Front with the Chinese Communists to oppose Japan, a process finalized at the outbreak of war.
Pre-war events
Invasion of Manchuria
The chronic warfare in China provided excellent opportunities for Japan, which saw Manchuria as a limitless supply of raw materials, a market for its manufactured goods (now excluded from the markets of many Western countries as a result of Depression-era tariffs), and a protective buffer state against the Soviet Union in Siberia. As a result, the Japanese Army was widely prevalent in Manchuria immediately following the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, where Japan gained control over the South Manchuria Railway Zone and the Kwantung Leased Territory in Manchuria.