China Background - Enter Japan
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: why not?
Topic: Cold Front Passing Hokkai
  Let it be clear, China was always a country with rich resources and great wealth. In the 20th century it was agriculture, minerals of all kinds (iron, coal, gold, silver, copper, manganese, and on and on), manufac-turing, opium (lots of opium), imports, exports, commerce of all kinds, foreign and domestic. Most of the wealth was in the hands of Shanghai Bankers who happily paid protection money to Big-eared Tu and his pitiless followers. The wealth trickled in tiny, oft-broken streams to the poor, uneducated masses of peasants.
          In 1931 Japanese Militarists began to move in. Japan had taken Korea in 1895, China was next, beginning with Manchuria in the North. Chiang Kai-shek declined to engage the invaders, urging his people to "maintain a quiet dignity." Chinese patriots had other ideas - rioters in Shanghai attacked Japanese businesses and demanded that war be declared. Chiang refused. It seems that during the 1927 Shanghai Massacres he had struck a secret deal with Japan to support his takeover. In present day America everyone is familiar with so-called Chinatowns in many large cities. In 1931 Shanghai there was what might be called a Japantown which now suffered the burden of the Manchurian invasion - not only were Japanese businesses boycotted but crowds of Japanese fought back against Chinese rioters resulting in death, destruction, and ultimately the arrival of the Japanese Imperial Fleet with brigades of Japanese Marines. The Chinese 19th Army was in Shanghai at the time helping "Major General" Big-eared Tu in this and that odd job, mostly related to drug running, but to everyone's surprise they put up a spirited fight against the invading Japanese Marines. A cease-fire was at last arranged in March 1932. The fighting brought trade to a dead stop and resulted in 600,000 refugess and destruction of 900 factories and businesses. 
                China under Chiang was faced with a serious dilemma - which would it be? Fight the invading Japanese, or fight the internal threat of the Chinese Communists? T.V. Soong wanted to fight the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek thought different.