Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
claims that the people of Manchuria had begged Japan to make theirs an
independent state, and the League of Nations criticized Japan for its
aggression. Japan responded bywithdrawing from the League andmore
or less thumbing its nose at the rest of the world. Japan's lack of concern
for its international image became further apparent in January 1932,
when it attacked and occupied the Chinese areas of Shanghai and did
not withdraw until the middle of the year, after several foreign powers
intervened to help negotiate a truce. But Japanese occupying troops
remained in Manchuria, and during the early and mid-1930s the
tentacles of Japanese military occupation spread to other areas of
northern China. The Japanese knew that Chiang Kai-shek's government
in Nanjing was too busy with the Chinese Communists to resist their
invasions effectively.
DISEASES OF SKIN AND HEART
The great and pressing question for Chiang Kai-shek's government
duringtheJapaneseaggressionofthe1930swaswhotofightfirst:
theJapaneseinvadersortheChineseCommunistinsurgents.This
question,inturn,boileddowntoanassessmentofwhichwasthe
greater threat, the invasion from without or the subversion from
within. For Chiang Kai-shek there was little question that the Commu-
nists posed the greater peril to China. Comparing the Japanese to a
disease of the skin and the Chinese Communists to a disease of the
heart, he reasoned that only a strong and internally unified China
freed of subversion could successfully resist the Japanese invasion.
Accordingly, he continued his relentless search for Chinese Commu-
nists in the cities and continued the fight against the rural soviet
regime in Jiangxi.
THE EXTERMINATION AND ENCIRCLEMENT CAMPAIGNS
Chiang Kai-shek had launched the first of his ominously named
extermination and encirclement campaigns against Jiangxi in Novem-
ber 1930. This was a disastrous failure: 40,000 Red Army troops
defeated 100,000 Nationalist troops. Undeterred and undiscouraged,
Chiang attacked a second time from February through June 1931, but
with similar results: 30,000 Red Army troops defeated an army of
200,000 Nationalist men. Chiang personally led 300,000 troops on the
third campaign in the summer of 1931 and penetrated deep into
Jiangxi, but Mao and Zhu successfully divided the army into small,
