Three Key Reasons Japan Sought Control Over China by 1921

 

The fog that had rising slowly over the Yangtze River in 1921 carried a China in between the past and the present, the tradition and the chaos that were taking their place. There were Japanese military leaders and industrialists across the East China Sea with a wide and ambitious gaze westward, not at a neighbor, but at an opportunity.

The Context of Empire

By 1921, Japan had turned around to become the leading industrial power in Asia almost out of being an isolated feudal state. The 1921 Imperial Eastern Region Conference and the 1927 conference once again reinstated the promise of Japan to be the most powerful country in the Northeast, especially in Manchuria. This decision did not come out of the blue. The death of the Meiji emperor in 1912 did not only mark Japan as having become the same as the west but also the most influential imperialist in the East Asian region. The country had already achieved decisive victory over China 1894-95 and Russia 1904-05 making it a form to reckon with.

However, why did Japan choose China to control? This was pursued by three basic motives, Economic desperation due to lack of resources, military strategic location in an unpredictable world, and the internal conviction that it was in Japan’s destiny to be the leading force in Asia.

• Economic survival by way of getting resources.

The industrial revolution in Japan had resulted in a paradox. The fast industrialization process in Japan after the Meiji Restoration has left Japan in urgent demand of raw materials and markets. China with its huge population and unexploited resources was the ideal answer to the economic problems of Japan. The Japanese leaders were of the opinion that managing the economy of China would not only develop their industrial base but also provide them with the basis of taking control of the region.

The figures were a story to themselves. The Manchuria was well endowed with iron ore and coal reserves, and this caught the attention of Japan who wanted to be self reliant. This was not a luxury but the matter of survival to Japanese minds. They were so dependent on trade and were afraid that their enemies would blockade them to do as they please and this left Japan exposed.

Look at the extent of the Japanese economic needs that were offered to China in 1915. The notorious Twenty-One Demands were not mere political gagging. Groups One and Two had been concerned in affirming the leading role of Japan in Shandong, South Manchuria, and eastern Inner Mongolia. Group Three would recognize Japan special interests in an industrial complex within central China. These requirements indicate that there is a methodical strategy of obtaining raw materials and markets that are crucial to the machine of industry in Japan.

The Japanese method of economic control was all-inclusive. They insisted on right to manage railways, manage mines, and set up industrial belt all over the Chinese land. China had an obligation to consult Japans approval whenever any significant railway construction activity and loan to the areas of Manchuria and Mongolia were involved. This economic domination would basically have made China the source of resources and the zone of captivity of Japan.

• Military Strategic Placing to Western Powers.

The leaders of the Japanese army realized that it was not just about economic gains to control China. It was strategic depth not only to the West imperialism, but also to the emerging Soviet menace. The military of Japan, exploiting the immense distances, and the Imperial Germany being engaged in the struggle on the other side of the ocean, captured German property in the Pacific and in East Asia, but there was no great call to arms of the economy.

The World War I had proved the opportunity and weakness. World war I provided an unprecedented chance to Japan to increase its influence in China. As the European powers were engaged in bloody war in the Western Front, their focus and resources had been taken out of focus in regard to their interests in Asia. Japanese planners knew that this window would not last long.

Japanese China policy had a military aspect that was not only about the acquisition of territories. China had to install Japanese advisors in Group five where effective control of Chinese government, economy and military would be assumed. This would have established a buffer state between the Japanese authority which would guard the home islands against possible aggression by the West or Soviet Union.

The situation with the strategic calculus had grown even more intricate by 1921. The involvement of Japan in the Allied intervention in Siberia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 raised more apprehensions about the expansion of the Japanese. The disarmament conference that took place in Washington, D.C., in 1921-22, one of the major occurrences, was to bring the influence of Japan down. Japan was in a position that it was between domestic ambitions of expansion and international restrictions to check.

• The Pan-Asian Leadership Philosophy.

The ideological reason was probably the most influential and yet immaterial one to explain why Japan wanted China. The leaders in Japan had evolved a worldview according to which Japan became the natural head of the Asian region, who would liberate the continent of Western imperialism and, on the contrary, impose their own one.

The leaders of Japan openly proclaimed their desire to conquer and hold as Japan of leading place in the whole region of eastern Asia, the western Pacific and the southern Pacific. They, therefore, believed the German thesis that seventy or eighty million Germans were superior to any other race in Europe in terms of race. And Japan, in its turn, proclaimed that the seventy or eighty million Japanese folks were also superior to the seven or eight hundred millions of other residents of the Orient. They were so conceited that they would be the masters of a country with nearly a half the number of people on the earth.

This was not the propaganda of the home audience. Japanese policy makers were actually convinced that they were on a civilizing mission in China. The political fragmentation that followed the defeat of Qing Dynasty in China made them feel that Chinese were unable to govern themselves. Later Japanese support of corrupt warlord government in Manchuria and North China also aided in confirming the anti-Japanese character of contemporary Chinese nationalism, but Japanese leaders continued to believe they were bringing order to chaos.

The ideology worked in form of practical policies. Japan demanded much more than economic control when they made the Twenty-one Demands. China to grant Japan permission to build her hospitals, schools as well as her temples within the main territory of China. Japanese nationals were to be hired in the Chinese police force. Japanese preachers to preach in China free of charge. These requirements demonstrate a desire to remodel Chinese society in the fashion of the Japanese.

Practical Implications: The May Fourth Movement.

The Chinese nationalism was grossly misjudged by the Japanese. The response was violent when the Twenty-One Demands publicity surfaced, and more so when the Treaty of Versailles gave Shandong to Japan instead of China.

This was met by a nationwide boycott of Japanese products by the Chinese people; Japan lost its exports to China massively. To be more precise, The Chinese people reacted with an unplanned nationwide boycott of Japanese merchandise; Japan lost its exports to China by 40 percent. May Fourth Movement of 1919 was a turning point in Chinese nationalism as it brought together students, intellectuals and workers to oppose the Japanese expansion.

Having lost his credibility and popularity as a leader because his own policy of appeasement had only worked against him, Yuan saw the signing of the treaty as a horrible humiliation (qichi daru), and May 9 as the National Humiliation Day of China. The Twenty-One Demands fostered a good deal of popular hostility to Japan, and the nationalist surge is still sharply experienced in the contemporary Chinese management of the Sino-Japanese relations.

In summary: Future Conflict Seeds.

By 1921, the efforts of Japan to conquer China had realized tactical victory but strategic defeat. Yes, they had gained economical concessions and high standings in Manchuria. However, they had also awakened the Chinese nationalism and disturbed the Western powers and preconditioned the decades of conflict.

The Manchurian Crisis 1931-33 was a warning that the agreements of the 1920s on peace, nonaggression and disarmament were meaningless before an aggressive power that was bent on marching on. Such reactions as the Stimson Doctrine of non-recognition were not effective either. During the post-crisis years, the shift in alliances, the economic needs and shifted policies would lead to the full-scale war between China and Japan.

Three motives that were used to control China by Japan; economic need, strategic location, and ideological belief were a mirror to the desires and fears of a fast-growing modernizing nation. The leaders of Japan thought that their survival and fate was based on the control over China. Rather, their violent quest provided the very circumstances that would see Japan finally defeat in World War II.

This is a lesson that is applicable even in modern times: trying to subdue another country by force no matter how economically or strategically justified it is will end up becoming a lesson learned to resist and as a result lose security. It is this historical memory of humiliation that leads to the current modern assertiveness of China and we are reminded today that the shadows of 1921 are still present in the current East Asian geopolitics.