reality. To the Western world he nevertheless
embodied China; his ambassadors were accredited
to other countries and represented China at the
League of Nations in Geneva. Here it was that
Chiang Kai-shek sought to mobilise the help of
the Western powers when in 1931 the Japanese
began transforming their special rights in
Manchuria into outright occupation and control
of the province. The issue appeared to be a simple
one for the Western powers of supporting the
League and China against Japanese aggression.
The contrast between the real condition of China
and its international legal position, together with
its image in the eyes of the public in the Western
world, was one critical factor in the eastern Asia
crisis of the 1930s.
The struggle between a central power claim-
ing to speak for and to rule China and regional
and provincial rulers was nothing new in modern
Chinese history; the contest between integration
and disintegration had been going on for decades
and continued until 1949. China’s chronic weak-
ness had allowed the European powers to estab-
lish colonies and special rights in Shanghai and
other treaty ports. Since the beginning of the
century the Japanese leaders had been conscious
of a great divide in their options for a China
policy. Japan could identify with China as a fellow
Asian nation and help it to achieve independence
from the ‘white’ imperialists; or it could copy the
Western imperialists and join them in acquiring
colonial possessions and ‘spheres of influence’ in
China. To combine with China after dominating
it meant certain conflict with the more powerful
Western powers. Japan’s best interests seemed to
be served by emulating the Western powers and
joining in the scramble for China. This meant
participating fully in Western great-power diplo-
macy, which Japan did when concluding an
alliance with Britain in 1902. Britain for its part
welcomed the Japanese alliance to check Russia
and to preserve its own position in China. After
the Russo-Japanese war three years later Japan
acquired its own considerable empire by annex-
ing Korea and by replacing Russia and carving out
a sphere of interest in southern Manchuria.
During the next fifteen years the Japanese sought
to extend their influence in northern China in
agreement with the Russians and at China’s
expense. The First World War gave Japan its
biggest opportunity and for the first time its
ambition now encompassed controlling the gov-
ernment of China itself. But hostile Chinese and
international reactions forced the Japanese to
withdraw from these extreme pretensions. This
was a blow. Worse was the army’s profitless
Siberian intervention from 1918 to 1922. It had
brought neither glory nor gain.
The Japanese in the 1920s then appeared
ready to limit their empire to what they already
held with the acknowledgement of the Western
powers, and beyond this to work with the
Western powers within an agreed framework of
international treaties, military and territorial. At
the Washington Conference of 1921–2 this
framework was set up. Japan accepted an inferior
ratio of battleships to Britain and the US (3:5:5),
but this inferiority was counterbalanced by the
agreement of Britain and the US not to build any
naval bases in the Western Pacific. Then the
Japanese also signed the Nine-Power Treaty
(1922) whereby the powers undertook ‘to respect
the sovereignty, the independence, and the terri-
torial and the administrative integrity of China’,
and not to take ‘advantage of conditions in
China’ to seek special rights or create ‘spheres of
influence’. But what of existing rights? The
Western powers were not about to relinquish
their rights in Shanghai. Japan also interpreted
the treaty as not affecting its existing rights and
‘special interests’ which, the US had acknow-
ledged in the past, it should exercise wherever its
own territories were close to China’s.
Since the opening of the twentieth century the
US had tried to secure the consent of the other
powers with interests in China to two proposi-
tions. First, they should allow equal economic
opportunity to all foreign nations wishing to trade
in China (the Open Door). The behaviour of the
foreign nations, however, showed that this ‘equal
opportunity’ was not extended to the Chinese
themselves, who did not exercise sovereign power
over all Chinese territory. Second, the US urged
that China should not be further partitioned
(respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity),
but in practice the US had acknowledged Japan’s
1
THE MOUNTING CONFLICT IN EASTERN ASIA, 1928–37 195
