the base he had recently set up in Yenan and
smash the ‘bandits’, before turning to meet the
Japanese aggression. He sent Zhang Xueliang,
called the Young Marshal, to Xi’an in the
province of Shensi with the intention that he
should march his troops to Yenan and liquidate
the communist stronghold. What happened then
is one of the most astonishing episodes in the
Chinese war. The Young Marshal installed in
Xi’an with his army had ideas of his own. Mao
skilfully undermined his loyalty to Chiang Kai-
shek appealing to him to make common front
against the Japanese. The Young Marshal then
looked for allies and sought the support of the
powerful warlord in the neighbouring Shansi
province; he found him guarded but not unsym-
pathetic. When in October 1936 Chiang Kai-shek
left Nanking and flew to Xi’an to rally the gener-
als against the communist ‘traitors’ the response
was lukewarm. So in early December 1936
Chiang Kai-shek returned to Xi’an hoping for
better success.
The Young Marshal now brought matters to a
head. He probably saw himself as replacing
Chiang Kai-shek in a united national movement
against the Japanese who were starting a full-scale
military drive in the north. On 12 December the
Young Marshal’s troops stormed Chiang’s head-
quarters just outside Xi’an, killed many of his
bodyguards and took Chiang Kai-shek himself
captive. Two weeks later he was released and
allowed to fly back to Nanking. He owed his
release, and possibly his life, to the intervention
of Mao Zedong. It was an extraordinary turn of
events. Mao had received a telegram from
Moscow conveying Stalin’s advice that Mao
should form a united front with Chiang Kai-shek
against the Japanese. Mao sent Zhou Enlai to
Xi’an to negotiate, to propose that the commu-
nists unite in the fight against the Japanese with
Chiang Kai-shek and to offer to subordinate their
forces. Zhou Enlai also persuaded the Young
Marshal that Chiang Kai-shek was the only pos-
sible leader of a ‘united’ China. A formal com-
munist offer in February 1937 was not officially
accepted by Chiang Kai-shek, but the military
effort of the Kuomintang did switch to resisting
the Japanese.
As for the Young Marshal, he was arrested and
imprisoned. But the ‘Xi’an incident’ did mark the
beginning of cooperation at least in theory
between the Kuomintang and Mao’s communist
forces. After the Japanese had resumed a full-scale
war in the summer of 1937, the two sides reached
agreement that the 30,000 soldiers of the Chinese
Red Army should become the Eighth Route
Army under nominal Kuomintang control. It was
not a union of spirit, but a tactical move on both
fronts and Mao retained control of the commu-
nist base areas.
Of all the Western powers, Britain had most at
stake in China. Its total trade and commercial
investment in China were very large in 1930, just
exceeding Japan’s. Together, Britain and Japan
dominated all foreign investment in China,
accounting for 72 per cent of the total. The US’s
investment was far behind at 6 per cent, about
the same as France’s. No other power had any
significant investment. The most sensitive point
of Western interests and influence was the great
city of Shanghai. The Western powers and the
Japanese held ‘concessions’ there which virtually
removed the heart of the city and its port from
Chinese control. In January 1932 the Japanese
bombed the Chinese district, army reinforce-
ments attacked the Chinese parts of Shanghai,
meeting fierce resistance from a Chinese army.
The conflict in China was now brought home
to the ordinary people in the West. For the first
time the cinema newsreels showed the effects of
modern warfare. People were horrified by the suf-
ferings inflicted on civilian populations and by the
terror bombing from Japanese planes on the
hapless Chinese. This new image of war, which
was to become even more familiar after the out-
break of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, had a
tremendous impact on public opinion. It pro-
duced contradictory currents. It provoked a revul-
sion against war, thus underpinning later attempts
at conciliating Hitler in Europe. The public also
identified with the sufferers and therefore cast
attackers in the role of aggressors to be stopped.
China was seen as the innocent victim. The
Japanese did incalculable harm to their cause by
1
THE MOUNTING CONFLICT IN EASTERN ASIA, 1928–37 201
