A History of the World From the 20th to the 21st Century

(Jacob Rumans) #1

wounded, the communists broke through the
encirclement and fought their way north for 6,000
miles on the epic ‘Long March’. Yet it was not
civil war that dominated the 1930s but the
Japanese invasion in 1937. Once more, fervent
national feelings created a sense of unity in resist-
ing the brutal aggressor. Before Chiang Kai-shek’s
decisive breach he utilised the strength of the
communists to support the northern military
expedition started in 1926 to convert what was a


local government into a national one. It was a
tremendous feat to sweep successfully north from
their base in southern China to Peking. There was
some hard fighting; some warlords agreed to
accept Chiang Kai-shek’s authority on behalf of
the nationalist government now established in a
new capital in Nanking.
Chiang Kai-shek took care at this stage not to
offend the Western powers in China. He smashed
the anti-Western movement of the communists in

78 BEYOND EUROPE: THE SHIFTING BALANCE OF GLOBAL POWER

Kabul

RUSSIAN EMPIRE

CHINA

JAPAN
KOREA

HONG KONG

INDIA

BURMA

CEYLON

TIBET

AFGHANISTAN

SUMATRA

SARAWAK

CELEBES

THAILAND
FRENCH
INDO-CHINA

BORNEO

MALAY
STATES

PHILIPPINES

FORMOSA
(Japan)
Delhi

Chungking

Shanghai

Hanoi

Canton

Manila

Rangoon

Calcutta

Bangkok

Karachi

Colombo
0 800 miles
0 800 km

Bombay

GOA

Saigon

Singapore

Nanking
Hankow

Peking

Vladivostok

Dairen

Tokyo

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r

R.
Ye
llo
w

R.Y

ang

tze

R.G
ang
es

R.

Ind

us

NEPAL

SINKIANG

OUTER MONGOLIA

INNER
MONGOLIA

MANCHURIA

China and Japan in Asia,

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