Chiang Kai-shek and the second Sino-Japanese War

Shortly before 5 o’clock on the morning of July 8, a Sino-Japanese joint delegation arrived at the scene to solve the dispute. While negotiations for a settlement were proceeding, Japanese troops outside the town opened fire. The Chinese returned fire and the second Sino-Japanese War began. 

Chiang Kai-shek did not want war with Japan. An agreement was reached for a truce on July 11. But on that day the Japanese North China Garrison made seven unacceptable demands, including the withdrawal from Hebei and Chahar of all organs of Chiang’s Nanjing government and the replacement of the regular army units in Beijing with security forces. Though unreasonable, these demands were accepted.

Then the Japanese mar shalled six divisions in North China. On July 27, they attacked the peripheral towns to Beijing. A major conflict was on. The Chinese army units withdrew from Beijing and Tianjin fell. On July 31, Chiang made a statement to the nation and the fighting forces: 

“In the past few years we have patiently endured Japan’s insults. We kept silent when the enemy spat on us, and we refused to lift a finger when the enemy hit us. Why? Because we needed time to put our own house in order, to consolidate national unity and to strengthen our national power.

“Now the hope for peace has been shattered, and we have no option but to fight the enemy to the bitter end. We must be prepared to take every sacrifice to expel the wicked enemy from our land.” 

It is Chiang’s declaration of undeclared total war that saved China. He never thought of surrender, which the Japanese believed would come once their “invincible” army took his capital Nanjing. Why not? The Manchu court in Beijing sued for peace when the Japanese army occupied Weihaiwei, poised to attack the Qing imperial capital, and signed the Treaty of  Shimonoseki to cede Taiwan to end the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.  Nanjing fell before the year was out.

Chiang moved his capital to Chongqing and fought on till Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945. In what China calls its eight-year war of resistance, millions of Chinese were killed, including at least 200,000 men, women and children massacred in the Rape of Nanjing. That is why the Chinese still hate Japan.

The ethnic Chinese on Taiwan were spared that trauma. Though they were looked down on and discriminated against by their Japanese colonial masters, they fared much better than the Koreans under Japanese colonial rule, and never had it so good after Japan began the modernisation of its island colony. The people of Taiwan attained a much higher standard of living under Japanese rule than they had as subjects of Qing China. They were given a modern Japanese education, and as a result most of the Taiwanese now in their 80s or older are more Japanese than Chinese in their way of thinking and doing things. Most of them think they are not Chinese and don’t hate the Japanese as their mainland Chinese brethren do.

One of the best known Japanophiles in Taiwan is former President Lee Teng-hui, godfather of the Taiwan independence movement. When the Second World War ended and all the Japanese had to leave Taiwan, most islanders in all walks of life did not think too unkindly of their stern and discriminating colonial rulers. By far a great majority of Taiwanese looked upon the departing Japanese in 1945 as stern disciplinarian mentors, who should best be sped on their way home.

Taiwan’s modernisation, started in earnest by the Japanese, went on after Chiang moved his Kuomintang government from Nanjing to Taipei at the end of 1949. Taiwan attained complete modernisation and entered into the post-modern era, working the economic miracle of the 20th century in the process.

All this is possible because Chiang decided never to surrender and continued to fight to the bitter end to wear out the Japanese Empire, which eventually had to return Taiwan to its Chinese fold.