Zhang Xueliang

Were the Japanese really that much of an existential threat to the Chinese?

It really seems like the Japanese entered a war they couldn't really win even if they hadn't attacked the Western Allies.

>>2716518
Chiang Kai shek was an existential threat to the Chinese. Hate on communism as much as you want the CCP had the better starting team during WW2.

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>>2716505
>Pragmatic Patriot

For parts of his career

>communist traitor?
It would be more accurate to describe him as a beeing too nationalistic rather than communistic.

>Were the Japanese really that much of an existential threat to the Chinese?

Extremely just 5 years early they had taken all of North Eastern China by force and 25 ish years earlier they took all of Korea Korea. Not to mention before that they had taken Taiwan.

Japan was methodically dismantling and dominating China.

>It really seems like the Japanese entered a war they couldn't really win even if they hadn't attacked the Western Allies.

Not really even with the issue regarding oil Japan was still in a good position to achieve its aims of shattering China and replacing the West as the dominant Imperialist power there.


>tfw you will never live in a timeline where Yan Xishan took control of the KMT

>>2716518
Yes and no.

Yes in that there are parties in Japan like the ultranationalists who wanted to make China as some sort of Japanese India.

No in that you also had parties in Japan (particularly among the Genro-influenced old guard) that wanted a united Asian front and supported a form of indirect imperialism to strengthen other Asians - most particularly China- versus Western threats.

They really went to war split on what to do with Asia, although most of the time the Ultranationalists got their way.

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What the FUCK was his problem?

>>2717303
Faggot tried to restore an empire and failed miserably

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>>2716981
>tfw you will never live in a timeline where Yan Xishan took control of the KMT

We were so close too, if Ma Hongkui stuck with the coalition and Zhang didn't side with Chiang we would have had President Yan and Premier Feng.

>>2716997
>most of the time
You mean all of the time after 1933 you jap apologist

>>2717303
everything

>>2717303
Hey at least he kept the Beiyang united.

>>2716981
>Extremely just 5 years early they had taken all of North Eastern China by force and 25 ish years earlier they took all of Korea Korea. Not to mention before that they had taken Taiwan.
it's irresistible to see some kind of inevitable "trend" of japanese advancement into China. But historically that idea doesn't pan out. Japan had had its eye on Korea since the Meiji Restoration because, geostrategically, it was a springboard from which an enemy power could invade Japan. This is why Japan fought the Chinese in 1895 (the Sino-Japanese War was mostly on land fought in Korea) and then Russia when that empire started establishing itself on the Pacific, and then Manchuria and the Lushun peninsula and with a further eye to taking Korea or, at the very least, making it a vassal state in direct opposition to Japan's de facto subordination of the Korean peninsula ten years earlier. After Japan defeated Russia, annexation of Korea followed in 1910 and the Great Powers also acknowledged Japan's sphere of influence over Manchuria. Naturally Japan prized Korea's and Manchuria's natural resources because the Japanese islands themselves didn't have enough raw material for its industrialization. Consequently, Manchuria and Korea received heavy investment from Japan to develop their resources. Manchuria was particularly rich in agricultural and mineral wealth, so when the Depression struck Japan, and the newly established Nationalist government in Nanjing "appeared" to threaten Japanese interests in the region, the military felt justified in seizing it to prop up Japan's ailing economy and industry, which had suffered greatly from the Depression and US protectionism. This brings us to the topic of militarism which, more than geography, brought Japan on a collision course with China. As the military's power over the civilian government grew, so to did its imperatives: imperatives based on the strategic thinking of the army and navy,(cont.)

>>2718715
[imperatives based on the strategic thinking of the army and navy,] which were constantly fighting with each other to secure funding for their respective branches. The army theorists believed that Japan should secure an Asian empire, so as to create an autarkic economic sphere. The navy wanted to project into the South Pacific and (iirc) create an informal empire more akin to the British, who ruled through economic influence, collaborators and occasional shows of military force. As demonstrated in Manchuria, the army took the initiative by securing Manchuria. But the inevitable logic of geostrategic security--inevitable in so exposed a geographic entity as Japan was, forced the military to take greater and greater steps toward securing some kind of "natural border" where Japan could be securely protected. But this spooky logic inevitably forced the army establishment to take progressively larger pieces of mainland asia to insulate Japan. At the same time, the navy tried to establish its prerogatives in the Pacific, which also had a nebulous logic to it; one needed to secure a continuous ring of islands to achieve "true" security of Japan. This predictably led to a clusterfuck of competing priorities which is why Japan's wartime strategy was so utterly confused.

>>2718765
so tl;dr
what I argued, not so clearly, is that while the japan did crave land and wanted the prestige of empire, it was moreso the military's flawed strategic thinking that sucked Japan into invading Manchuria and eventually warring against China. In a sense, it was a historical demonstration of the aesthetics border meme we joke about here on /his/

>>2716981
>It really seems like the Japanese entered a war they couldn't really win even if they hadn't attacked the Western Allies.
This only became apparent three years into the Sino Japanese War, when World War II erupted in Europe and Hitler plowed through the French and cucked the British out of Europe. It made the Japanese lose all sense of deference to Europeans in East Asia, sort of how they used WWI as a pretext to seize Germany's colonies in the Pacific.

>>2717303

Chronic backstabbing disorder. He just couldn't stop knifing people in the back.