Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945

by Rana Mitter

Chiang was confronted with a fateful question: Was the two-day struggle really just a minor skirmish, like so many before it, or did it herald the start of another major Japanese assault on Chinese territory, like the Manchurian crisis of 1931? If he decided that it was the former, then tensions would quickly cool. After all, north China was not really under Nationalist control, but dominated by a patchwork of regimes run by Chiang’s Chinese rivals and the Japanese military. By letting the fighting go, Chiang would not be immediately worse off. But if he decided that the incident was more serious, a push by Japan to invade and occupy yet more of northern China, leaving the Nationalist heartland in central China vulnerable, then Chiang had a grave decision to make: whether or not to declare war.