Japan, the third great power whose fate would affect China in wartime, viewed the establishment of Chiang’s Nationalist government in Nanjing with great alarm. During the 1920s Japan had appeared to take a more moderate attitude toward China. Tokyo had learned important lessons from the aftermath of the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference that had followed it. The May Fourth demonstrations in 1919 showed that Chinese nationalism was an important force to be dealt with, and that Japan could not simply invade Chinese territory wholesale as it had done in the wars of 1894–95 and
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