The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

by Adam Tooze

The unintended effect of Tokyo’s new policy of working concertedly with the Beijing government was to discredit their Chinese collaborators and to unleash precisely the kind of disintegration that General Tanaka’s secret agents had worked so hard to manufacture through subversive means in 1916. As news leaked out that Prime Minister Duan had accepted Japan’s generous offer of loans, a wave of nationalist opposition began to build. From his rebel base in Southern China, Sun Yat-sen let it be known that he opposed entering the war. Echoing the fears that Prime Minister Duan himself had expressed to the Americans, Sun insisted, that ‘Whether a country can promote her status’ by means of war, depended ‘on the strength she has gained. For China, to join the allies will result in domestic disorder rather than improvements.’