the sale only if all the weapons—the machine guns and bomb racks—were removed. State Department officials were worried that selling weapons to China would endanger relations with Japan. At an impasse, the US bureaucracy kicked the decision up to Herbert Hoover in the White House. Hoover authorized the sale—weapons included. And with that, the floodgates were opened. China’s arms imports from America tripled in a year. From 1930 to 1934, China bought 478 tons of smokeless gunpowder—mostly from the DuPont Company in Delaware. United Aircraft Exports Company added one million rounds of
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