Japanese domination over Manchuria after 1928 is possible, just have Zhang Xueliang fail in his attempt to take power. This can be achieved through the guys beneath him deciding not to lend him their support for whatever reason. If Zhang doesn't kill the obviously pro-Japanese people (there were quite a few of them), that will allow the Kantogun to make their move sooner.
So in this case, their "move" consists of putting more troops in the region, exercising greater
de facto authority over all matters political and economic, but *not* creating a formal breakaway state.
It would be very interesting to see if the pro-Japanese proxy regime is as bold as Zhang Xueliang was in moving to assert control of the Soviet-owned Chinese Eastern Railway. This assertion caused a brief Sino-Soviet war. Would the Japanese restrain their Manchurian clients from making such a move, or encourage them, and back them up if the Soviets tried to resist by force. Of course the Soviets might just decide to take their lumps in this case if they see risk of confrontation with Japan. But I'd be very interested in thoughts on this.
However, the establishment of Manshuukoku per se is not as easy, because IOTL the plot to take over Manchuria was in fact a plot against Zhang Xueliang's rule, which threatened to unite Manchuria's institutions and society with central Chinese rule. ITTL, the Japanese have fragmented the high-level politics in the region and thus maintained the status that existed in the early 20s, before Zhang Zuolin veered off into his own ambitions. Since the Japanese ITTL are able to maintain their special status in the region, at least for a few more years, there is no need to use military force to invade it.
I guess the question is how much the Kwangtung Army, Imperial Army actions and eventual civilian acceptance of
faits accompli was driven by semi-objective circumstances in China or by purely subjective Japanese perceptions that rationalized military mutiny against party politicians, the Nine-Power Treaty, Shidehara diplomacy, military budget limitations and the Washington Treaty order that Army and Navy men increasingly resented as the 1920s and 1930s went on.
So your scenario would probably delay the 918 Incident and the creation of Manshuukoku, due to the Japanese being less threatened by the post-Zhang Zuolin Fengtian leadership, rather than bring it forward.
Yes it very well could, especially if the military feels less inclined to act or if the civilian governments have more popular support in opposing military action because in the ATL such actions seem gratuitous and unnecessary. IE, if objective conditions in China are more of a driver than subjective instincts.
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If you want to accelerate overt Japanese invasion of China's northeast, you can have Zhang Zuolin make a clear break with the Japanese in, say 1927 or very early 1928, the way Zhang Xueliang did in 1929. That way, the Kantogun would be sufficiently frightened by these events and decide that instead of killing Zhang Zuolin, an actual regime change is needed.
That would be fascinating.
The question is: why would Zhang break with the Japanese? In OTL's 1926-28 he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. His economy was in the toilet due to his military excursions, and his military excursions had met with failure.
Good point. Maybe a point of departure could be him becoming more successful.....too successful in Japanese eyes. He upgraded his military a great deal in time for the second Fengtien war of 1926. He had the best equipped forces in the country. If he swept his Zhili Clique opponents from the board and appeared to be solidly dominating the country, or even just everything down to the Yangtze, that might make the Japanese nervous enough to regret their earlier support and turn against him. While success on this scale could increase his self-confidence and give him broader constituencies to answer to.
I suppose we could apply this to any warlord or warlord clique that gets too much momentum. For instance in the middle 1920s Wu Peifu of the Zhili Clique appeared to many to be a likely unifier. If he did utterly crush Japan's clients in the Fengtien clique while holding his home ground in the Yangzi Valley, Japan could get very nervous, perhaps even intervening in the middle to late 1920s.
In 1928 he fought against the North Expedition and lost. Back then, the warlords of China were very much in a "if you can't beat them, join them" mindset. Some say that because Zhang lost, the Japanese were scared he would submit to Jiang Jieshi and ruin Japanese domination of Manchuria.
So what could happen ITTL is that the worst fears of the Japanese come true and Zhang Zuolin does pledge allegiance to the KMT.
That would be fascinating. Hmm- instead of simply fleeing north of the Great Wall to get assassinated, he meets with the KMT & pledges allegiance to its new regime. the Kwangtung Army panics and frets. Maybe its even difficult to get the Japanese to agree to evacuate from Jinan, Shandong in 1929. Bam, earlier escalation in China and militarization of Japan.
Or, Zhang could pledge allegiance to Guomindang even earlier. He did ally with them a couple times against the Zhili clique. Maybe he would just join them and say he's a "convert" to their popular ideology when the Northern Expedition starts. So the Northern Expedition in 1926 becomes the "pincers expedition" coming from south and north, and Zhang opens lines of collaboration with the GMD and Soviet Union.
Or, he could convert to GMD in summer 1927, justifying it with Jiang's anticommunist purge, and starting the "pincers expedition" then. With a Zhang Zuolin-GMD coalition Japanese military and even civilian politicians may come to see Shandong as a vital position they cannot afford to abandon, no matter what the cost.
I've been thinking a bit about this as well. So if Japanese action prevented Zhang Xueliang from consolidating power in Manchuria, presumably one of his pro-Japanese lieutenants would take over the three northeastern provinces - someone like Yang Yuting or Chang Yinhuai - and maintain some sort of ostensibly republican regime in opposition to the Nationalists. One possibility is that the Japanese-backed Manchurian regime presents itself as the legitimate government of the ROC, using the Beiyang flag and bringing on northern politicians to serve as the civilian facade for the Guandong army and those forces loyal to Yang / Chang / whoever... basically an early collaborationist "legitimate government".
This is a fascinating idea, and not unlikely at all, in my view. Even with their subservience to Japanese interests, I would imagine Yang or Chang would find it much more palatable to claim the mantle of the Beiyang government rather than to say they are partitioning off their territory from China.
I haven't seen any sources that indicated that the Japanese ever considered doing this ~1928, but considering their actions a decade later it isn't outside the realm of possibility IMO.
Well I have seen claims saying that the Kwangtung Army at least was hoping to occupy Manchuria in the aftermath of Zhang Zuolin's death. The question then becomes if Yang & Chang persist in claiming themselves the legitimate remnant of the Beiyang government, committed in principle to retaking Beijing and the rest of the country from the Nanjing-based Guomindang rebels, how do Tanaka or Shidehara deal with the resulting dilemma. Do they go along with that claim, hoping for the best? Or do they find it unacceptable to be seen as holding onto Beiyang and prolonging the Civil War when the Americans and other powers are all recognizing Nanjung? If it's unacceptable, their only alternatives are to take the at least equally provocative step of having Yang & Chang declare independence, or ordering Yang & Chang to accept nominal suzerainty of Nanjing/Guomindang while maintaining de facto autonomy and Japanese influence.
In terms of the fallout, the entire plot would still be done independent of Japanese civilian authority, so I can see even a more successful plot bringing down the Tanaka government in Japan AIOTL. The next few years would probably see similar pacifist / more liberal ministries AIOTL, but considering the position of the Guandong Army in Manchuria, I think any civilian attempt to curtail the army's authority would accelerate the various ultranationalist coup "attempts" and border skirmishes with Nationalist soldiers in Rehe, Hebei, etc. The increasingly active army would prompt the Japanese Navy to try and compensate by attacking Shanghai, and things would fall apart on an earlier schedule than OTL.
So you're thinking that given conditions at the time, rather than just having the whole country roll along with an Army fait accompli, pacifists & liberals would win one more round of control before Army radicals terrorized the political class into accepting their agenda ?
The net result being an earlier Sino-Japanese War, with a significantly less-prepared ROC Army which IMO would fare significantly worse than OTL ...
The key question is how much faster would things fall apart. Were you envisioning OTL's Manchurian and Shanghai preliminaries, which were ultimately five years before the main event, just blending right in to an immediate Sino-Japanese war. So Manchuria 1930, Shanghai '31, and then we're off to the races with a full-scale, on-going Sino-Japanese war. Or, we end up with truce years after Shanghai and the full blow up starting in '34, '35 or '36.
I suppose in the former case, yes, the Chinese have less benefit of governing experience and will not be the beneficiaries of German aid like OTL. Also, the Communists can end up in a more advantageous position because they have not been forced to abandon bases all over south China. On the other hand, earlier Sino-Japanese war probably means an earlier second United Front and earlier Soviet support for the Nationalist war effort. A lot depends on the value that one places on the Nanjing decade as a period of national strengthening or not. There was physical and military strengthening, but the Guomindang became more corrupt and lost some its political lustre that peaked with the Northern Expedition over the course of the Nanjing decade. They also were able to waste some of the time during the Nanjing decade with internecine conflicts like the Central Plains war, and attempted secessions by Guangdong and Fujian, and bloody anti-communist bandit suppression campaigns.
The Soviets are less mechanized and formidable in the early 30s than they would be by the OTL 1935-1936 timeframe, so the Japanese would not need to hold as much force on the northern flank, which is bad for the Chinese. On the other hand, the Japanese are mobilizing more rapidly and starting from a lower base force.
If the Sino-Japanese war goes full-scale only in '34, '35 or '36, then the Guomindang can get a little German aid, might finish bandit extermination campaigns in the south, and the Sino-Japanese fight peaks while the Soviets are at their pre-purge peak of strength while the Nazis are much weaker. This could be a recipe for a decisive Soviet intervention. This is a blessing for China vis-a-vis Japan, but not for Jiang personally, at least if the Soviets turn over captured weapons to the ChiComs. The interval of time in the early 1930s before all-out war starts gives some time for Nationalist China and the USSR to materially strengthen themselves, but also allows for more internal disillusionment, internecine conflict and corruption to set in.
If this happens, we might not even see the creation of Manshuukoku ITTL, but as you suggested, a nominally Chinese but in fact Japanese-controlled puppet government in NE China versus the ROC.
But that doesn't erase Chinese nationalism, in fact it inflames it even earlier since we are talking about 1928 rather than 1931. The Japanese are still going to try to gain influence over Hebei and North China generally, and Jiang Jieshi is still going to fight the Communists. However, I think that Jiang will be forced to pivot to face Japan sooner than IOTL because the earlier deterioration of relations with Japan and the resultant rise of Chinese nationalist sentiment is going to force his hand (as well as those of the Japanese) by about 1935 at the latest...
I enthusiastically agree with this, Chinese nationalism will be equally inflamed by a "Beiyang Republic" obviously in Japan's pocket.
But it's not just a matter of worse organization, training, and equipment. There is a very real political threat from the Northeast in the form of Japan's puppet government, which the IJA is certainly going to use as a cover to entice ROC officers to abandon the sinking ship. IOTL the collaboration movement never had a substantial role, as it was fairly clear that collaboration equated betrayal of China. Here, however, things could be murkier, depending on how much autonomy the Japanese allow the post-Zhang Manchurian leadership to exercise.
Well, the northeastern government will only be a political threat in inverse proportion to how much its very existence enflames Chinese nationalism. IE, it would enflame Chinese nationalism presumably because its regarded as a Japanese puppet. However, being perceived as a puppet makes it less enticing to defectors. If it's more of a political threat capable of enticing more ROC officials (presumably because its perceived as being more than a mere puppet), then maybe the heat on Jiang to go into full-scale war is low enough he can resist it, because Chinese nationalism is correspondingly less enflamed. Hmm, maybe that prolonged period where Jiang is able to resist going to war could lead to a situation where the Comintern tries to press the CCP to migrate north and east to areas under Beiyang control where it can trouble Japanese clients and therefore at least be of some use to Soviet foreign policy. If Mao does not play ball, you could end up with a divided Chinese Communist party with a northern group unresponsive to Mao but more responsive to the USSR & Comintern.
On the other hand, Japan has its own challenges with an earlier war against China.
Yes, for instance its starting from a lower base force size. Also, the generation of Japanese fighting the war have had fewer years of uncontested indoctrination in militarism. It's an unlikely longshot, but maybe an early war that's hard and lengthy makes being anti-militaristic more politically acceptable (Japanese antimilitarism and public weariness was influential in ending the Siberian expedition for instance.
Assuming that WW2 in Europe still happens at the end of the 1930s or 1940, that's about five years of Japan facing off against China while the rest of the world watches. The Americans and Soviets have an interest in keeping China from becoming a Japanese puppet a la Manchuria, and may provide more material and diplomatic support to the KMT than they did IOTL, given the earlier timeline and the comparatively poor state of ROC defensive capabilities.
Yes-American and Soviet aid is likely to offset the probable material weakness and loss of German aid to the KMT. Say the war is going on all this time and not quite concluding while the Soviet 1930s build-up proceeds. The Soviets possibly attack at their pre-purge peak of 1936, or they strike during the period of their non-aggression pact with the Nazis from roughly 1939 to 1941.