Japan tries to revive a puppet Qing china

How would events unfold If Japan treats Manchuria as Qing China and declares war on China with the open intent to revive the Qing to legitimize their invasion of China as a "restoration of order" but with secret intentions on creating a friendly China that is dependent on Japan for stability (and recognizing a few minor territorial gains on the coast)?
 
As if they already haven't tried that OTL... with them putting the last emperor of [Qing] China as the puppet emperor of Manchukuo.
 
As if they already haven't tried that OTL... with them putting the last emperor of [Qing] China as the puppet emperor of Manchukuo.

It's odd because it looks like they set up the dominos but never knocked them down, It almost felt like reviving the Qing was a aborted idea at some point because even though they did set up the last emperor it never seemed to lead to anything as they opted for what appeared to be a conquest/puppitisation of China that left Manchuria out of any gains. So what if they had set the dominos off so to speak and actually had gone through with this idea?
 
The reason the Japanese didn't intend to resurrect the Qing is that it had lost all popular support from the majority Han population. This is why, with the Wang Jingwei government etc, they tried to co-opt the rhetoric and imagery of the Xinhai revolution, rather than the Qing dynasty.

Resurrecting the Qing would indicate rule by foreigners, which is exactly what the Japanese didn't want to do (although it was very obvious to everyone that the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was a massive sham).

They propped up Pu-Yi in Manchuria to win over the local Manchu population, which had recently been largely disenfranchised by an influx of Han Chinese during the latter years of the Qing and the Xinhai revolution period (prior to that, Han hadn't been allowed to migrate to Dongbei). The process of Han migration had been accelerated by things such as the construction of Harbin and the South Manchuria railway. Pu-Yi was intended to bring the Manchu over to the Japanese side. The more ethnic separatism the Japanese could encourage, the more they could sideline the massive Han ethnic group and make them easier to subjugate. Hence why they also supported the Mengjiang government in Inner Mongolia and Suiyuan (sp?) , which was nominally Mongol, but where over 50% of the population was Han. Incidentally, the Han population of those areas is now in the 90+% range.
 
Pussyfooting around with casus belli is for Europa Universalis, not for Hearts of Iron. No Western country will give a shit about those legitimacy fig leaves when Japan threaten their trade interest in the regions, and conquering/puppeting China does that. When all options lead to similar results (geo-politically speaking), might as well go for the naked aggression route.
 
It's odd because it looks like they set up the dominos but never knocked them down, It almost felt like reviving the Qing was a aborted idea at some point because even though they did set up the last emperor it never seemed to lead to anything as they opted for what appeared to be a conquest/puppitisation of China that left Manchuria out of any gains. So what if they had set the dominos off so to speak and actually had gone through with this idea?

You need to look at thw Qing in the context of setting up Manchuria as a seperate entity from the rest of China. The Qing were, lets recall, native to the area, and by appointing Pu Tokyo could then legally rationalize the creation of a state on the grounds that by throwing off the monarchy the ROC had broken the sole legal tie between the Han and Manchu homelands.
 
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