Peace betwin China and Japan?

[Ahab]

What terms could have been acceptable by both china and Japan in order to end the second china-japan war?
Can peace be reached before 1941?
would the chinese accept the lose of Manchuria and abandon any claim to Taiwan and Korea? How will it affect the European war?

 

[Shaby]

I believe that an arrangement could have been made so Japanese returned to the borders from 1937, while Chinese really wanted to take care of Mao and the Communists. The details may vary and include a port or two being ceded to Japan.

The biggest obstacle is getting Japan to agree, China would probably slide in as it was (at least in the short term) weaker party in the conflict. Chiang realized he was sapping his strength and the longer he fought the Japanese the weaker he would be for an eventual showdown with Mao. Had the Japanese been able to approach the negotiation with goodwill and willingness to openly negotiate and had IJA been curbed in 1936, after 2-2-6 incident took place, the Pacific War as we know it might not have been.

As for Europe, well, obviously British would have a much easier time fighting Rommel in 1942. Even more US troops, airplanes and navy would be present in ETO and perhaps USMC would take part in an invasion (I wouldn't mind seeing this in a timeline, BTW).

After the war, China would probably still end up Communist, Chiang was way too corrupt to survive for long. Japan would have (probably) its Algiers/Indochina moment in Korea and Manchuria and Taiwan might have remained Japanese to this day, accepting the Chinese refugees as mainland fell under Communist rule.

 

[lycan]

1. China goes Communist after overthrowing the Japanese, possibly brought on by an earlier Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

2. The Chinese and Japanese governments decide they have a common wish to "liberate" India from western rule.

 

[Kiritsugu]

rather impossible. Japan saw the war as a holy crusade. Not as a "normal war". The war was in fact not intended by the government in the first place, the japanese army kind of did what it wanted. You can look it up just search for the japanese army, you will see that the japanese army kind of acted.. seperate. (that one in china!). Although as the war continued the war became really a racial war.. a white peace or a peace with small concessions was unthinkable for japan. It was a holy crusade, you dont stop a holy crusade.

Actually propaganda claimed that it was a holy crusade.

 

[Shaby]

rather impossible. Japan saw the war as a holy crusade. Not as a "normal war". The war was in fact not intended by the government in the first place, the japanese army kind of did what it wanted. You can look it up just search for the japanese army, you will see that the japanese army kind of acted.. seperate. (that one in china!). Although as the war continued the war became really a racial war.. a white peace or a peace with small concessions was unthinkable for japan. It was a holy crusade, you dont stop a holy crusade.

Actually propaganda claimed that it was a holy crusade.

But they actually did consider this and were willing to accept it. And yes, I recognize the Army was the major obstacle. That is why the reassertment of civilian authority would be indispensable. But in all probability it would require a European POD, ideally involving a stop to hostilities or a at leadt less than decisive German victory in France, preferably a stalemate.

Such a development would incalidate Japanese asumptions and compell them to come to terms with US.

 

[lycan]

rather impossible. Japan saw the war as a holy crusade. Not as a "normal war". The war was in fact not intended by the government in the first place, the japanese army kind of did what it wanted. You can look it up just search for the japanese army, you will see that the japanese army kind of acted.. seperate. (that one in china!). Although as the war continued the war became really a racial war.. a white peace or a peace with small concessions was unthinkable for japan. It was a holy crusade, you dont stop a holy crusade.

Actually propaganda claimed that it was a holy crusade.

China seems like a 20th century "wild west" as far as Japan is concerned. The Kwantung Army needed to be defeated, one way or another.

 

[Blackfox5]

The minimum concessions Japan was willing to accept were beyond what Chiang could accept. The only way Japan can have peace is it forces China to make peace.

Japan did not have the ability to knock out China as long as China kept getting resupplied from the Soviets and the West. So a victory by 1941 is almost impossible.

The only way Japan could conceivably do this by 1941 is if the early stages of the war go much different. Japan would need to have their decisive battle that destroyed the Chinese army that eluded them in 1937-1938. Perhaps when the Chinese army retreated north of Nanking to draw them away from Wuhan, if the Japanese Chinese Expeditionary Army went up the Yangtze instead they might have taken the city and gotten what they wanted.

 

[Shaby]

Japan would need to have their decisive battle that destroyed the Chinese army that eluded them in 1937-1938. Perhaps when the Chinese army retreated north of Nanking to draw them away from Wuhan, if the Japanese Chinese Expeditionary Army went up the Yangtze instead they might have taken the city and gotten what they wanted.

For all intents and purposes they had their decisive battle when they destroyed the Chinese German trained and equipped units that were supposed to be core of Chinese army. Beyondthat, Japanese could have no decisive battle against the Chinese any more than Germans could have one against the Red Army.

After losing the aforementioned core, the Chinese just kept raising more and more troops, replacing units that were shattered multiple times, same as Red Army did.

 

[Alex1guy]

1. China goes Communist after overthrowing the Japanese, possibly brought on by an earlier Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

2. The Chinese and Japanese governments decide they have a common wish to "liberate" India from western rule.

Not sure why they would give a rat's ass about India but I think seeing a common enemy in the Soviets might be a possibility. However you would need top stop Japan from being to antagonistic in the Pacific.

 

[Blackfox5]

For all intents and purposes they had their decisive battle when they destroyed the Chinese German trained and equipped units that were supposed to be core of Chinese army. Beyondthat, Japanese could have no decisive battle against the Chinese any more than Germans could have one against the Red Army.

After losing the aforementioned core, the Chinese just kept raising more and more troops, replacing units that were shattered multiple times, same as Red Army did.

Except that the Japanese never destroyed that core in the Battle of Shanghai. They heavily damaged it and killed lots of Whampoa officers which degraded Chiang's army, but they never actually destroyed them. Most of their equipment was replaced the following year with the port of Canton being opened. Those German trained and equipped units fought at Taierzhuang and Wuhan. They served as the mobile reserve of Chiang's forces to reinforce crucial areas and retain loyalty of the warlord units. Many were sent north to keep an eye on the CCP. A substantial number were later sent to Burma. It was the losses there (including those divisions that had to retreat to India) as well as cut off its last remaining supply route to the West that really degraded China's army. But by that time China knew the other powers would defeat Japan and thus no reason to make a separate piece.

The losses of Chiang's German trained divisions in 1937 did hurt them very much. But it wasn't decisive because they did survive and China kept fighting.

Japan never had a battle of annihilation because the Chinese made sure it couldn't happen. The only time they had a chance to do so is if they didn't take Li Zongren's bait and send their forces at Nanking north. If instead they marched immediately on Wuhan, they might have gotten that decisive battle.

 

[ModernKiwi]

A big part of the KMT's legitimacy came down to the fact that they were fighting Japan and continued to claim Manchuria as a part of China. They could no more abandon the fight than Japan could.

 

[EternalCynic]

Between the Marco Polo Incident and Nanjing, as a matter of fact Adolf Hitler tried three times to broker peace, partly because he believed both proto-fascist regimes should be focusing their efforts on the USSR rather than each other. Chiang was apparently willing to negotiate a ceasefire only if the Japanese retreated north of the Shanhai Pass. After Nanjing, no ceasefire was possible.

But it's doubtful that peace would have lasted long. The Japanese army had already staged "incidents" in Shanghai to force Chiang to demilitarize that city, and throughout the 1930s was arranging for "autonomy" for five northern provinces. Then they were building relations with warlords who were nominally subordinate to Chiang. So Japanese ambitions were simply not limited to Manchukuo, and even if Adolf Hitler brokered some peace, it would not have lasted long.

But again, the IJA viewed this as a racial holy war, and were not behaving rationally.