Indonesian Caliphate
25. Sino-Japanese War I and II

First Sino-Japanese War ( ⁇ / ⁇ - Zhongru Jiangzhen); (2 Romaji: Nisshin Senso) (1 August 1894–17 April 1895) was a war between the Qing Dynasty of China and Meiji of Japan in the struggle for control over Korea. The Sino-Japanese War was a symbol of the decline of the Qing Dynasty and also showed the success of Japanese modernization since the Meiji Restoration compared to the Self-Strengthening Movement in China.

The war ended with the defeat of the Qing Dynasty and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 which resulted in the indemnity of 30 million taels to Japan.

The subsequent influence of the war was the shift of Asian regional dominance from China to Japan and was a major blow to the Qing Dynasty and ancient Chinese traditions. The humiliating loss of Korea as a tributary state to China, provoked unprecedented public outrage. Within the country itself, the defeat of China prompted several political upheavals led by Sun Yat-Sen and Kang Youwei. The Xinhai Revolution culminated in 1911.

After more than two centuries of self-imposed exile under the Shogunate, Japan finally opened up foreign trade, with the 1854 Treaty of Kanagawa. The fall of the Shogunate, followed by the Meiji Restoration, allowed the newly formed Meiji government to begin reforms to make Japan a centralized and modern state. Japan also sent several Japanese delegates and students around the world, to study and accept the culture and science of the western nation, with the aim to advance and make Japan in line with Western powers. These reforms made Japan, which was once a feudal society, a modern industrial state.

The Qing dynasty in China also began implementing political and military reforms, but it was still very far from successful.

The Second Sino-Japanese War (7 July 1937 to 9 September 1945) was a major war between China and Japan, before and during World War II. It was the largest Asian war of the 20th century.

Although the two countries have been intermittently at war since 1931, a large-scale war began only in 1937 and ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945. The war was a result of Japan's decades-long imperialist policies. Japan intends to dominate China politically and militarily in order to maintain China's vast reserves of raw materials and natural resources. At the same time, the rise of Chinese nationalism and determination made resistance inevitable. Prior to 1937, the two sides had already fought in small and local incidents to avoid open warfare. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was known as the Mukden Incident. The final part of the attack was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937 which marked the beginning of a full-blown war between the two countries.

From 1937 to 1941, China fought its own war against Japan. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Second Sino-Japanese War joined the larger conflict, World War II.

In Chinese, this war is known as the War of Resistance against Japan ( ⁇ ), and is also known as the Eight-Year War of Resistance ( ⁇ ), or more briefly the War of Resistance ( ⁇ ).

In Japan, the Japan-China War ( ⁇ Nicchu Senso) was more widely used because of its neutrality.

In Japanese propaganda, the invasion of China was a holy war (seisen), the first step of the slogan Hakko ichiu (eight corners of the world under one roof). In 1940, prime minister Konoe formed the League of Members of Parliament who Believed in the Purpose of Holy War. When the two sides officially declared war in December 1941, the name was changed to the Great East Asian War ( ⁇ , Daitoa Senso).

At that time, the Japanese government still used the term "Shina Incident" in official documents. Based on the reason the use of the word "Shina" is considered insulting by China, Japanese media often replace it with other terms that have also been used by the media in the 1930s, such as: Japan-China Incident ( ⁇ [Nikka Jihen], [Nisshi Jihen].

The background to this war is:

In 1915, Japan issued Twenty-One Requests to China to increase interest in politics and trade with China. After World War I, the Japanese took control of the Shandong region from Germany. China under the Beiyang administration remained fragmented and unable to resist foreign invasions until the Northern Expedition of 1926-1928, launched by the Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party), rival government based in Guangzhou. The Northern expedition extended across China until it finally came to a halt at Shandong. Beiyang's military leader, Japan-backed Zhang Zongchang, tried to halt the advance of the Kuomintang Forces in unifying China. The situation reached its peak when the Kuomintang and Japanese forces engaged in a battle called the Jinan Incident of 1928. That same year, the Manchurian military leader Zhang Zuolin was also assassinated because he was no longer willing to cooperate with the Japanese. After these incidents, the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek finally succeeded in unifying China in 1928.

Nevertheless, a number of battles between China and Japan continued due to rising Chinese nationalism, and to fulfill one of the aims of the Three Principles of the People, which was to expel China from foreign imperialism. However, the Northern Expedition was only able to unify China by name, and civil war broke out between the former military leaders and rival factions, the Kuomintang. In addition, the Chinese communists rebelled against the central government after a purge of its members. Due to such situations, the Chinese central government turned much attention to the civil wars and followed a policy of "internal peace first before going against the foreign side". This situation provided an easy opportunity for Japan to continue its aggression. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria soon after the Mukden Incident. After fighting for five months, in 1932, the puppet state of Manchukuo was formed with China's last emperor, Puyi, appointed head of state. Unable to challenge Japan directly, China appealed to the League of Nations for help. The league's investigation published the Lytton Report, which condemned Japan for invading Manchuria, and resulted in Japan withdrawing from the League of Nations. Since the late 1920s and during the 1930s, calm was the basis of the international community and no country wanted to actively show its stance, but only issued petty condemnations. Japan regards Manchuria as an unlimited source of raw materials and as a buffer state against Soviet threats.

The conflict that followed the Mukden incident did not stop. In 1932, Chinese and Japanese troops fought a brief battle on the January 28 Incident in Shanghai. The battle resulted in the demilitarization of Shanghai, which forbade the Chinese from deploying troops in their own cities. In Manchukuo, there was an ongoing campaign to defeat the volunteer army that rose up in disappointment with its non-Japanese policies. In 1933, Japan attacked the Great Wall area, and after that, the Tanggu Armistice was signed, which gave Japan control of Rehe province and a demilitarized zone between the Great Wall and the Beiping-Tianjin region. Japan was aiming to create another buffer zone, this time between Manchukuo and the then-capitalist Chinese Nationalist government of Nanjing.

In addition, the Japanese increasingly used internal conflicts between Chinese factions to reduce their power one by one. This is due to the fact that a few years after the Northern Expedition, the political power of the Nationalist government only expanded around the Long River Delta (Yangtze), and other regions of China that were indeed within regional powers. Japan often buys or makes special connections with these regional powers to undermine the efforts of the central Nationalist government to unify China. To that end, Japan sought out various Chinese traitors to cooperate and help them lead some autonomous governments friendly to Japan. This policy is called the North China Specialization (Hanzi: ⁇ ; Pinyin: huabheiteshuhua), or more commonly known as the North China Autonomous Movement. The northern provinces involved in this policy were Chahar, Suiyuan, Hebei, Shanxi, and Shandong.

In 1935, under Japanese pressure, China signed the He-Umezu Agreement, which banned the KMT from running its party activities in Hebei and directly ended Chinese rule over North China. In the same year, the Chin-Doihara Agreement was signed and resulted in the KMT being removed from Chahar. Thus, by the end of 1935, China's central government had been removed from North China. Instead, the Eastern Hebei Autonomous Assembly and the Hebei-Chahar Political Assembly were formed by Japan.