Quick questions on The Japanese invasion of Manchuria 1931: HSC Modern History National Study China

Manchuria (the three north-eastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang) covered around 1.3 million square kilometres with around 30 million people. Japan held the Kwantung Leased Territory (Liaodong peninsula) and the South Manchurian Railway zone since the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The Kwantung Army (a Japanese garrison of around 10,000) guarded the railway.

On 18 September 1931 Japanese officers of the Kwantung Army (Colonels Itagaki Seishiro and Ishiwara Kanji) detonated a small charge on the South Manchurian Railway just north of Mukden (Shenyang). The explosion did not even derail a train, but the Kwantung Army used the pretext to attack the Chinese garrison and seize Mukden.

Zhang Xueliang's forces (around 250,000) outnumbered the Kwantung Army many times over but did not resist; Chiang ordered non-resistance, gambling that internationalisation would save Manchuria. By early 1932 the Kwantung Army had taken Mukden, Changchun, Jilin, Qiqihar, and Harbin. The conquest was effectively complete by February 1932.

The puppet state of Manchukuo ("Manchu State") was proclaimed on 1 March 1932. Henry Puyi, the last Qing Emperor, was installed as Chief Executive; he was elevated to Emperor of Manchukuo (in the Kangde reign era) on 1 March 1934. The real authority was the Kwantung Army's commander, who doubled as Japanese ambassador.

Chiang appealed to the League of Nations under Article 11 of the Covenant on 21 September 1931. The League dispatched the Lytton Commission (chaired by the British Earl of Lytton) in early 1932. The Commission spent six weeks in Manchuria, three weeks in China and Japan, and produced its report on 1 October 1932.

The Kwantung Army's success encouraged the Imperial Japanese Navy. The "First Shanghai Incident" (28 January to 3 March 1932) saw Japanese marines and reinforcements attack the 19th Route Army defenders of Shanghai's Chinese district. The fighting cost perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese dead before a League-brokered ceasefire. The action revealed both Chinese capacity to resist and the limits of that resistance against modern Japanese forces.

Chiang's strategic doctrine (jiao gong, kang ri: "suppress the Communists, then resist Japan") rested on three assumptions: China was militarily too weak to fight Japan; international intervention would eventually constrain Tokyo; the CCP threat had to be eliminated to permit unified resistance.

Mao and the CCP leadership called for a war of national resistance from August 1935 (the "August First Declaration"). After the Long March arrived in Shaanxi (October 1935), the CCP positioned itself as the patriotic alternative to Chiang's appeasement. The strategy paid off in the Xi'an Incident (December 1936) when Zhang Xueliang's troops mutinied against Chiang and forced agreement to a Second United Front.

Rana Mitter (The Manchurian Myth, 2000) is the standard study of the regional and Chinese response.

It was the largest war China had seen since the Boxer Rebellion, an area the size of France and Germany combined, and the first major collective-security failure.

Mukden led to Manchukuo; Marco Polo led to the full-scale Sino-Japanese War.

The Third Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi was aborted in September 1931 because Chiang had to redeploy north. The Long March is unthinkable without Manchuria's prior disruption of KMT strategy.