By Zhu Dingrui
The September 18th Incident was an inevitable outcome of Japanese imperialism's long-standing "Manchuria-Mongolia policy" aimed at invading China. After WWI, Japan sought to aggressively expand its so-called Manchurian and Mongolian interests in Northeast China. From June to July 1927, the cabinet of the then Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi convened the Eastern Conference, establishing a policy that prioritized the separation of Manchuria and Mongolia as the starting point, laying the groundwork for incremental aggression against China and eventually the wider world. By 1929, amid the Great Depression that crippled the global capitalist economy and severe domestic economic hardships, Japanese authorities promoted the notion that resource-rich Northeast China represented a "lifeline" and 'line of interest" for overcoming the crisis, amplifying this narrative alongside the media's "Manchuria-Mongolia crisis" discourse.
On the night of September 18, 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army staged an explosion on a section of the South Manchuria Railway near Liutiaohu, in the northern suburbs of Fengtian (present-day Shenyang), and then falsely blamed the Chinese army for the sabotage. They launched an attack on the garrisons of the Northeast Army, triggering the invasion of China's northeast, known as the September 18th Incident. In less than six months, the Japanese army had occupied the three northeastern provinces of China and installed the puppet state of Manchukuo under Puyi, carrying out colonial rule.
Following the September 18th Incident, the Chinese people launched a protracted and arduous 14-year war of resistance against Japanese aggression. On the third day after the incident, the CPC Central Committee issued a declaration, explicitly calling for a national revolutionary war to expel Japanese imperialism from China. For the first time, it identified the September 18th Incident as the opening of WWII and urged the Chinese people to take up arms to achieve the genuine independence of the Chinese nation and the complete liberation of the working masses. In this way, the Chinese people fired the first shot of the War of Resistance, marking the beginning of the World Anti-Fascist War and opening the main Eastern front.
From the September 18th Incident to the July 7th Incident, the regional war of resistance against Japanese aggression manifested mainly in two aspects. The first is the CPC led resistance activities in Northeast and North China. On September 22, 1931, the CPC dispatched a group of officials to Northeast China to join forces with other anti-Japanese volunteer resistance militias and carry out guerrilla warfare. Starting in 1933, the CPC organized the scattered resistance forces across Northeast China into the Northeast People's Revolutionary Army, which was later restructured as the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army to conduct a prolonged struggle against Japanese aggression. On December 9, 1933, students in Beiping (present-day Beijing), under the leadership of the CPC, launched the December 9th Movement, holding large-scale demonstrations demanding that the Kuomintang authorities stop the civil war and unite to resist foreign aggression. The second is the regional war of resistance launched by local powerholders and some patriotic military personnel within the Kuomintang who were dissatisfied with the government’s conciliatory policy toward Japan. Notable examples include the Battle of Shanghai in 1932, the Defense of the Great Wall in 1933, the Chahar Resistance War, and the Suiyuan Campaign in 1936. These actions formed an important part of the regional war of resistance against Japanese aggression in China.
The regional war of resistance is of great significance. First, it broke through the constraints of Western appeasement policies and domestic non-resistance, becoming the first in the world to raise the banner of anti-fascist war and representing the forward march of world history. Second, it was the first in the world to create a new model of warfare to fight fascist aggression through guerrilla warfare, gaining experience that would later enable the CPC to establish the battlefields behind-enemy-lines after the July 7th Incident. Third, from regional to nationwide war of resistance against Japanese aggression, the Chinese people, with an indomitable fighting spirit, were the first to open the main Eastern front of the World Anti-fascist War.
In the fourteen years following the September 18th Incident, the Chinese people persevered under extremely harsh conditions, making immense national sacrifices until achieving complete victory, thereby sustaining the main Eastern front of the World Anti-Fascist War. The Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression not only saved China and its people from subjugation but also pinned down a massive number of Japanese troops and gave strong support to the Allied forces in the European and Pacific theaters, thus making an irreplaceable contribution to the ultimate victory of the World Anti-Fascist War.
(The author is an assistant research fellow of the Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.)
Editor's Note: Originally published on china.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.