Lugouqiao, 1937 Chinese politics and the outbreak of war with Japan

This dissertation seeks to present a reinterpretation of Chinese politics during the mid-1930s through a detailed study of the issue of peace and war with Japan. This study consists of three parts. Part One explores China's Japan policy after the Manchurian Incident in 1931. Part Two investigates the origins of the Lugouqiao Incident (or the Marco Polo Bridge Incident) and the fall of Beiping and Tianjin. The final part examines China's war policies and the beginning of all-out resistance to the Japanese invasion. Underlying these issues is the question of why the Nationalist government avoided confrontation with Japan in the period 1935--37. What structural and factional factors produced the delay that had such momentous effects on Chinese politics?;This study argues that the Sino-Japanese war could have started before the Lugouqiao Incident in July 1937. Much of the appeasement policy in north China was associated less with Jiang Jieshi than with his longtime rival, Wang Jingwei, and others.;This study emphasizes the political and circumstantial, as well as bureaucratic, constraints that ultimately conditioned the policy struggle over issues of peace and war. Political developments in the prewar era and the initial phase of war were not all dictated by Jiang Jieshi. Jiang was struggling to assert his authority, and the Japanese war provided the context for this struggle. Jiang was not as powerful as so often portrayed.