ABSTRACT
Up to the nineteenth century the Qing government had impeded Han immigration to this region, which was considered the homeland of the Manchus. When it allowed the Russians to develop cities and build railways and ports, Manchuria had a rapid increase of Han settlement from the southern provinces (Bernard 1993: 608-619). After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, the Russian ports and railways in southern Manchuria were taken over by the Japanese. Since the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the Han communities in Manchuria were ruled by the regional military power-holder. In 1934 Japan declared the area independent from China, appointed the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty to be the Emperor of “Manchukuo,” and divided its colony into fifteen provinces. Under the Japanese administration, the majority of the Manchukuo population was Han Chinese, and its official slogan “the harmony among five races” was meant to refer to Japanese, Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, and Koreans (Tamanoi 2000). With Japanese investment and the region’s rich natural resources, Manchuria became an industrial powerhouse. From 1937, Japan used Manchukuo as a base to invade China. This move proved foolhardy and expensive. On August 8 1945 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, in accordance with the agreement at the Yalta Conference, and invaded Manchukuo. Manchuria was then divided into nine provinces under the Chiang Kai-shek government. Today it includes the three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning as well as the eastern part of Inner Mongolia. The region is now called “the Northeast” or Dongbei in Chinese.
