ABSTRACT

The activities of the Japanese armies in north China presented the Nanjing government with two distinct problems. One of these, the choice between concession and resistance in the face of Japanese encroachment, has been explored in detail by other writers. Moreover, while questions of resistance and appeasement were addressed, publicly and privately, by senior Chinese central officials throughout the years immediately preceding the war, the initiative in addressing these problems rested with the regional authorities rather than with the central government. The other crucial, and unresolved, issue was rather that of the mechanics of dealing with Japan on all fronts. The subject of this chapter is Nanjing’s attempts to address this second question: how, if at all, was diplomacy, properly the preserve of the central government, to be conducted effectively in conditions where decisive action could be, and indeed was, taken by actors outside formal diplomatic circles? In a criticism of the Nanjing government, Okamura Yasuji described the diplomatic relationship between China and Japan as ‘a castle built on sand’; 1 as the Chinese authorities sought to resolve their relationship with the Japanese government against a background of army-inspired disruption in north China and constantly-shifting policy in Tokyo, they might well have had disputed his reasoning, but recognised the description.