ABSTRACT

In the 1930s, when Japan undertook its most flagrant phase of imperialism, China, or at least the Chinese people, had begun to stiffen their resistance. In the end, it was the often brutal imperialism of the Japanese that gave rise to surging nationalism throughout much of China. Nationalism had been a powerful force, at least in Chinese core areas, for thirty years and in many peripheral areas for twenty by the time he made this pronouncement—a vibrant, virile, often violent force. Hundreds of thousands had fought a revolution in the 1920s to establish China's national identity. The focus on warlords and the North drew Japan's vision away from the growing Nationalist revolution in the South. Though some Japanese merchant capitalists had begun to talk of the strategic importance of greater involvement with markets in Central and South China, the fixation on the North continued.