ABSTRACT
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, despite ardent hopes that the International Settlement would remain a safe haven for all who fled the brutalities of Japanese military occupation, the gudao became a scene of much violence. Nationalist and Communist activists alike used the foreign concessions to air anti-Japanese feelings, to gather intelligence, to procure war materials, to plot assassinations, and to stage a war of nerves against the Japanese. The Japanese, with the help of Chinese puppet police forces, retaliated in kind. In the Cold War atmosphere of the time, former members of Juntong who survived the 1949 takeover in China were invited by their Communist captors to denounce their own past. The Xi' an Incident was a major turning point that marked a decided change in official Chinese policy towards Japanese military aggression in China. It thereby set the stage for war.
