ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at Shidehara’s return to the position of foreign minister and the arrival of the third wave of international change: the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It opens with a discussion of the 1929 Sino-Soviet border conflict with a focus on internal Chinese factors and the relative goals of the foreign powers towards the conflict, particularly how, despite increased inter-power cooperation at the London Naval Conference and his devotion to cooperation with the United States and Britain, Shidehara still acted to counter an American initiative in order to prevent Western involvement in Manchuria. Next, the chapter discusses Sino-Japanese negotiations over customs and managing China’s foreign debt. In doing so, it emphasizes the divisions within the Nationalist government (the existence of competing “realist” and “idealist” factions) and the Japanese foreign ministry (as epitomized by Shidehara and Minister to China Shigemitsu Mamoru). It also discusses how Shidehara’s policies during his second term as foreign minister differed from those of his first. Finally, it turns to the Manchurian Incident. Rather than focusing on the role of the League of Nations as many studies do, the chapter instead discusses the possibility that direct negotiations between China and Japan could have resolved the incident before addressing why the Chinese chose not to militarily resist the Japanese invasion.
