In June that year Japanese forces in Shanghai began conducting night exercises in the vicinity of the Marco Polo Bridge. Of the forty-eight different national groups living there, the largest was that of the Japanese. Though Nanking was the Chinese capital at that time, Shanghai was the country’s largest and most cosmopolitan city. Torn with internal strife, China was unable to fend off the Japanese incursions.īeing seen as territory that would provide Japan with raw materials, food, and, by subjecting its population, provide a compliant labour force, the vast province of Manchuria was the main subject of Japanese aggrandizement. They had been able to achieve this because of the collapse of central authority in China since the Xinhai Revolution of 1912 which had swept away the old Qing Dynasty. Since 1931 the Japanese had been encroaching upon China’s territory. For the Far East, the fighting which became part of the Second World War began in 1937 and continued until the collapse of Japan in 1945.
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