Japanese aggression and China's international position 1931–1949

Akira Iriye

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521243384.011

10 - Japanese aggression and China's international position 1931–1949

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Akira Iriye

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John K. Fairbank and

Albert Feuerwerker

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Akira Iriye: Affiliation:
University of Chicago

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Summary

Starting in the 1930s as a lone victim of aggression, enjoying little systematic help from the world community, China ended the Second World War as a member of a victorious global coalition, endowed with the status of a major power, only to see its position undermined because of a civil war. To trace this development in some detail is to understand the close links between domestic and international affairs, between China as it was and as it might have been.

THE WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS: CHINA'S MARGINALITY

Any discussion of China's international affairs during the 1930s must start from the world economic crisis which began in 1929. This crisis primarily affected the advanced industrial countries which had, after the World War, sought desperately to re-establish a prewar-type international order for trade, investment and other forms of economic transactions. The landmarks of the 1920s – the return to the gold standard at prewar parity in the United States, Britain and elsewhere; the containment of dangerous inflational spirals in Germany, France and Italy; compromise settlements of the debt and reparations question – had hardly concerned China. Its trade never amounted to more than a fraction of the total volume of international trade, and foreign investments in China were not significant beside those in Japan or in European countries. The United States, the major sustainer of the international economic system after the war, did not expand its trade or investment in China. American goods and capital found other, more attractive outlets, especially in Germany and Japan.

Keywords

Chinese-Japanese conflict international economic relations Chiang Kai-shek China's international position Japanese aggression Manchurian incident postwar international system

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of China , pp. 492 - 546

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521243384.011 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 1986

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