Events In Manchuria (1900-52)

Japan and Russia long struggled for control of this rich, strategically important region. Japan tried to seize the Liao-tung peninsula in 1895, but was forestalled by the Triple Intervention. From 1898 to 1904 Russia was dominant. As a result of a Russo-Chinese alliance against Japan, the Russians built Harbin, the naval base at Port Arthur, the commercial center of Dalny (Dalian) and the Chinese Eastern Railroad. Japan, after victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), took control of Port Arthur, Dalny (renamed Dairen) and the Southern half of Manchuria, limiting Russian influence to the North. Chiefly through the South Manchurian Railroad, Japan developed the region's economy. From 1918 to 1931 the warlords Chang Tso-lin and Chang Hsüeh-liang controlled Chinese military power in Manchuria.

Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931–32, when Chinese military resistance, sapped by civil war, was weak. The seizure of Manchuria was, in effect, an unofficial declaration of war on China. Manchuria was a base for Japanese aggression in North China and a buffer region for Japanese-controlled Korea. In 1932, Japan annexed Manchuria and formed it as Manchukuo, an independent nation that was in truth a puppet state. The Japanese developed the cities of Dairen (Dalian), Anshan, Fushun, Mukden (Shenyang), and Harbin areas into a huge industrial complex of metallurgical, coal, petroleum, and chemical industries.