JAPAN'S AIMS IN CHINA

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22345, 8 March 1938, Page 13

JAPAN'S AIMS IN CHINA

A GREAT EASTERN EMPIRE "THE REAL WAR YET TO BEGIN" CHINESE NATIONAL SPIRIT UNDER-VALUED LONDON, February 15. Three victorious campaigns have led Japan to the threshold of a far more difficult task. The declaration of policy (writes the Tokyo correspondent of "The Times") issued on Sunday defines her aim as the establishment of a new regime with which she can co-operate in the rejuvenation of China. With one hand Japan must wear down guerrilla warfare in a country as large as European Russia, and with the other she must reconstruct the administration of that country and bring its policy into line with her own. When the fighting began six months ago Japanese staff officers predicted that it would be over by Christmas. There is a sense in which their hopes have been fulfilled. The Chinese Army has been defeated and pursued for hundreds of miles, and the Japanese spent Christmas in the enemy's capital. The principal ports, railways, and sources of revenue are in Japanese hands. Yet the Prime Minister of Japan speaks of the successful campaign as a prologue, and warns his people that the real war is yet to begin. The Chinese also say .hat the war is only beginning. The military defeat and the loss of North China. Shanghai, and Nanking were foreseen. Their army may have hung on a little too long to Shanghai, but otherwise the war is going according to a plan of campaign which testifies to the sound instruction of their German military advisers. It was devised to an end, a "Moscow campaign," in which victory to Japan could not be denied, but would never be decisive. Japan would win campaigns and lose the war. The Chinese have withdrawn, bloody but unbowed, to their limitless hinterland. They propose a test of endurance. They cannot expect victory—but—as in ju-jitsu—they hope to reach a point when the opponent will signal that the bout is over because he is caught in grips in which his own effort will break his arms or his neck unless he obtains release.

Japan's Hand Forced

In striking a balance of the war to date the criterion is—What are the aims of Japan, and how near has military victory brought her? At first the Japanese would have been satisfied with a local settlement. They meant by that the withdrawal of the compromised Chinese army south of the Yungting river—that is to say, immediately beyond the Peiping and Tientsin railway zone. They would have been content with a small slice from the ham, but the animal rose and attacked with claws and tusks. Two factors converted the local clash in the north into a struggle for the subjugation of China: China's decision to make the Yangtze the principal theatre and Japan's decision to insist on her demands in the north even after China was seen to be uniting to refuse them. Japan was in the position described by the Russian proverb, "He who says A says B." Chiang Kai-shek had refused to impose arrangements in North China which Japan deemed essential to the safety and well-being of Manchukuo, and the challenge could not be rejected. Japan prepared to destroy the Kuomintang and its armed forces, the hotbed of anti-Japanism. She laboriously distinguished the Chinese people from the Chinese army, and proclaimed that the ultimate aims of her policy were China's friendship, co-operation against Soviet penetration, and co-operation in economic fields.

Those aims are political. • Japan wants China to adopt a certain policy. Reading China's history, she believes that China is not cohesive, and if not dominated by Japan will be dominated by Russia. The Japanese hate and fear Communism, and in Russia's Red Army they see the only challenge to their ambition to be the protectors of peace and overlords of East Asia. If China should side with Russia, the odds against Japan would be too great. So when the Japanese papers declare with pathetic daily insistence that what Japan seeks is China's friendship they are not hypocritical. China's friendship is necessary for Japan's security. With China friendly, the odds turn against Russia. The fear of aggression from the north fades, and the dream of perpetual peace in East Asia under the protection of Japan will be realised. Docile Governments The immediate task before Japan is to set up docile Chinese Governments in the areas which her army occupies; to confine the Nanking Government and their forces to the interior, stopping their revenues, excluding them from the railways, and depriving them of contact with the outside world except for the tenuous link with Russia. The result which Japan expects is thElt the anti-Japanese Government will dwindle down to a local regime, and that over the greater and wealthier parts of China a pax Japonica will be established. The Chinese masses will be satisfied because they will have peace and relatively good government; slowly the Chinese leaders will be converted to the idea of China, Manchukuo, Mongolia, and Japan as partners (Japan the president of the board) in a great East Asiatic bloc. While that policy is developing, China will have neither modern army, fleet, air forces, nor foreign policy. It is a colossal task, not one for years, but for decades and generations. But in its earlier stages it does not require much more than that China should forget her new. and as the Japanese say, artificial political unity. She will relapse into a group of provincial autonomies in many of which Japanese influence will hardly be felt. A protectorate status, in short, is'proper to China's present development. Its benefits in the form of peace, security, and low taxation will soon cause the memories of the struggle to be forgotten—so at least runs the Japanese thesis. . In the meantime, instead of keeping China and Russia apart, Japan's methods have driven them closer together. The degree of unity Chinese nationalism had achieved was undervalued in July, and it may be that the risks of guerrilla warfare are underestimated in January It is perhaps unfortunate that the Japanese in their short modern career have never known the indispensable teaching of failure, and that success has given them supreme self-confidence. This, added to absolute military supremacy m their own part of the world, makes them formidable empire builders.