January 1938: Japan decides to depose Jiang Jieshi

What:

Throughout the fighting in 1937, the Japanese goal in China had always been to establish security for Japanese interests there, preferably through transforming northern China into a colony, so that the Japanese army could safely attack the USSR. At a Cabinet meeting on 14 January 1938, Japan decided to abandon its previous goals and instead continue fighting in China until it had succeeded in establishing a subservient Chinese government, either by creating its own puppet government or by forcing the Guomindang to oust Jiang Jieshi and appoint a leader who would agree to Japanese demands. Regime change remains Japan’s goal in China throughout the war.

 

Why:

The ultimate Japanese goal remained the removal of China as a threat so that Japan could safely invade the USSR. The decision to pursue regime change is because many Japanese felt that the Jiang’s government was intractably anti-Japanese and would never accept Japanese Treaty rights or the independence of Manchukuo. Thus, removing China as a potential threat and ensuring stability in East Asia required removing Jiang and his clique from power. Most Japanese expected China to surrender after they captured the capital and took Jiang’s insistence to fight on as evidence that the Japanese position in China could only be secured by removing him from power.

Impact:

The decision to pursue a regime change war in China greatly expanded Japanese involvement in China, in both manpower and time. A different settlement could have potentially allowed Japan to pursue its original goal of invading the USSR, but the decision to prosecute a prolonged war in China meant that Japan never launched its planned invasion of the USSR. This decision also meant that Japan was not satisfied with its existing gains in China, which at this point included the occupation of the five northern provinces, but instead decided to pursue campaigns deep into the Chinese interior in an attempt to crush the Guomindang. These campaigns to take Hankou and, later, to cut off the remaining routes to Chongqing, would be enormously costly and remain a central focus of Japanese army operations for the remainder of the war.