Why Didn't China Surrender in WWII?

[Blackfox5]

China didn't surrender due to a number of factors.

1) The mass of population in China was fiercely anti-Japanese due to Japan's predatory ambitions.

2) Japan could not continue to occupy China because it lacked the troops. Much of the countryside in occupied China was free of Japanese troops because there was more land than troops to garrison. Advancing further into China would only make the situation worse, diluting Japanese strength until the point the Chinese could strike and defeat them.

3) The price of surrendering was too high. Japan would take at minimum the five northern provinces and likely additional land.

4) China would likely relapse into warlordism as the central government would have lost too much power and prestige.

5) Chiang always believed the West would intervene and defeat Japan. Thus all he had to do was wait and conserve his strength.

The exact reason why China didn't surrender was some mix of the above five, but the exact mix changed throughout the war. In 1937-1939, China was still too tough for Japan to defeat, and the price Japan demanded was too much. In 1940 and 1941, things were tougher, but Chiang still had hoped the US would intervene, and then Japan brought them into the war. By 1944 when the Chinese government was near collapse, it was obvious that Japan was going to lose the war, and it'd be foolish for China to surrender.

If Japan had offerred more acceptable terms, or had succeeded in its goal of utterly destroying the Chinese army, then some kind of surrender/peace would have happened. As it was, China was always strong enough to survive with the hope eventually someone would help it out.

 

[ggarner57]

It's almost like saying " if we go down then let's take the bastards down with us", especially if knowing that they could hold long enough for the Allies to finish the job.

 

[Flocculencio]

But from what I've read, the Japanese continued their brutality because the Chinese didn't surrender*. It was different from the Nazis in the USSR, where mass murder was the goal, not just the method.

Nope- they were incredibly brutal to populations which did surrender.

That coupled with the fact that Chiang didn't really care about Chinese casualties was what kept China in the War. If the Japanese had shown themselves as reasonable conquerors there might have been a chance to get the troops to mutiny against Chiang but when the alternative is the brutality of the Japanese occupation forces...

 

[Tredecimus]

What led Wang Jingwei and the various Chinese collaborationist governments to surrendre?

Their own personal ambitions and their hatred of Chiang's dictatorship.

 

[johnboy]

Exactly what it says on the tin. With Beijing, Nanjing, and every major port captured, and Chinese civilians dying by the millions, why didn't the CCP or the KMT surrender to Japan?

And if they had surrendered Japan would have been so much nicer to the Chinese population? I don't think so. Also, they probably thought, quite correctly as it turned out, that Japan would eventually bite off more than they could chew.

 

[Kome]

China surrendered three times against Japan already (after the Manchuria, Shanghai and Great Wall campaigns). Since the Japanese kept coming back to invade them further each time, clearly that strategy wasn't working out for China.

 

[Kome]

What led Wang Jingwei and the various Chinese collaborationist governments to surrendre?

In the case of Wang Jingwei, he personally always had a lot of disagreements policywise with Chiang Kai-Shek, even before the war.

Like the fact Chiang had him shot by an assassin.

A lot of collaborationists were political rivals of Chiang who disagreed with him over various matters (like the policy of getting them all killed in an endless war). The war gave Chiang greater powers (in terms of centralizing control in himself) which didn't really help when they already disliked him. And seeing how he did in some cases try to kill or arrest them, they probably decided it was easier to build their own China by siding with the Japanese. In other cases were Chinese who ended up stranded in the Japanese OZ when the Chinese Army retreated, which left them in a bit of an unenviable position in terms of choices for the future.

 

[LeX]

Wang Jingwei's collaborationist movement was based on a hope that if they gave up armed resistance, Japan would let him and some other guys have a reasonable degree of autonomy in governing China (albeit in a way that was beneficial to Japan). At the time and given the desperate context, it wasn't a totally retarded idea - after all, the Chinese had been seemingly crushed in all major battles to 1939 and the Japanese had agreed to terms before, even if they meant massive concessions for Chinese sovereignty. From the standpoint of saving lives, one might have made the case that a China as a Japanese protectorate would have suffered less than one in a drawn-out war.

I view Wang's attempt to collaborate as similar to that of whoever was responsible for Vichy France being created. Should the French have fought to the last man and drawn it out as long as possible? Sure, they were fighting goddamned Nazis. Did it make some sense from the standpoint of "hm I don't think we want to lose millions of people and possibly let everything of worth in our country be put to the torch"? Yes.

Now of course, the Japanese didn't want to let Wang have any real authority, just as the Nazis didn't intend to let their European conquests be self-ruling at all. But we know this from hindsight and the resources to look at the situation carefully.

It doesn't really answer the OP, but I do think that Japan could have brought China into puppet, Vichy-style status. As Librarian has pointed out, the Chinese were seriously on the brink in 1938-39.

 

[Green Painting]

Because we were not surrender monkeys, full stop.

 

[Flocculencio]

Because we were not surrender monkeys, full stop.

Classy

 

[fhaessig]

Because we were not surrender monkeys, full stop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_treaty

 

[Natos]

Why Didn't China Surrender in WWII?

Now China has boasted they can field an army of 200 million soldiers.

 

[Sharunaku]

Like the IJA wanted it. Mass slaughtering civilians during German mediation sure helped a lot.

 

[andyheong]

It doesn't really answer the OP, but I do think that Japan could have brought China into puppet, Vichy-style status. As Librarian has pointed out, the Chinese were seriously on the brink in 1938-39.

The majority of the Chinese population was against surrender. However, I agree that it might have been possible for Japan to obtain a Chinese puppet government. However, such government would be shall we say, a tad bit unpopular. By this time the emnity between the Chinese and the Japanese is such that for anyone who is trying to potray themselves as a legitimate, surrender would not be an option.

Besides, there's also plenty of examples that surrender or not, the Japanese were totally brutal towards the Chinese. A good example would be what happened to the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore.

I'm not saying it's rational not to surrender given the massive devatation but that's the way the Chinese feel. Heck, I'm 3rd generation Chinese in Malaysia and I grew up with stories about how we (being Chinese) should never let the Japanese bully us again. Much to my grandad's (who spent the better part of the Japanese occupation hiding in jungles of Perak) displeasure, my first car was a Mitusubishi

 

[Mikestone8]

Basically they didn't surrender because they didn't have to. Japan simply didn't have enough troops to occupy all of China, so now matter how many battles the Chinese lost they still had plenty of space to retreat into.

Pretty much how things would have gone in Russia had Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad all fallen to the Wehrmacht. Even then there'd have been plenty more Russia to go.

 

[Ultimate Paragon]

The majority of the Chinese population was against surrender. However, I agree that it might have been possible for Japan to obtain a Chinese puppet government. However, such government would be shall we say, a tad bit unpopular. By this time the emnity between the Chinese and the Japanese is such that for anyone who is trying to potray themselves as a legitimate, surrender would not be an option.

Besides, there's also plenty of examples that surrender or not, the Japanese were totally brutal towards the Chinese. A good example would be what happened to the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore.

I'm not saying it's rational not to surrender given the massive devatation but that's the way the Chinese feel. Heck, I'm 3rd generation Chinese in Malaysia and I grew up with stories about how we (being Chinese) should never let the Japanese bully us again. Much to my grandad's (who spent the better part of the Japanese occupation hiding in jungles of Perak) displeasure, my first car was a Mitusubishi

I'm pretty sure the Japanese did set up puppet governments in China.

 

[Sharunaku]

I'm pretty sure the Japanese did set up puppet governments in China.

Those were more like General Government than Vichy France, I think andyheong referred to the latter kind.

 

[LeX]

The majority of the Chinese population was against surrender. However, I agree that it might have been possible for Japan to obtain a Chinese puppet government. However, such government would be shall we say, a tad bit unpopular. By this time the emnity between the Chinese and the Japanese is such that for anyone who is trying to potray themselves as a legitimate, surrender would not be an option.

Besides, there's also plenty of examples that surrender or not, the Japanese were totally brutal towards the Chinese. A good example would be what happened to the Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore.

I'm not saying it's rational not to surrender given the massive devatation but that's the way the Chinese feel. Heck, I'm 3rd generation Chinese in Malaysia and I grew up with stories about how we (being Chinese) should never let the Japanese bully us again. Much to my grandad's (who spent the better part of the Japanese occupation hiding in jungles of Perak) displeasure, my first car was a Mitusubishi

The Chinese did surrender in the Northeast. I don't think that most of the 40 million people living there wanted to do it, but you have to remember that they had no choice. The same goes for the rest of China. If you can get enough of the people who have power to collaborate with the Japanese, then you get a China that looks like Vichy France. With less autonomy apparently.

You shouldn't look at people's feelings in hindsight to judge the historical situation. How could Wang Jingwei have known perfectly just how stupid his plan was until he tried it? I'm just saying that the war really was going terribly and people were desperate.

 

[lionhead]

But from what I've read, the Japanese continued their brutality because the Chinese didn't surrender*. It was different from the Nazis in the USSR, where mass murder was the goal, not just the method.

Oh, there wasn't much difference. The japanese saw the Chinese as inferior, just like the Nazis saw the Slavic and Jews.

If the war in China would have been easier and locations caputred with much infrastructure intact, the systematic destruction of the Chinese people would have gone underway in much more rapid and efficient way. The genocide in China during that war made the Holocaust look like a small deal.

 

[LeX]

Oh, there wasn't much difference. The japanese saw the Chinese as inferior, just like the Nazis saw the Slavic and Jews.

There was a difference. The Japanese seeing Chinese as inferior was not embedded in Japanese ideology. It is true that the militarist side of things saw the Chinese as inferior, but the militarists' way of thinking was not overtly forced upon everyone the way Nazism was on the Germans.

Just looking at the two invaders and seeing that they committed vaguely similar acts of brutality does not make them the same.

If the war in China would have been easier and locations caputred with much infrastructure intact, the systematic destruction of the Chinese people would have gone underway in much more rapid and efficient way. The genocide in China during that war made the Holocaust look like a small deal.

This was not planned in any way similar to that of Generalplan Ost or the Endlösung. The brutality against the Chinese people was not genocide, because it did not strive to wipe them all out, it was always with the goal of pacification, similar to the free fire zones in Vietnam or how the Soviets massacred revolting areas in Afghanistan. Genocide means something else.

This is not to say that the Japanese militarists would avoid genocide if killing off a whole people would serve their interests, just that as things happened historically it was not a requirement of their ideological policy the way it was in Germany.

If the Japanese had been planning genocide, they would have started with the Northeast. It is true, as I mentioned in an earlier post, that many Northeastern Chinese were killed either by direct brutality or by forced or otherwise inhumane labor practices. But never did the occupiers take steps to exterminate everyone. In fact, several opinions I have heard from Chinese people living under the Japanese is that while it sucked being occupied by Japan, they did institute a sort of order and brought some modernizations with them. My grandfather, who lived in Beijing, went to school as usual, with the added obligatory Japanese language course (that nobody paid attention to). A comment I read by a Northeasterner talked about how education and literacy, as well as medical facilities and other infrastructure were expanded in Manchukuo. This is not to say that the Japanese were welcome or justified in any way, but that they did not have complete eradication in mind.

The places where the Japanese continuously went crazy was where they had to deal with either resisting armies or insurgent operations. Once they had gotten an area securely under control they would administer it in a rather oppressive but orderly fashion. Contempt for native folk manifested itself through economic and to a lesser extent cultural oppression, as opposed to declared policy. It was very much a conflict between haves and have nots.