The Tanggu Truce

At 11.10 a.m. on 31 May 1933 in Tanggu, a port at the mouth of the Hai River near Tianjin, two officers signed a short document that ended the fighting Japan had been waging in China since September 1931. It was signed on behalf of the Kwantung Army by its deputy chief of staff, Major General Yasuji Okamura, and on behalf of the Chinese forces in northern China by Lieutenant General Xiong Bin, representing the Beijing branch of the Military Affairs Commission. The Chinese undertook to withdraw their troops to a line running in an arc north and east of Beijing and Tianjin and not to cross it. The Japanese were to return “in principle” to the line of the Great Wall. Between the Wall and that line a demilitarised zone was created, in which order was to be kept only by the Chinese police. The truce made no mention of Manchukuo or Rehe, but in practice it left them to Japan.

It is often said that China gave in to all of Japan’s demands. This is largely true, since the text of the truce was dictated by the Japanese and the Chinese were unable to change a single word of it. It should be added, however, that this was a military agreement, not a treaty. The Nanjing government did not recognise Manchukuo in it, did not renounce any territory, and maintained that it was merely a local cessation of hostilities. The Japanese thus obtained de facto, but not formal, recognition of their conquests.

From Shanhaiguan to the gates of Beijing

The campaign began with the provocation at Shanhaiguan on 1 January 1933. On 23 February the Kwantung Army and Manchukuo forces attacked the province of Rehe (Jehol). The governor, Tang Yulin, fled, and on 4 March the Japanese vanguard took the provincial capital, Chengde. Zhang Xueliang, who was responsible for the defence of northern China, resigned. He was replaced by the war minister, He Yingqin, a trusted associate of Chiang Kai-shek. At the passes of the Great Wall – Xifengkou, Gubeikou and Lengkou – Chinese units put up stubborn resistance for many weeks. General Song Zheyuan’s 29th Army passed into legend through night attacks by detachments armed with dadao swords.

Emperor Hirohito agreed to the occupation of Rehe on condition that the army did not cross the Wall. In April the Kwantung Army, wishing to push the Chinese back from the border, nevertheless advanced into eastern Hebei as far as the Luan River. When the worried Emperor asked whether a direct order ought not to be issued to the army, the General Staff in Tokyo ordered a withdrawal. At the end of April the Japanese returned behind the Wall, but Chinese troops followed them again. The Kwantung Army’s chief of staff, General Kuniaki Koiso, obtained Tokyo’s consent to a new offensive. At the beginning of May two Japanese divisions crossed the Wall, broke through the defences and within two weeks reached Miyun, Huairou and the vicinity of Tongzhou, on the approaches to Beijing (which had been called Peiping since 1928, when the capital was moved to Nanjing).

At the same time, in Tianjin, General Seishirō Itagaki was conducting secret operations intended to bring about a coup in northern China. According to Chinese sources, the Japanese were financing several former warlords who were to set up an “autonomous” government in Beijing compliant with Japan. For Nanjing the threat was twofold: the loss of Beijing and Tianjin, and the break-up of the country.

Nanjing’s decision

Chiang Kai-shek, then chairman of the Military Affairs Commission, believed that China was not ready for war with Japan. His best divisions were fighting the communists in Jiangxi, where in the spring of 1933 they suffered heavy losses. The premier, Wang Jingwei, proclaimed the slogan “resistance and negotiation at the same time”. In May the government set up a special political council for northern China in Beijing and placed at its head Huang Fu, a former foreign minister who had studied in Japan and had good connections there. Huang Fu held confidential talks with Japanese diplomats and military attachés in Beijing.

On 25 May one of He Yingqin’s staff officers, Xu Zuyi, went to Miyun, to the headquarters of the Japanese 8th Division, and conveyed to the Kwantung Army a formal request for a ceasefire. The Japanese halted their offensive and set talks for Tanggu. On 30 May a Chinese delegation under General Xiong Bin and a Japanese one under General Okamura arrived there. According to Chinese accounts, Okamura at once laid on the table a draft he called the Kwantung Army’s final proposal and declared that he would not change a word of it. The Chinese could only say “yes” or “no” by 11 a.m. the following day. Xiong’s written comments were ignored, and any further matters were to be discussed only after signature. Xiong Bin gave way at the last moment and at 11.10 a.m. signed the Japanese text.

Five points

The truce consisted of five points:

1. Chinese troops will withdraw west and south of the line Yanqing – Changping – Gaoliying – Shunyi – Tongzhou – Xianghe – Baodi – Lintingkou – Ninghe – Lutai and will not cross it or undertake any provocative actions.
2. The Japanese may at any time verify compliance with this point by aircraft or by other means, and the Chinese side will provide them with protection and facilities.
3. When the Japanese have established that the Chinese troops have withdrawn to this line, they will not cross it and will voluntarily withdraw “in principle” to the line of the Great Wall.
4. Order in the zone between the Wall and this line will be maintained by the Chinese police. No armed formations that might offend Japanese sentiment may be used for this purpose.
5. The truce takes effect upon signature.

According to some sources, confidential arrangements were attached to the agreement, excluding former anti-Japanese volunteers from the zone’s police and providing that disputed matters would be settled between the two governments.

The demilitarised zone covered the eastern part of Hebei province, with some twenty counties, from the Wall and the sea to the outskirts of Beijing. Its boundary ran a few dozen kilometres north and east of the city. The Chinese could keep no troops there, while the Japanese could fly over it and carry out inspections. The words “in principle” in the third point also allowed them to leave soldiers at several places south of the Wall. The Great Wall, the ancient frontier between China and the peoples of the steppe, became the border between China and Manchukuo. The Japanese later set up the new state’s boundary posts along it.

Humiliation and respite

On the afternoon of 31 May the authorities in Nanjing approved the truce. At home it was received as a disgrace. In February the acting premier and finance minister, Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong), had declared in Beijing that even if the enemy took the capital, no one in China would agree to a “peace beneath the city walls”. Now the government had concluded exactly such a peace. Critics accused He Yingqin and Huang Fu of treason, while Wang Jingwei and Chiang Kai-shek argued that the country had to gain time. On 26 May in Kalgan (Zhangjiakou), General Feng Yuxiang proclaimed the formation of the Chahar People’s Anti-Japanese Allied Army, which in July recaptured several towns in Chahar province from Manchukuo forces, Duolun among them. Nanjing treated it as a challenge to its own authority, and in August, under pressure from the government and the Japanese, Feng had to disband it.

On the day of the signing, the Japanese Foreign Ministry announced that the army had gone beyond the Wall only because the Chinese had persistently attacked, and that Japan had no intentions other than securing Manchukuo. It expressed the hope that China would “abandon its hostile attitude”. For the Kwantung Army the truce marked the end – and the complete success – of a campaign it had begun at Mukden without the government’s consent. Manchukuo now had a frontier on the Wall and the opium-rich province of Rehe. In the autumn of 1933 further talks on implementing the truce were held in Dalian and Beijing, and in 1934–1935, despite the opposition of Chinese public opinion, rail and postal traffic between China and Manchukuo was resumed, while formal recognition of Puyi’s state was avoided.

Chiang Kai-shek got what he wanted: quiet in the north. In the autumn of 1933 he launched the fifth campaign against the Chinese Soviet Republic in Jiangxi, this time a methodical one, with the help of German advisers. A year later it forced the communists into the retreat that went down in history as the Long March.

The zone from which war came

The Tanggu Truce closed the first chapter of Japanese aggression in China, which had begun with the Mukden incident. Two months earlier Japan had left the League of Nations, which refused to recognise Manchukuo but did nothing to stop the Japanese. Now China, left to fend for itself, had to accept the loss of four provinces. The lesson was not lost on others: aggression paid if the aggressor was strong and the victim isolated.

The demilitarised zone, which was supposed to separate the two armies, became a base for further expansion. In 1935 the Japanese forced through the He–Umezu Agreement between He Yingqin and General Yoshijirō Umezu, which removed government troops and Kuomintang organisations from Hebei province, and a similar agreement concerning Chahar, negotiated by General Kenji Doihara. In November 1935, in the very zone created at Tanggu, the Japanese set up a puppet “autonomous” administration of eastern Hebei under Yin Rugeng, through which Japanese goods and narcotics were smuggled into China on a massive scale. In 1937, after the clash at the Marco Polo Bridge, the Japanese army took Beijing and Tianjin within a few weeks. The Second Sino-Japanese War had begun, and in 1941 it became part of the world war.

History also has its postscript. General Okamura, who in May 1933 had dictated terms to the Chinese at Tanggu, was in 1945 commander-in-chief of the Japanese forces in China. On 9 September 1945, in Nanjing, he handed the instrument of surrender of those forces to General He Yingqin.