Lesson 18 The September 18 Incident and the Xi'an Incident

The September 18 Incident

On the night of September 18, 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army blew up a section of the South Manchurian Railway near Liuzhizhou Lake in the northern suburbs of Shenyang, falsely accusing the Chinese army of sabotage, and on this pretext, suddenly attacked the North Camp, the headquarters of the Northeast Chinese Army, and shelled the city of Shenyang. The Northeast Army was defeated without a fight, and the military and political leaders scattered and fled. Early the next morning, the Japanese occupied Shenyang. This was the "September 18 Incident" that shocked China and abroad.

Then, the Japanese army expanded its aggression and occupied three provinces in the northeast one after another. More than 100,000 men of the Northeast Army retreated to the Shanhai Pass. In just four months, more than one million square kilometers of the Northeast's beautiful rivers and mountains fell into enemy hands.

In 1932, Japan installed Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, who had abdicated long ago, to establish a pseudo-Manchukuo in Changchun in an attempt to split the Northeast from China. Under the iron heel of the Japanese invaders, 30 million compatriots in the Northeast lived a humiliating life of slavery.

The September 18 Incident aroused the anti-Japanese fury of the whole country. The people of Northeast China and the Northeast Army, which had not been withdrawn, organized the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army to resist the invasion of the Japanese. The Chinese Communist Party sent Yang Jingyu and others to organize guerrilla units in the Northeast to carry out anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare. At the beginning of 1936, the anti-Japanese forces in the Northeast began to transform into the Northeast Anti-Japanese Allied Army, led by the Chinese Communist Party, and fought against the Japanese in the White Mountains and Black Water.

Crisis in North China and the January 29th Movement

In the second half of 1935, Japan launched the so-called "North China Autonomy Movement" in an attempt to separate the five provinces of North China from the Chinese territory. The Kuomintang government adopted a compromise policy of non-resistance to Japan, and the Chinese nation was in danger of being annihilated.

On December 9, 1935, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, thousands of students in Beiping gathered in front of Xinhua Gate in the cold to petition the Kuomintang authorities. They chanted slogans such as "Down with Japanese imperialism", "Oppose autonomy for North China", "Stop the civil war and unite against Japan", and held demonstrations. The reactionary military and police used swords, water hoses and wooden sticks to suppress the unarmed young students. This is the famous "January 29th Movement". This patriotic movement exposed the Japanese invaders' plot to annex North China, and attacked the Nationalist government's policy of compromise with Japan, and promoted the arrival of a new climax of the national anti-Japanese salvation movement.

Xi'an Incident

Inspired by the Communist Party's anti-Japanese national united front policy, patriotic generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, who were besieging the Red Army in the northwest, called a truce with the Red Army and demanded that Chiang Kai-shek unite against Japan. However, Chiang stubbornly insisted on the civil war policy and went to Xi'an to force Zhang and Yang to continue attacking the Red Army. After repeatedly pleading in vain, on December 12, 1936, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng detained Chiang Kai-shek in Xi'an and carried out a "military remonstration" and sent a telegram to the whole country, demanding the cessation of the civil war and the alliance with the Communists against Japan. This was the "Xi'an Incident" that shocked China and abroad.

After the Xi'an Incident, the Chinese Communist Party, in the interest of the whole nation, advocated a peaceful solution and united with Chiang against Japan. After the efforts of the CPC and all parties, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to accept the conditions of stopping the civil war and joining hands with the Communists to resist Japan.

The peaceful resolution of the Xi'an Incident unveiled the prologue of the civil war between the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of China and became the key to reversing the current situation. From then on, the ten-year civil war was basically over, and the national united front against Japan was formed initially.（723words）