S. C. M. Paine

At the end of the late 19th century, a dramatic shift took place in East Asia, as Japan replaced China as the dominant country in the region. While this shift was the result of a series of developments that took place over decades, a key turning point was the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, when Japan defeated China in a short, sharp conflict that reflected the changing balance of power in the area. By its end Japanese forces had driven the Chinese from Korea and established themselves as a force to be reckoned with, one that was treated almost as an equal by the Western imperial powers.

That such "a seminal event in world history" has not received its due from Western historians is not surprising given the language barriers confronting scholars seeking to write about the war. For this reason alone Sarah Paine's effort to provide English-language readers with a long-needed history of the war is a commendable one. Yet this very demand contributes to a sense of disappointment with this book. To write it, Paine relies heavily upon the often unreliable coverage of the war in contemporary newspapers, supplemented with published documentary collections and the related secondary literature on the subject. Nowhere in its pages is there any evidence of archival research on her part that would provide a basis for judging the veracity of sometimes contradictory reports she uses, leaving unaddressed the numerous questions raised in her book about the exact course of events and the motivations behind the decisions made in response to them. Nor does it help when she exaggerates the importance of the war by ascribing to it developments that arguably predated (such as Western perceptions of Chinese decline) or postdated (such as Western regard for Japan as a modern power) it.

The result is a work that is a serious letdown. Had Paine undertaken the archival labors necessary to sort through the often confusing reportage of events it would have been a major contribution to our understanding of the war and its place in modern history. As it is, however, she has written a book that is useful as an introduction to the conflict but ultimately serves to demonstrate how much more work needs to be done to properly understand its place in the transformation of the fortunes of China and Japan in the late 19th century.… (lisätietoja)

Although this is called the Wars for Asia, it is essentially the Wars for China. The author lines the Chinese Civil War, the 2nd Sino-Japanese War and World War II together to show how each affected the others. Although there are some areas where the analysis is questionable, the overall argument of linkage is very convincing. The local war (Guomindang-Chinese Communist Party) was interrupted by the regional war (Japanese invasion), which was then affected by the Global War (WWII). To understand how the CCP won the local war, understanding the other two arenas is essential.

The book does a good job of analyzing the countries involved, although he gives much bigger role to the Soviets than many historians do. As he looks at Japan, he shows that it was dominated by the military and riven by internal factions. The army in Manchurian was divided into competing sections, all of whom set up client states. Japan pumped money into Manchuria but when the Chinese began boycotting Japanese goods, it became a national security issue because the states were supposed to pay for themselves rather than drain the Japanese economy. But the army, not the civilian government, was making decisions. Since the military didn't make economic projections on how the war would affect the economy long-term or how they would pay for it, they made a operational decision to invade without considering the economic ramifications.

The author has a very favorable view of Chiang Kai-shek. He did his best with little actual power. His power base was the army but he controlled less than half the men under arms in China. Because of these constraints on his power and the constant conflict with the CCP and then the Japanese, he had no time to build institutions that might have stabilized his government and China.

By contrast, the book presents a a very harsh view of Stalin (which is not hard to do), suggesting that he manipulated the Shanghai massacre to gain leverage over Trotsky. And then that he manipulated the Xian incident to get China into the war, which would bog down Japan. Mao and Chiang both thought they'd get Russian help but once they were involved, Stalin had what he needed (Japan occupied) so he didn't help much after that..

The section on the Japanese invasion of China is interesting but slanted. It does a great job in showing that the Japanese government wasn't really in control and that competing elements of the military were running the show, particularly in escalating the war. The entire chapter is about linking together how the Japanese continued to broaden their aims, which included making their peace demands more expensive, while the Chinese could never decide whether to fight the Japanese or with each other (Communist and Nationalist). Both Chinese groups had incentives to make peace so they could fight the other group, but the escalating Japanese demands made that impossible. And the early Japanese success and the cost of the war meant lowering those demands were impossible. There are weaknesses here. He seems to mock the Japanese entrance into the Axis as putting them on center stage to western war planning, but he offers no reason for that hurting the Japanese cause. He doesn't mention that Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the US immediately after Pearl Harbor, partly because of the alliance with Japan. That really helped Japan, although clearly not enough.

When he gets to WWII as a global war, he again fights against what he calls the "conventional tale", in this case arguing for the importance of Chinese and Soviet involvement. He makes a good case for China tying down the majority of the Japanese army. He says that the Chinese couldn't have beaten the Japanese on their own but they made the American job in the Pacific much less costly. As before, he argues that the Guomindang bore the brunt of the fighting, which is true, but the benefit of the doubt that he continually gives Chiang is much more generous than most historians. His emphasis on Russian involvement is less convincing. He argues that this was what allowed the Japanese army to surrender, rather than the atomic bombs. While possible, that explanation needs a lot more support to be compelling. He finishes by showing the costs of the war, starting with the monumental toll on Japan, but also showing the even larger costs to China, particularly the GMD. In this, his emphasis on GMD fighting is clearly setting the stage for the final chapter on the Chinese Civil War.

He finishes the substantive section with the end of the "Long Chinese Civil War". This is a good formulation, because the conflict never really stopped from 1927-1949. He looks at two aspects. The first is foreign intervention, where he casts some blame on the US for how it dealt with Chiang. In particular, he sees the Marshall coerced cease fire of 1946 as giving the Chinese breathing room when they were on their last legs. He also viewed the US interruption of aid to the GMD as very harmful to the Nationalist cause. On the other side, the Soviets weren't particularly helpful until 1947, but then their aid allowed the Chinese to move from a guerrilla war to a more traditional war of opposition. So while the US was stopping its aid temporarily, the Soviets were ramping theirs up. He gives a great deal of importance to this difference in timing and dedication of aid, even though US aid was larger overall by an order of magnitude. The other aspect is the strategies of the two sides, where he asks the question if the Communists won or the Nationalists lost. He has many examples to support both answers, but he offers no strong conclusion himself, although he seems to blame Chiang more for his loss. His more interesting, and controversial, question was why did the GMD collapsed so quickly after losing Manchuria. His answer is not in GMD incompetence or CCP excellence, but in Chinese culture, which views dynasties as cyclical. He argues that GMD allies defected to the CCP because they saw a dynastic change coming. Defections like this have been common in Chinese history, so these defections were not surprising. He offers several examples from Chinese history but no actual evidence that the defecting GMD officers or troops were thinking in this way. It's worth thinking about, but it needs a lot more support as an explanation.

The conclusion sums up the book's main points, but also bring the book together. He has three points which he makes in a very convincing way. First, he makes a strong case for how the civil, regional and global wars were tied together and need to be understood that way. If the Chinese Civil War had gone differently, Japan might not have invaded past Manchuria. Likewise, without that invasion, the Chinese Communists were probably finished. The US entry into the war gave China hope, but the US was only fighting the global war, which affected the regional war but it had different goals than its ally, Chiang, who was primarily concerned with the Civil War. To understand any of the three levels of war, you need to understand them all. Second, almost no one got what they wanted from the wars. Chiang wanted to save his troops to fight the Communists, but his policies only invited further aggression that undermined his ability to fight. The Japanese lost their empire and allowed Communism to flourish in China. The Soviets thought they were getting a pliable ally, but their double-dealing and stinginess pushed the Chinese Communists away from Moscow. The United States wanted to avoid war with Japan but ended up provoking one and then it wanted to prevent a communist takeover in China. Only the Chinese Communists got what they wanted and most of that was by luck.

Finally, Paine argues for the importance of military history, which is significantly out of fashion at the moment. Yet every major event or change in China and east Asia in the first half of the 20th century was spurred by war. To discount military history is to intentionally limit our understanding of the monumental changes of the era.

This is a very good book. Even if I don't agree with all its points, it provides an excellent conceptual framework for understanding the wars in China from the 1920s to the 1940s. It also clearly supports one Paine's main points - We ignore military history at our peril.… (lisätietoja)

This international history of the Sino-Japanese War is of value, but somewhat strangely arranged. Of particular virtue is how Paine examines the domestic situation of all the relevant players; China, Japan, Korea, and Russia, and how their preconceptions of the their neighbors impacted on how the war played out. What is not good is how Paine throws the expression "face" around for roughly four-fifths of the book as a major term of analysis, with very little explantion of what is meant. One only gets some alleviation of this situation at the end of the study when an examiniation of the points of cultural stress involved in this conflict are examined, which is admittedly a good capsule outline of the attitudes involved. Until you reach this point you'll either be confused if you haven't studied a lot of East Asian history or, if you're actually a student of the region (or a student of ethnographic studies in general), you'll be somewhat irritated at what seems like a simplistic analysis of social behavior. This further leaves one wondering at who this book is really aimed at, and one suspects that the target audience is military officers and makers of policy, who are more likely to buy into Paine's seeming belief in conflict between immutable national cultures akin to the vision offered by Samuel Huntington.… (lisätietoja)