Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Who led China in the First Sino-Japanese War?
The war demonstrated the failure of the Qing Dynasty's attempts to modernize its military and fend off threats to its sovereignty, especially when compared with Japan's successful Meiji Restoration. For the first time, regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan;[2] the prestige of the Qing Dynasty, along with the classical tradition in China, suffered a major blow. The humiliating loss of Korea as a tributary state sparked an unprecedented public outcry. Within China, the defeat was a catalyst for a series of political upheavals led by Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei, culminating in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution.
"The Sino-Japanese War at Sea 1894" is set in the late 19th century and based on the events of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), which was fought between the Qing Empire of China and the Empire of Japan.
Another source from Hilary Conroy claim that a total of 447,000 Japanese soldiers died in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Of the 1,130,000 Imperial Japanese Army soldiers who died during World War II, 39 percent died in China.
In the absence of Russian competition, and with the distraction of European nations during World War I, combined with the Great Depression that followed, the Japanese military began efforts to dominate China and the rest of Asia, which eventually led to the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War theatres of World War II.
For China, the war revealed the high level of corruption present in the government and policies of the Qing administration. Traditionally, China viewed Japan as a subordinate part of the Chinese cultural sphere. Although China had been defeated by European powers in the 19th century, defeat at the hands of an Asian power and a former tributary state was a bitter psychological blow. Anti-foreign sentiment and agitation grew, which would later culminate in the form of the Boxer Rebellion five years later. The Manchu population was devastated by the fighting during the First Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion, with massive casualties sustained during the wars and subsequently being driven into extreme suffering and hardship in Beijing and northeast China.[92]
The United States was a strong supporter of China after Japan invaded in 1937. Even the isolationists who opposed war in Europe supported a hard-line against Japan. The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 saw aid flow into the Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-shek.
The Sino-Japanese War at Sea 1894 is a 2012 Chinese historical war film directed and written by Feng Xiaoning, starring Lu Yi, Xia Yu and others. It is based on the events in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, with emphasis on the naval battles and the career of the Chinese naval officer Deng Shichang. The film premiered in China at the International Convention Centre in Weihai, Shandong, on 26 June 2012.
Starting in the 1860s Japan rapidly modernized along Western lines, adding industry, bureaucracy, institutions and military capabilities that provided the base for imperial expansion into Korea, China, Taiwan and islands to the south. It saw itself vulnerable to aggressive Western imperialism unless it took control of neighboring areas. It took control of Okinawa and Formosa. Japan's desire to control Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria, led to the first Sino-Japanese War with China in 1894–1895 and the Russo-Japanese War with Russia in 1904–1905. The war with China made Japan the world's first Eastern, modern imperial power, and the war with Russia proved that a Western power could be defeated by an Eastern state. The aftermath of these two wars left Japan the dominant power in the Far East with a sphere of influence extending over southern Manchuria and Korea, which was formally annexed as part of the Japanese Empire in 1910.
China fought Japan with aid from the Soviet Union and the United States. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts of World War II as a major sector known as the China Burma India Theater. Some scholars consider the start of the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to have been the beginning of World War II. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. It accounted for the majority of civilian and military casualties in the Pacific War, with between 10 and 25 million Chinese civilians and over 4 million Chinese and Japanese military personnel dying from war-related violence, famine, and other causes.
Japan seized concessions in areas of China towards the end of the Qing Dynasty. Dissatisfaction with the settlement and the Twenty-One Demands by the Imperial Japanese government led to a severe boycott of Japanese products in China in 1915. Bitterness in China persists over the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japan's post-war actions. This sentiment may also be at least to some extent influenced by issues related to Chinese people in Japan. According to a 2017 BBC World Service Poll, mainland Chinese people hold the largest anti-Japanese sentiment in the world, with 75% of Chinese people viewing Japan's influence negatively, and 22% expressing a positive view. Anti-Japanese sentiment in China was at its highest in 2014 since the poll was first conducted in 2006 and was up 16 percent over the previous year.
The United States was a strong supporter of China after Japan invaded in 1937. Even the isolationists who opposed war in Europe supported a hard-line against Japan. The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 saw aid flow into the Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-shek. American public sympathy for the Chinese was aroused by reports from missionaries, novelists such as Pearl Buck, and "Time Magazine" of Japanese brutality in China, including reports surrounding the Nanking Massacre, also known as the 'Rape of Nanking'. By early 1941 the U.S. was preparing to send American planes flown by American pilots under American command, but wearing Chinese uniforms, to fight the Japanese invaders and even to bomb Japanese cities. The "Flying Tigers" under Claire Lee Chennault arrived just as the U.S. entered the war.
Then in "War Without Mercy", John W. Dower claim that a total of 396,000 Japanese soldiers died in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Of this number, the Imperial Japanese Army lost 388,605 soldiers and the Imperial Japanese Navy lost 8,000 soldiers. Another 54,000 soldiers also died after the war had ended, mostly from illness and starvation. Of the 1,740,955 Japanese soldiers who died during World War II, 22 percent died in China.
Today, the war is a major point of contention and resentment between China and Japan. The war remains a major roadblock for Sino-Japanese relations, and many people, particularly in China, still harbor grudges over the war and related issues.
History of China History of Japan History of Korea History of Taiwan Military history of China Military history of Japan Sino-Japanese relations
Germany and the Soviet Union provided aid to China at the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War. By 1940 the United States had become China's main diplomatic, financial and military supporter.
While the Qing Empire was fighting the First Sino-Japanese War, it was also simultaneously engaging rebels in the Dungan Revolt in northwestern China, where thousands lost their lives. The generals Dong Fuxiang, Ma Anliang and Ma Haiyan were initially summoned by the Qing government to bring the Hui troops under their command to participate in the First Sino-Japanese War, but they were eventually sent to suppress the Dungan Revolt instead.[66]
The term "free area" or "Free China" was used during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) to describe the territories under the control of the Kuomintang led Nationalist Government in Chungking (today Chongqing), as opposed to the parts of China under Japanese occupation, including Nanking (today Nanjing) the capital of the China until the Japanese invasion in 1937.
Anti-Japanese sentiment in China is an issue with old roots. Japan annexed land from China towards the end of the Qing Dynasty. Dissatisfaction with the settlement and the Twenty-One Demands by the Japanese government led to a severe boycott of Japanese products in China. Bitterness in China persists over the atrocities of the Second Sino-Japanese War, such as the Nanjing Massacre and Japan's post-war actions. Today, textbook revisionism and censorship remain contentious issues.
The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 saw aid flow into the Republic of China (ROC), from the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A series of Neutrality Acts had been passed in the US with the support of isolationists who forbade American aid to countries at war. Because the Second Sino-Japanese War was undeclared, however, Roosevelt denied that a state of war existed in China and proceeded to send aid to Chiang.
Zhang Xueliang is the person who declared the Chinese reunification in 1928 after the end of the Northern Expedition by the National Revolutionary Army led by Chiang Kai-shek to unite the Beiyang Government under the Republic of China. Chiang was unwilling to cooperate with the Communist Party of China to defend China against the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. On December 1936, in the event called the Xi'an Incident, Zhang took Chiang as hostage and demanded that he stop the civil war with the Communist Party and unite to fight against the Japanese. 
1109 individuals were interned by the People's Republic of China, 969 in the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre and 140 in the Taiyuan War Criminals Management Centre, on suspicion of having committed war crimes within China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Those held in Fushun had been captured in Manchuria by the USSR and after enduring internment in Siberia were transferred to China in 1950. They included many Japanese soldiers as well as Chinese such as Puyi and Zhang Jinghui. Those held in Taiyuan included Japanese soldiers who after the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War had joined the Nationalists and fought against the communists during the Chinese Civil War.
The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894– 17 April 1895) was fought between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea.[1] After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the port of Weihaiwei, the Qing government sued for peace in February 1895.
In July 1937, the Sino-Japanese war began with the Marco Polo incident. Dirksen reported that his Japanese hosts were extremely unhappy that Germany was the largest supplier of arms to China, and that officers of the German military mission were training and in some cases leading the troops of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army into battle against the Imperial Japanese Army. In response to Dirksen's suggestion that the German military mission be recalled from China, the War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg proposed sending officers to the military mission in China. In late 1937, Dirksen become involved in attempts to mediate the end of the Sino-Japanese war. The Sino-Japanese war had caused a major bureaucratic power struggle within the German government with Wehrmacht and the "Auswärtiges Amt" supporting China while the "Dienststelle Ribbentrop", the SS, and the Propaganda Ministry supporting Japan. Dirksen a pro-Japanese voice in the otherwise solidly pro-Chinese "Auswärtiges Amt" feared his career might become marginalized as Neurath was annoyed at Dirksen's support for the pro-Japanese Ribbentrop, which led him to suggest German mediation to end the war before the struggle between the pro-Japanese and pro-Chinese factions destroyed his career. Neurath for his part, afraid that he might lose out in the power struggle with Ribbentrop, took up the suggestion of mediation as a way out while Hitler himself was indecisive about which side to back.
For most of the first half of the twentieth century, there was considerable tension between the Russian (later Soviet), Chinese and Japanese governments, along their common borders in what became North East China. The Chinese Eastern Railway or (CER) was a railway in northeastern China (Manchuria). It connected China and the Russian Far East. The southern branch of the CER, known in the West as the South Manchuria Railway, became the locus and partial casus belli for the Russo-Japanese War and subsequent incidents, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War and Soviet-Japanese Border Wars. Larger incidents included the Sino-Soviet conflict of 1929 and the Mukden Incident between Japan and China in 1931. The battle of Lake Khasan was fought between two powers which had long mistrusted each other.
This China War Memorial Medal, also known as the Order of Victory of Resistance against Aggression, () was authorized after the Second Sino-Japanese War (World War II) by the Republic of China government for servicemen who assisted the Chinese Government fighting against the Japanese during the war. Members of the Fourteenth Air Force, the Flying Tigers, were eligible to be awarded this medal. The medal was created in 1944 and first distributed in 1946 to those who met the requirements from the Chinese Nationalist Government. Lt. General Claire Lee Chennault and Anna Chennault were a few who had received this medal.