Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2014

 

The Japanese Navy's Expansion in the Yangtze River Basin before the National Revolution                                                                     

(Abstract)

 

Li Shaojun

 

After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, in the course of its continued expansion into Chinese waterways, the Japanese Navy took the Yangtze River basin as a key point and gradually brought the area from Shanghai to Chongqing under the range of its patrol boats, forming a fleet targeting the Yangtze River basin. The fleet not only provided armed protection for the expansion of Japanese markets and for Japan’s acquisition of resources, but also suppressed popular resistance along the Yangtze River, revolutionary movements and local forces. From the second half of 1917, Japanese fleets often anchored at important Yangtze ports. In the 1920s, faced with the anti-imperialist movement and local turbulence, the Japanese navy became ever more brutal; for instance, it sent Japanese naval personnel to act as escorts on the fleets, seized onshore facilities illegally, and developed an assembly capacity for river gunboats in Shanghai and Hankou. In the course of its expansion, the Japanese navy maintained long-term cooperative relations with the British. From the establishment of the Republic of China to the National Revolution, the strength and distribution of the Japanese fleet in the Yangtze River basin and its ports were second only to that of Britain; it became an important branch of the Japanese invasion forces.