The story of Aisin Gioro Pu Yi, the last Qing Emperor of China, is but a footnote to the history of China in the first half of the 20th century. The famous Bertolucci film The Last Emperor (1987) captures well the pathos of the life of a person who was forever the prisoner, either metaphorically or literally, of his circumstances. The chapter of his life as the puppet Emperor of Manzhouguo (spelled Manchukuo in the
old Wade-Giles system) from 1932-45 would seem to be even less important a footnote, but it is still an important illustration of how Japan cynically manipulated appearances and tried to legitimize the illusory "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."
Born to Rule
Pu Yi was born in February 1906, and was crowned as Emperor of China at the age of three in December 1908. He lived in the Forbidden City -- forbidden for common men to enter, forbidden for him to leave -- in the centre of Beijing. He was unaware of the revolution in October, 1911 that toppled the Qing Dynasty and installed China's first republican government. Although he was no longer the Emperor, he was allowed to continue living in the City, protected by the "Articles of Favourable Treatment." In 1924, a warlord named Feng Yuxiang seized control of the capital, cancelled the Articles, and expelled him from the Forbidden City.
Pu Yi and his family soon settled in the Japanese Concession in Tianjin, an extraterritorial enclave beyond the reach of warlords or provisional governments. This was the beginning of his involvement with the Japanese, who saw his hereditary role as ruler of the Manchu people (who were ethnically distinct from the Han majority) as a symbolic asset useful to their territorial ambitions in north Asia.
Tempting Prize
The Japanese garrisons in northern Korea (annexed after their 1894 war with China) and in some enclaves in Manchuria (extracted in return for joining the Allied side in World War One) were collectively called the "Guandong Army" ("Kwantung," old style). During the time of the warlords, this expeditionary force consisted of about 12,000 troops organized as one infantry division and six battalions of railway troops providing security for the South Manchuria Railway Company.
The Japanese provided the independent warlord Zhang Zuolin (Chang Tso-Lin, old style), who controlled the three large provinces comprising Manchuria, with supplies, money, military equipment, and an outlet for selling opium (the fastest and most reliable way for a warlord to raise cash). This assured them of enough stability in the region to conduct normal business, but the Guandong Army was dominated by ambitious ultranationalist officers who were anxious to secure a rich prize like Manchuria for the Emperor.
Almost all of the copper, aluminum, oil shale, magnesite, and uranium to be found in China was there, as was three quarters of the lead, zinc and iron ore, and about half of the salt, coal, and gold. One-third of China's railway network was in Manchuria, along with most of its heavy industrial plants, arsenals, and steel mills. The soil was fertile and offered much living space for overcrowded Japan.
They had their chance to grab it before very long. From 1926-28, a man named Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek, old style) led the military forces of the Guomindang (Nationalist Revolutionary Party, the political inheritors of the first legitimate republican government) out of their base area in southeastern China on the "Great Northern Expedition" towards Beijing to subdue the warlords and reunite China by force. As the Expedition drew closer to Beijing in the spring of 1928, Zhang Zuolin (who happened to control the city at that point) prepared to withdraw to Manchuria proper. Fearful that Zhang might rally to the increasingly powerful (and therefore increasingly legitimate) Guomindang, the Guandong Army assassinated him by blowing up his personal armoured train.
However, command of Zhang's troops devolved to his son Zhang Xueliang, who promptly declared his allegiance to Jiang and the Guomindang. Frustrated in their attempts to manipulate Zhang, the officers of the Guandong Army began planning for the day when they would seize Manchuria outright. The support they received from members of the "strike-North" faction in the highest levels of the Imperial Japanese Army and government (who believed Japan could build its empire in northern Asia at the expense of China and the USSR and still stay on good terms with the industrialized anti-Communist West, and were opposed by the "strike-South" faction), combined with the resurgence of militarism in Japanese society, ensured that the Army became a regional power operating independently of the civilian government in Tokyo.
Seizure of Manchuria
On 19 September 1931, the Japanese launched a surprise attack with their single infantry division. Zhang had 250,000 regulars organized into 35 infantry brigades, ten cavalry brigades, and nine field artillery regiments, with about 100 modern aircraft to support them, but they were simply overwhelmed by the speed and shock of the attack and faded into the hills. Most of southern Manchuria was in Japanese hands in two days. In November and December, they completed their conquest of northern Manchuria, fronted by a hastily assembled force of Manchurian mercenaries claiming to be "volunteer fighters for Manchurian independence." Most of them were defectors from Zhang's army. Of course, Tokyo had not known in advance of this attack, but faced with its success, they reinforced the Guandong Army with three more divisions.
By February 1932, the Japanese had consolidated their hold on the three main provinces of Manchuria. It was important for Japan to legitimize its seizure of Manchuria and mollify the League of Nations by creating the facade of an independent, functioning state ruled by its hereditary leader. Time to put Pu Yi to work: they proposed to him that he become Chief Executive of the new Republic of Manzhouguo, whose National Assembly would in time restore the imperial system and make him an emperor again. Pu Yi agreed, and the process of establishing a fake republic with a parliament of collaborators, a puppet head of state, and all the ceremonial trappings was quickly completed.
Manzhouguo was formally declared as a new republic, separate from China and with its capital at Changchun, in March 1932. Japan formally recognized Manzhouguo in September 1932, and a secret protocol to the treaty establishing this stated that "Manzhouguo shall entrust the national defence and maintenance of public peace in the future to Japan, all necessary expenditures to be borne by Manzhouguo."
The new republic would pay for its own occupation many times over: it was never to be anything more than a facade. As Chief Executive, Pu Yi presided over a State Council with a Prime Minister and eight other departmental ministers. In reality, though, each Chinese minister had a Japanese "Chief of General Affairs" who had the real power and made the decisions. Pu Yi and the State Council were "advised and assisted" by a Board of General Affairs that had a Japanese chief, a Japanese Advisory Board composed of senior military officers, and the Japanese ambassador to Manzhouguo just happened to be the commander of the Guandong Army itself.
This structure was mirrored throughout the rest of Manzhouguo: the Japanese did all the managing, administration, and profiteering while the Manchu natives provided all the labour. The Lytton Commission, sent by the League of Nations to investigate the "Manchuria Incident", came and went without concrete result except that Japan withdrew from the League in April 1933. In February 1933, they completed their conquest of Manchuria by invading the province of Jehol with 25,000 Japanese and 25,000 Manzhouguoan troops. They were opposed by about 160,000 Chinese troops, who offered no effective resistance. Their advance halted at the Great Wall itself, the demarcation line of Han China and just 13 miles short of Beijing.
From 1933-37, the Guandong Army concerned itself with opening up Manzhouguo for exploitation by Japanese concerns, reorganizing its society for maximal control and profit. Over a million Japanese would settle in Manzhouguo's cities and rural areas, pushing the native Manchus aside when it suited them, while millions more immigrated from Korea and China. They forced massive investment in heavy industry, so that the only sources of even basic consumer products like clothing were Japanese. They instituted the "pao-chia" system of social control, where whole neighbourhoods were organized to spy on each other and were collectively punished for any individual's misdeeds. They also formed the "Concordia Association," supposed to be a political party but in reality another arm of the Japanese secret police. They also established a state monopoly in drug trafficking.
Farmers were subsidized to grow opium poppies, and all opium addicts were required to register with the government to receive a weekly ration at below-market prices. By 1938 there were over one million registered addicts.
Meanwhile, the units of the Guandong Army and the new Manzhouguoan Army were busy controlling the borders and "suppressing bandits" in the countryside. The bandits were a mixture of the remnants of Zhang's troops and peasant guerrillas, and their numbers peaked at an estimated 320,000 in late 1932. The remarkable brutality and efficiency of the Japanese had reduced their numbers to only a few thousand by 1940. The puppet troops who had followed the Japanese into northern Manchuria and Jehol formed the core of the Manzhouguoan Army. At first they were unreliable and often deserted, but their quality improved over time. Besides providing over 100,000 police, border guards, and labour troops, the standing army during the 1930's consisted of about 100,000 troops organized into 26 infantry and eight cavalry brigades. These units were really just an extension of the Guandong Army: they were organized along Japanese lines, used Japanese equipment and tactics (although they were usually not given heavy weapons or artillery) and had Japanese officers. The only unit that was not under direct Japanese command was a 200-man "Imperial Guard" that was part of Pu Yi's personal retinue.
The Past & Present Emperor in Eclipse
Pu Yi faded further into obscurity. The Japanese had permitted him to assume the title of Emperor of Manzhouguo (not Great Qing Emperor of China, as he had been, for this would theoretically put him on an equal footing with Hirohito) in March 1934. Besides two short state visits to Japan in 1935 and 1940, he rarely left his walled palace in Changchun. Reviled by the Manchurians, humiliated and manipulated by the Japanese, he was the least consequential ruler in the world.
By 1936 Emperor Hirohito had decided for the "strike-South" faction. In July 1937, the Japanese crossed the Great Wall and struck southward into China. The number of divisions assigned to the Guandong Army rose steadily but their quality and size declined as the campaign in China and Southeast Asia drained replacements, fuel, and equipment away from the Manchurian front. A number of incidents along the 2,500 mile border with the USSR, climaxed by the Nomonhan Campaign in the summer of 1939, gave the Army some tense times. However, the outbreak of a general war in Europe diverted the Soviets from further action, so the front would remain quiet until the closing days of the war.
As the front moved closer to Japan itself in late 1944, the Guandong Army lost more and more of its troops and equipment to the defence of southern China and the Home Islands. They tried to make up for these withdrawals and the threat of Soviet invasion by mobilizing the Japanese colonists in Manzhouguo. 250,000 of them would be called up by mid-1945, and they formed nine new divisions, seven new brigades, and filled out the ranks of the 21 divisions already there. Quality had suffered greatly: most of the older divisions were upgraded border garrison units, and the best of them were rated at only about 30% of the power of a prewar division. There were few officers or NCO's, no anti-tank weapons of any type, and only about one-third the proper amounts of automatic weapons, field guns, and ammunition.
The Manzhouguoan Army, which by this time had been reorganized into two infantry and two cavalry divisions, 12 infantry brigades, and four Mongolian cavalry regiments, could no longer be relied upon to offer a serious defence. Stalin wanted Manchuria for the same reasons as the Japanese did, and by August of 1945 had assembled a force of over 1.5 million men supported by 25,000 guns and mortars, 5,500 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 5,000 aircraft to take it. On the morning of 9 August, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima and the day of the destruction of Nagasaki, they attacked. The Guandong Army fought with what it had, but they were simply overwhelmed. Almost 600,000 of them were captured and sent to Soviet labour camps, from which some survivors did not return until 1955. The Manzhouguoan Army ceased to exist: where it was not simply brushed aside, it deserted. On 15 August, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender over the radio and hostilities ceased.
End of an Emperor
Two days later, Pu Yi formally declared the Republic of Manzhouguo and its government dissolved and abdicated as its Emperor. The following day he was captured by Russian paratroops at the Shenyang (Mukden, old style) airport while waiting for a plane to take him to Tokyo. He stayed in Soviet custody until 1950, when he was handed over to the new People's Republic of China. He was kept in a detention centre until 1959, when he was released after demonstrating his conversion to Maoism. Until he died of cancer in 1967, he divided his time between working as a common gardener in Beijing and working on his memoirs. The last Emperor of the Chinese died as he had lived, in lonely obscurity.
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© Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz.
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