IB History Japanese Military Rule Including Three Alls Policy Notes

Japanese Occupation: Atrocity, Administration, and Resistance

1. Japan occupied eastern and northern China from 1937 to 1945. In that time it established puppet governments, exploited Chinese economic resources, and carried out systematic violence against civilian populations. The scale and character of Japanese rule shaped Chinese nationalism for generations.
2. The most infamous single event was the Nanjing Massacre (December 1937-January 1938). After Nanjing fell on 13 December 1937, Japanese forces killed an estimated 200,000-300,000 civilians and prisoners of war over six weeks.
3. Tens of thousands of women and girls were raped. The city was systematically looted and burned.

Three Alls Policy and Wang Jingwei Regime

1. The Three Alls Policy (Sanko Sakusen) was formally applied from 1940 in areas of northern China where CCP guerrilla networks operated. Japanese commanders authorised units to destroy entire villages suspected of supporting resistance fighters: kill all inhabitants, burn all structures, loot all supplies.
2. The policy was deliberately collective: it punished communities rather than individuals.
3. In 1940, Japan established a formal puppet government in Nanjing under Wang Jingwei, a senior GMD leader and former rival of Jiang Jieshi.
4. Wang genuinely believed that collaboration with Japan offered China a better outcome than continued resistance. His Nanjing National Government administered occupied territories, maintained police forces, and ran economic extraction programmes.
5. Most Chinese treated it as an instrument of Japanese power, not a legitimate government.

1. Japan's economic exploitation of occupied China was systematic. Chinese industrial equipment was dismantled and shipped to Japan. Agricultural output was redirected to feed Japanese forces, and forced labour was used in mines and factories. By 1945, Japan had extracted an estimated $50 billion (in 1945 values) from occupied China.

Japanese Military Rule and the Three Alls Policy: Causation, Limits, and Historical Debate

1. Japanese rule combined direct military violence with attempts to govern through collaboration. These methods aimed to extract resources, secure communications, and isolate resistance from civilian support.
2. The Three Alls Policy intensified the war in northern China by targeting villages suspected of helping guerrillas. Destruction, killing, and seizure of supplies imposed collective punishment on communities.
3. The Wang Jingwei regime offered an appearance of Chinese administration, but its authority depended on Japanese protection. Collaboration reflected calculation, coercion, and local survival as well as ideological support.
4. Occupation varied by region. Cities, transport corridors, and rural zones experienced different levels of control, which prevents the idea of a single uniform occupation system.
5. Brutality could disrupt resistance in the short term but also deepened hostility. Civilian suffering supplied both the GMD and CCP with evidence for anti-Japanese mobilisation.
6. The political result was contradictory. Japan extracted resources and held key territory, yet coercive rule made durable legitimacy impossible and strengthened the nationalist claims of its opponents.

1. Japanese rule in China combined terror with administration: neither alone explains its failure. Coercion won territory and resources in the short term, but it also handed both the CCP and the GMD a shared grievance to build national legitimacy on.