Demilitarized Zone Peace Preservation Corps

Last updated

The Demilitarized Zone Peace Preservation Corps was a police force created by the Tanggu Truce to patrol and maintain order in the demilitarized zone extending from south of the Great Wall, to a line north east of the Bai River in Hebei province in northern China during the late 1930s.

Contents

Background and history

Japanese Propaganda, Unarmed zone in East Hebei. Fei Wu Zhuang Di Dai .png
Japanese Propaganda, Unarmed zone in East Hebei.

Per the terms of the Tanggu Truce, the Imperial Japanese Army withdrew to the line of the Great Wall, and regular units of the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China was withdrawn to south of the new demilitarized zone. Within the zone itself, which partially encompassed the major cities of Tianjin and Beijing, public order was to be maintained by a lightly armed “Peace Preservation Corps”. Per the terms of the Tanggu Truce, any disputes that could not be resolved by the Peace Preservation Corps would be settled by agreement through direct discussions between the Japanese and Chinese governments.

A secret clause of the Tanggu Truce excluded any of the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies from the Peace Preservation Corps. [1] This effectively meant that the Japanese Army was able to dominate the Peace Preservation Corp with demobilized troops from the collaborationist proxy Chinese armies which had participated in the Battle of Rehe and the subsequent attack on the Great Wall and the intrusion into Hebei. Some 1,000 men were recruited into the Corps from the former troops of warlord Shi Yousan and a further 2,000 men from the forces of Li Jizhun. [2]

At the end of 1935, with the proclamation of the Autonomous Government of Eastern Hebei, the Peace Preservation Corps was disbanded, and its forces were absorbed into the new East Hebei Army.

Notes

  1. Fenby, Chiang kai Shek pp,282
  2. Jowett,Rays of the Rising Sun, pg. 39-40

Sources

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern Expedition</span> 1926–1928 Kuomintang military campaign

The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The purpose of the campaign was to reunify China, which had become fragmented in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1911. The expedition was led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and was divided into two phases. The first phase ended in a 1927 political split between two factions of the KMT: the right-leaning Nanjing faction, led by Chiang, and the left-leaning faction in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei. The split was partially motivated by Chiang's Shanghai Massacre of Communists within the KMT, which marked the end of the First United Front. In an effort to mend this schism, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as the commander of the NRA in August 1927, and went into exile in Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Revolutionary Army</span> Military unit

The National Revolutionary Army, sometimes shortened to Revolutionary Army (革命軍) before 1928, and as National Army (國軍) after 1928, was the military arm of the Kuomintang from 1925 until 1947 in China. It also became the regular army of the Republican era during the KMT's period of party rule beginning in 1928. It was renamed the Republic of China Armed Forces after the 1947 Constitution, which instituted civilian control of the military.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanggu Truce</span> 1933 ceasefire between the Republic of China and Empire of Japan

The Tanggu Truce, sometimes called the Tangku Truce, was a ceasefire unequal treaty that was signed between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan in Tanggu, Tianjin, on May 31, 1933. It formally ended the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which had begun in 1931.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">He Yingqin</span> Chinese general and politician

He Yingqin also Ho Ying-chin, was a Chinese politician and one of the most senior generals of the Kuomintang (KMT) during Nationalist China, and a close ally of Chiang Kai-shek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Defense of the Great Wall</span> Army campaign between China and Japan before the Second Sino-Japanese War

The defense of the Great Wall was a campaign between the armies of Republic of China and Empire of Japan, which took place before the Second Sino-Japanese War officially commenced in 1937 and after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. It is known in Japanese as Operation Nekka and in many English sources as the First Battle of Hopei.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Rehe</span>

The Battle of Rehe was the second part of Operation Nekka, a campaign by which the Empire of Japan successfully captured the Inner Mongolian province of Rehe from the Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang and annexed it to the new state of Manchukuo. The battle was fought from February 21 to March 1, 1933.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sun Dianying</span> Chinese warlord and general (1887–1948)

Sun Dianying was a Chinese bandit leader, warlord, and National Revolutionary Army commander who fought in the Warlord Era, Second Sino-Japanese War, and Chinese Civil War, earning notoriety for changing sides multiple times in course of these conflicts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pang Bingxun</span>

Pang Bingxun was a high-ranking nationalist military commander who fought against the Imperial Japanese Army and Chinese Communist Army. He stopped the IJA 5th Division led by General Seishirō Itagaki, one of the principal architects of the 1931 Manchurian incident, from capturing Linyi and converging with General Rensuke Isogai's IJA 10th Division at Tai'erzhuang District, foiling their plan to assault Xuzhou.

The He-Umezu Agreement was a secret agreement between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China that was concluded on 10 June 1935, two years prior to the outbreak of general hostilities during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The East Hebei Army was raised from the former soldiers of the Peace Preservation Corps that had been created by the Tangku Truce of 31 May 1933. The Demilitarized Zone Peace Preservation Corps had been the "neutral" force policing the demilitarized area south of the Great Wall when Yin Ju-keng, at the instigation of the Japanese, proclaimed an Autonomous Government of Eastern Hebei in November 1935, with its capital at Tongzhou.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Hebei Autonomous Government</span> Japanese puppet/buffer state in northern China from 1935 to 1938

The East Hebei Autonomous Government, also known as the East Ji Autonomous Government and the East Hebei Autonomous Anti-Communist Government, was a short-lived late-1930s state in northern China. It has been described by historians as either a Japanese puppet state or a buffer state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yin Ju-keng</span> 20th-century politician in Republican China and puppet states of Imperial Japan

Yin Ju-keng; was a politician in the early Republic of China, later noted for his role as chairman in the Japanese-controlled East Hebei Autonomous Government and subsequent puppet regimes, such as the Wang Jingwei regime, during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collaborationist Chinese Army</span> Military unit

The term Collaborationist Chinese Army refers to the military forces of the puppet governments founded by Imperial Japan in mainland China during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. They include the armies of the Provisional (1937–1940), Reformed (1938–1940) and Reorganized National Governments of the Republic of China (1940–1945), which absorbed the former two regimes.

The Tongzhou mutiny, sometimes referred to as the Tongzhou Massacre, was an assault on Japanese civilians and troops by the collaborationist East Hebei Army in Tongzhou, China, on 29 July 1937, shortly after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which marked the official beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tang Juwu</span>

Tang Juwu, Tang Chu-wu, 唐聚五,(20 April 1898 – 18 May 1939), Chinese officer, general of one of the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies resisting the pacification of Manchukuo.

Li Jizhun (1875–?), a Chinese general from the beginning of the Republic of China, leader of a Japanese puppet force in southeast Manchukuo from 1933 -1935.

The Inner Mongolian campaign in the period from 1933 to 1936 were part of the ongoing invasion of northern China by the Empire of Japan prior to the official start of hostilities in the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1931, the invasion of Manchuria secured the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo and in 1933, Operation Nekka detached the province of Rehe from the Republic of China. Blocked from further advance south by the Tanggu Truce, the Imperial Japanese Army turned its attention west, towards the Inner Mongolian provinces of Chahar and Suiyuan, with the goal of establishing a northern China buffer state. In order to avoid overt violation of the Truce, the Japanese government used proxy armies in these campaigns while Chinese resistance was at first only provided by Anti-Japanese resistance movement forces in Chahar. The former included in the Inner Mongolian Army, the Manchukuo Imperial Army, and the Grand Han Righteous Army. Chinese government forces were overtly hostile to the anti-Japanese resistance and resisted Japanese aggression only in Suiyuan in 1936.

Liu Guitang was a Chinese bandit and soldier, involved in the Japanese attempt to control Chahar province in 1933. Noted for switching sides several times and returning to banditry. Later, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, he commanded some Nanjing Government puppet troops.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North China Buffer State Strategy</span> Series of political maneuverings in North China undertaken by Japan

The North China Buffer State Strategy is the general term for a series of political manoeuvrings Japan undertook in the five provinces of northern China, Hebei, Chahar, Suiyuan, Shanxi, and Shandong. It was an operation to detach all of northern China from the power of the Nationalist Government and put it under Japanese control or influence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War in Ningxia (1934)</span>

The war in Ningxia of 1934, also known as Sun Dianying Campaign, was a minor civil war for control over the Republic of China's province of Ningxia, fought between the warlord Sun Dianying and an alliance against him, consisting of the Ma clique, Governor Yan Xishan of Shanxi, and the Nationalist government of China. The conflict erupted as the unintended consequence of a plan by China's supreme leader, Chiang Kai-shek, to weaken the Ma clique, and resulted in the destruction of Sun Dianying's private army.