Chapter 35 North China: Confrontation in exercises

The 29th Army stationed in Hebei, Chahar, and Pingjin is at the forefront of national defense.By 1936, tensions between the students and the Twenty-Ninth Army had eased.Liu Shaoqi and other communists did a lot of work to promote the anti-Japanese war in the army, and the attitude of the lower-level officers in the 29th Army was particularly fierce. The Twenty-Ninth Army was able to enter Beiping, Tianjin, and Hebei provinces from the remote and barren Chahar Province. It was inseparable from the tolerance and acquiescence of the Japanese side.Although this is an army with a history of anti-Japanese heroes. During the Battle of the Great Wall, the officers and soldiers of the 29th Army performed well in Xifengkou and Luowenyu. The general of the 29th Army became a pawn of the Japanese Empire.The self-confidence of the Japanese is the worry of the Chinese. When the Hebei-Chahar Political Affairs Committee appeared at the end of 1935, the Chinese people doubted whether Song Zheyuan and other senior generals of the 29th Army were loyal to the motherland.

But after a few months, the Japanese began to despair.Although the 29th Army used the power of Japan to resist Chiang Kai-shek's pressure, the officers and soldiers all had a strong sense of patriotism, and the anti-Japanese sentiments of the soldiers and junior officers were even stronger. In late March 1936, after inspecting the situation in North China, the military attache of the Japanese embassy in China, Isoya Rensuke, called the Japanese Army Minister Hisuichi Terauchi and proposed a plan to increase troops to Pingjin and expel Song Zheyuan.He said: In order to oppress Song Zheyuan to obey Japan, strengthening the Chinese garrison is a prerequisite.The Japanese Consul General in Tianjin, Kawayue Shigeru, also began to express doubts about the plan to reform Song Zheyuan by stationing troops in North China. He pointed out bluntly: "The Japanese army thought that Song Zheyuan had been bought by Japan, but Song Zheyuan was also from China, and he never wanted Japan to seize the territory of China. It’s okay to see his attitude is ambiguous.” In fact, it was not easy for Song Zheyuan to perfunctory the Japanese’s despotic power without betraying the interests of the central government and the expectations of the people.

In May and June of 1936, the Hirota Koni cabinet suddenly increased its troops in North China under the pretext of preventing the Communist Party. The number of troops stationed in North China increased from less than 3,000 to nearly 10,000 at once, and the distribution locations exceeded the area stipulated in the original treaty. On May 21, Tashiro Kanichiro, the newly appointed commander of the Japanese Army in North China, arrived in Tianjin.The military rank of this commander is lieutenant general, while the previous commanders were only major generals, and the army under his command was renamed from "North China Garrison Army" to "Chinese Garrison Army".The upgrade of the specifications shows that the separation of North China has been officially set as the national policy of the Japanese government. The strength of the "Chinese Garrison Army" is rapidly expanding, with an increase of about 6,000 troops in one year.This army is playing the role that the Japanese Kwantung Army played in the Northeast.

Chinese public opinion was extremely angry. On May 28, Tianjin students marched to protest against the increase of Japanese troops.Even Song Zheyuan, who swallowed his anger, felt irritated and chilled. He and his generals made it clear: "The 29th Army vowed not to compromise with the Japanese side, and vowed not to retreat from North China." In October 1936, the Chinese garrison held a large-scale autumn exercise, showing off its force in order to threaten the military and civilians in North China.Japanese tanks and infantry conducted exercises in Beiping City, using civilian houses, public buildings and civilians as imaginary enemies. The streets from Chaoyangmen to Dongjiaomin Lane were smashed into chaos by tanks.

Not to be outdone, the 29th Army held a military exercise in the Hebei-Chahar area with three divisions in order to show its confrontational attitude and strength. The number of participants exceeded three times that of the Japanese army.Then a massive anti-war exercise was held in Gu'an, Hebei.The participating troops included the 37th Division, the 132nd Division and several special forces, with a total strength of about 50,000 troops.General Song Zheyuan personally went to Panggezhuang to command on the spot.Subsequently, the Wan Fulin Division of the Northeast Army stationed in North China, Shang Zhen's 32nd Division, and Pang Bingxun's 40th Army stationed in Xinxiang, Henan also held relatively large-scale exercises.

For the 29th Army, Japan was finally disappointed.In the second year, they decided to use the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to expel the 29th Army, thus starting a full-scale war of aggression against China.