China Formally Declares War on Japan, Germany, and Italy
China had been fighting Japan for four years when it declared war on 9 December 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. The absence of a declaration until then was deliberate on both sides. Japan called the fighting since 1937 an incident, and China avoided a formal declaration because a declared war would have triggered American neutrality legislation and cut off the arms and aircraft it was buying. Pearl Harbor removed the difficulty. Chiang Kai-shek declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy on the same day, and China became one of the Allies — which was the point, since it converted a regional war that nobody was helping into part of a coalition with an interest in Chinese survival. The practical consequences were mixed. Lend-lease supplies came over the Hump from India after the Burma Road was cut, in quantities limited by what a transport aircraft could carry over the Himalayas; Stilwell arrived as chief of staff and quarrelled with Chiang for three years about whether the Nationalist armies would fight the Japanese or save themselves for the Communists. China tied down over a million Japanese troops for the duration. The diplomatic gains were real. The unequal treaties were renounced by Britain and the United States in 1943, the Chinese exclusion act was repealed, Chiang attended the Cairo conference, and China was given a permanent seat on the Security Council. Some 15 to 20 million Chinese died in the war. The Chinese theatre is the least studied major front of the war in the west. It ran for eight years rather than four, it was where Japan lost most of its army's strength, and the Nationalist collapse that followed in 1945 to 1949 is inseparable from what it cost.
- Year: 1941 CE
- Category: Military
