Tientsin incident
The was an international incident created by a blockade by the Imperial Japanese Army's Japanese Northern China Area Army of the British settlements in the north China treaty port of Tientsin (modern day Tianjin) in June 1939. Originating as a minor administrative dispute, it escalated into a major diplomatic incident. Background Starting in 1931 with the seizure of Manchuria, Japan had a policy of attempting to reduce Chinese independence with an ultimate aim of placing all of China within the Japanese sphere of influence. Britain's relations with China had not been particularly warm or close before the mid-1930s, but the rise of Japan had improved relations between London and Nanking. The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote: "In the middle 1930s, if China had a Western friend it was Britain. In 1935–36 Britain gave China real help with its finances and showed real concern about Japanese encroachments in north China. Realising that the only hope of inducing Japan to moderate these activities lay in an Anglo-American joint front, Britain proposed that a number of times, but was always rebuffed by Washington". In turn, improved Anglo-Chinese ties had strained relations between London and Tokyo. On July 30, 1937, Tientsin fell to the Empire of Japan as part of a military operation in the Second Sino-Japanese War, but it was not entirely occupied since the Japanese mostly continued to respect the integrity and extraterritoriality of foreign concessions in Tientsin until 1941. In December 1937, the Japanese took Shanghai, China's business capital. It was a major blow to the government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, as 85% of all Chinese government revenue came from Shanghai. After the loss of Shanghai, the economic ability of China to continue to resist Japan was very much in doubt. Flush with a series of Japanese victories in China, in early January 1938, the Japanese prime minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoe, announced a set of sweeping "non-negotiable" war aims that would have transformed China into a virtual protectorate of Japan if they had been implemented. Since the beginning of the war in July 1937, the Japanese had taken much of northern China, including the former capital of Beijing and in the Yangtze Valley, they had taken Shanghai and China's capital, Nanking. After taking Nanking on 14 December 1937, the Japanese had perpetrated the infamous Rape of Nanking in which the Imperial Army had gone on a rampage of arson, looting, torture, rape and murder that destroyed Nanking and killed somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 civilians. After the victories, Konoe regarded the war as good as won. Ominously for the Chinese, Konoe spoke of the status of Manchukuo as the ideal basis for a Sino-Japanese peace. Sometimes, Konoe went even further and mentioned the protectorate that the Japanese had imposed on Korea in 1905, which had been followed by Korea's annexation in 1910, as an ideal basis for peace. Whether Manchukuo or Korea was the model of new relationship with Japan, Konoe was quite open that the Chinese had to accept a