the same time compelled the Chinese to retreat into the interior from the Japanese, so that by 1943 the country was more firmly held by the Chinese government than it had been for seventy years.  After the creation of the People’s Democracy mass immigration into Sinkiang began, in connection with the development of oil fields and of many new industries in the border area between Sinkiang and China proper.  Roads and air communications opened Sinkiang.  Yet, the differences between immigrant Chinese and local, Muslim Turks, continue to play a role.

9 Collision with Japan; further Capitulations

The reign of Wen Tsung (reign name Hsien-feng 1851-1861) was marked throughout by the T’ai P’ing and other rebellions and by wars with the Europeans, and that of Mu Tsung (reign name T’ung-chih:  1862-1874) by the great Mohammedan disturbances.  There began also a conflict with Japan which lasted until 1945.  Mu Tsung came to the throne as a child of five, and never played a part of his own.  It had been the general rule for princes to serve as regents for minors on the imperial throne, but this time the princes concerned won such notoriety through their intrigues that the Peking court circles decided to entrust the regency to two concubines of the late emperor.  One of these, called Tzu Hsi (born 1835), of the Manchu tribe of the Yehe-Nara, quickly gained the upper hand.  The empress Tzu Hsi was one of the strongest personalities of the later nineteenth century who played an active part in Chinese political life.  She played a more active part than any emperor had played for many decades.

Meanwhile great changes had taken place in Japan.  The restoration of the Meiji had ended the age of feudalism, at least on the surface.  Japan rapidly became Westernized, and at the same time entered on an imperialist policy.  Her aims from 1868 onward were clear, and remained unaltered until the end of the second World War:  she was to be surrounded by a wide girdle of territories under Japanese domination, in order to prevent the approach of any enemy to the Japanese homeland.  This girdle was divided into several zones—­(1) the inner zone with the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, Korea, the Ryukyu archipelago, and Formosa; (2) the outer zone with the Marianne, Philippine, and Caroline Islands, eastern China, Manchuria, and eastern Siberia; (3) the third zone, not clearly defined, including especially the Netherlands Indies, Indo-China, and the whole of China, a zone of undefined extent.  The outward form of this subjugated region was to be that of the Greater Japanese Empire, described as the Imperium of the Yellow Race (the main ideas were contained in the Tanaka Memorandum 1927 and in the Tada Interview of 1936).  Round Japan, moreover, a girdle was to be created of producers of raw materials and purchasers of manufactures, to provide Japanese industry with a market.  Japan had sent a delegation of amity to China as early as 1869, and a first Sino-Japanese