Manchukuo

[GemState]

Manchukuo was a fascinating project. It was a State that was a constitutional monarchy in Manchuria under the de facto control of Japan from 1932-45 after most of the local elite Chinese opted to collaborate with the Japanese immediately after they took over. It had quite a lot of international recognition.

Through the help of Japan a mostly agricultural region that was often plagued by bandits turned into one of the most modern countries in East Asia. It became the 4th biggest ecconomy in Asia, Changchun was the largest city in the Orient. Manchukuo’s industrial output was about 60% of Italy’s at that time. There was a lot of greenery, urban sewage, and underground electric wires were maintained on the main roads.




Recently it's become more fondly looked at as Manchuria has essentially become China's Rustbelt after years of exploitation. It's a shame, it could have been another South Korea/Japan

 

[Burqad]

It was a backwards apartheid state where the Japanese offloaded all of their work onto coolies

 

[GemState]

It was a backwards apartheid state where the Japanese offloaded all of their work onto coolies

While the Japanese were in command, they were not shying away from using Chinese propaganda techniques in order to persuade Chinese officials to work with them. In practice, of course, Manchukuo was a Japanese puppet. But, the propaganda underlying Japan's conquest of Manchuria was fitted to both reassure, and please, the local native populations.

This is important to understand in order to understand the Japanese ideology behind their conquests throughout the 1920-40s. It was not solely driven by economical gain, like that of Western imperialism in Asia which sought to profit from unequal trade treaties, but rather that the races of Asia were to be "wedded" together in order for a final showdown between Asia and the West. That being said, there was certainly major economic interests in Manchuria for Japanese businessmen, and one would be wrong to totally ignore those factors when considering this.