page_title: Second Sino-Japanese War
section_title: 1937: Full-scale invasion of China
hierarchical_section_title: Second Sino-Japanese War / Course of the war / 1937: Full-scale invasion of China
caption_attribution_description: From en, en:Image:Zangjiesi-declare.jpg, corrected spelling.
context_page_description: The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from 7 July 1937 to 2 September 1945. The start of the war is typically considered to be the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, in which a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops escalated into a full-scale invasion. Some sources in the modern People's Republic of China date the beginning of the war to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In China, it is known as the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
  China fought Japan with aid from the Soviet Union and the United States. After the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts of World War II as a major sector known as the China Burma India Theater. Some scholars consider the start of the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to have been the beginning of World War II. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century.
context_section_description: On the night of July 7, 1937, Chinese and Japanese troops exchanged fire in the vicinity of the Marco Polo (or Lugou) Bridge, a crucial access-route to Beiping. What began as confused, sporadic skirmishing soon escalated into a full-scale battle in which Beiping and its port city of Tianjin fell to Japanese forces (July–August 1937). On July 29, some 5,000 troops of the 1st and 2nd Corps of the East Hopei Army mutinied, turning against the Japanese garrison. In addition to Japanese military personnel, some 260 civilians living in Tongzhou in accordance with the Boxer Protocol of 1901, were killed in the uprising (predominantly Japanese including the police force and also some ethnic Koreans). The Chinese then set fire to and destroyed much of the city. Only around 60 Japanese civilians survived, who provided both journalists and later historians with firsthand witness accounts. As a result of the violence of the mutiny against Japanese civilians, the Tungchow mutiny strongly shook public opinion within Japan.
caption: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced the Kuomintang policy of resistance against Japan at Lushan on July 10, 1937, three days after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
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