Tientsin Incident

Tientsin incident

Date	June 14, 1939 – August 20, 1939
Location	Tianjin, China
Result	Compromise solution

Belligerents

United Kingdom

Empire of Japan

The Tientsin incident (天津事件^?) 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.

Starting in 1931 with the seizure of Manchuria, Japan had a policy of attempting to reduce Chinese independence with the 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 was not entirely occupied, as the Japanese mostly continued to respect the integrity and extraterritoriality of foreign concessions in Tientsin until 1941. In December 1937, 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's if implemented. Since the beginning of the war in July 1937, the Japanese had taken much of northern China including the former capital of Beijing while in the Yangtze valley, they had taken Shanghai and China's capital, Nanking.

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