What were Japanese plans for China, after a victory in the Sino-Japanese War ?

[skarosianlifeform]

Were the Japanese ready to accept a conditional surrender from the RoC ?

Would they have demanded complete demilitarization of the RoC ? Or "merely" restricting the RoC military forces to infantry only ? Or maybe even let the RoC have a limited amount of tanks, combat vehicles and artillery ?

For that matter, would they even have tolerated the continued existence of the RoC (as a satellite state), leading to two Chinese states ruled by Chiang and Wang under the Japanese umbrella ?
Or would they have annexed the whole of China to the "Reorganized National Government of China" ruled by Wang Jingwei, under direct Japanese occupation ?
Or even dropped the pretence of puppet local governments and directly annexed China ?

Would they have tried the equivalent of Generalplan Ost (ie. murdering the majority of Han Chinese and other ethnicities through starvation, overworking and other means ; turning the surviving minority into chattel slaves that had zero rights ; and settling the freed space with Japanese colonists) over the whole of China ? Or merely treated China as a resource extraction area, while letting Japanese colonists settle in Manchuria and coastal areas ?

 

[Captain Homicide]

Would they have tried the equivalent of Generalplan Ost (ie. murdering the majority of Han Chinese and other ethnicities through starvation, overworking and other means ; turning the surviving minority into chattel slaves that had zero rights ; and settling the freed space with Japanese colonists) over the whole of China ?

I’ve never seen any plans for a Japanese equivalent of Generalplan Ost. They were mass murdering racists but they never made an explicitly genocidal plan to kill 75% of Chinese, 50% of Vietnamese, 65% of Thai etc like the Reich did.

Or merely treated China as a resource extraction area, while letting Japanese colonists settle in Manchuria and coastal areas ?

Everything I’ve read points to this. It would likely be an Asian version of the Congo Free State.

 

[Canuck Wingnut]

"The Japanese" were not a unified organization with a single plan for China. The Second Sino-Japanese War was largely begun as a result of actions by mid-level officers in the Kwantung Army; but once the Japanese government committed to the war the Navy felt the need to get involved and launched an offensive at Shanghai that the Kwantung Army did not desire. So the Kwantung Army and the IJN had different war plans and goals, but also the Imperial Japanese Army Headquarters in Tokyo launched efforts to rein in the Kwantung Army out of fear of their independence, leading to infighting between two Army factions. This is before you consider the civilian government, itself obviously split into multiple parties (or, after the formation of the Imperial Way, multiple factions) and eager to assert some control over events.

During the war itself, the Japanese backed multiple separate puppet Chinese regimes simultaneously, despite the overlapping claims to control the country and infighting that generated. Some of those regimes, notably the Wang Jinwei regime (the largest) maintained significant military forces (under Japanese control) others, such as the Wang Kemin regime, were not permitted to raise troops.

In short, the Japanese lacked a single unified plan for ending the war in China. The plans they did develop they were unable to execute without achieving consensus amongst themselves. This makes attempting to define what they would have done in case of victory futile, as it would most likely have been quite changed from the various plans they discussed during the war.