In Manchoukuo the Kwantung Army (that section of the Jap anese Army which serves in the land) is dominant. The other major Japanese unit is the South Manchuria Railway Company. The two are chronically in mildly disguised conflict.
Administratively Manchoukuo is organized in 14 divisions (Chinchow, Antung, Fengtien, Kirin, Chientao, Pinkiang, San kiang, Heiho, Lungkiang, Hsingan—divided into 4 provinces—and Jehol). The organization into the provinces of Chinese days has been altered.
Manchoukuo has had a somewhat anomalous position inter nationally. In 1932 Japan recognized it and negotiated with it a defensive alliance. China in 1939 had not yet accorded it formal recognition. Nor, except for El Salvador, Italy, and the Vatican, had any other Government done so.
Relations with Russia have entailed peculiar difficulties, partly because of the long common frontier, partly because of Russian influence in another neighbour land, Outer Mongolia, but chiefly over the Chinese Eastern railway. After long negotiations, in March 1935, the Russian interest in the line was sold to Man choukuo, but without formal recognition of the new State by Moscow. Thus the already tenuous Russian sphere of influence was finally eliminated. Of the three Powers which in 1931 joined in the condominium, China and Russia had been elbowed out.
Manchoukuo, although held by Japan to be independent, is closely supervised and controlled by Japanese advisers. Presum ably it would fall if not supported by Japanese bayonets. By practically all the rest of the world it is technically regarded as still a part of China. How permanent the Japanese control of Manchuria will be no one should venture confidently to prophesy. The Chinese are not reconciled to it, apparently not even in Manchoukuo itself. Continued clashes with the Russians occur on the borders—notably in 1937 over an island in the Amur, in 1938 near the corner where Korea, Manchoukuo, and Siberia join, and in 1939 on the ill-defined border between Manchoukuo and Outer Mongolia.
on which this economic development has proceeded, and is still proceeding, is the railway system. It offers an avenue of penetra tion into the interior both for Japanese capital and for Chinese immigration and a way of communication with the coast for the export of surplus production. Moreover, the leases of both the S.M.R. and the C.E.R. (now the North Manchuria railway) in cluded a wide zone on either side of the railway line, in which the companies could themselves engage in productive enterprises, work collieries and direct agricultural development. The story of the opening up of the Manchuria steppe is not unlike that of the Canadian prairie with which it is physically comparable, for in both the railway has preceded settlement and further railway construction will bring in its train an expansion of the area under cultivation. The economic development of Manchuria can there fore be best understood after an outline of the railway system. The arterial railway lines are, firstly, the main line of the C.E.R. (N.M.R.) from Manchouli to Suifenho, which when under Rus sian control formed the chord to the arc of the Trans-Siberian, the latter keeping on the outside of the northern river boundary of Manchuria, and, secondly, at right angles to the above, the main line of the S.M.R. from Dairen to Changchun where it connects with a branch of the N.M.R. from Harbin. Harbin is thus the great railway junction and, as Manchuria is a "new" country, the metropolis of northern Manchuria. The corresponding railway junction and metropolis in South Manchuria is Mukden, where the main line of the S.M.R. is joined from the south-east by its own branch from Antung, which is connected with the Korean rail ways, and from the south-west by the Peking-Mukden railway, one of the arterial lines of the Chinese railway system. It is there fore by way of Manchuria that China communicates by rail with Europe. This outline system as well as that of North China was completed before the Revolution of 1911. But while in China Proper, distracted by Civil War, there was very little construction for nearly 20 years after that date, the "new" and comparatively peaceful country of Manchuria, with its constant stream of immi grants, was the scene of active railway development.