The Demilitarized Zone Peace Preservation Corps was a

police force The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...

created by the

Tanggu Truce The Tanggu Truce, sometimes called the , was a ceasefire that was signed between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan in Tanggu District, Tianjin, on May 31, 1933. It formally ended the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which had begun ...

to patrol and maintain order in the

demilitarized zone A demilitarized zone (DMZ or DZ) is an area in which treaties or agreements between nations, military powers or contending groups forbid military installations, activities, or personnel. A DZ often lies along an established frontier or bounda ...

extending from south of the

Great Wall The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' wall") is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups ...

, to a line north east of the Bai River in

Hebei Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, and 0 ...

province in northern China during the late 1930s.

Background and history

Per the terms of the Tanggu Truce, the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

withdrew to the line of the

, and regular units of the National Revolutionary Army of the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

government of the Republic of China was withdrawn to south of the new demilitarized zone. Within the zone itself, which partially encompassed the major cities of

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popu ...

and

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

public order In criminology, public-order crime is defined by Siegel (2004) as "crime which involves acts that interfere with the operations of society and the ability of people to function efficiently", i.e., it is behaviour that has been labelled criminal ...

was to be maintained by a lightly armed “Peace Preservation Corps”. Per the terms of the Tanggu Truce, any disputes that could not be resolved by the Peace Preservation Corps would be settled by agreement through direct discussions between the Japanese and Chinese governments. A secret clause of the Tanggu Truce excluded any of the

Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and until 1933, large volunteer armies waged war against Japanese and Manchukuo forces over much of Northeast China. Due to Chiang Kai-shek's policy of non-resistance, the Japanese were soon able to esta ...

from the Peace Preservation Corps. This effectively meant that the Japanese Army was able to dominate the Peace Preservation Corp with demobilized troops from the collaborationist proxy Chinese armies which had participated in the

Battle of Rehe The Battle of Rehe (, sometimes called the Battle of Jehol) was the second part of Operation Nekka, a campaign by which the Empire of Japan successfully captured the Inner Mongolian province of Rehe from the Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang and an ...

and the subsequent attack on the Great Wall and the intrusion into Hebei. Some 1,000 men were recruited into the Corps from the former troops of

warlord A warlord is a person who exercises military, economic, and political control over a region in a country without a strong national government; largely because of coercive control over the armed forces. Warlords have existed throughout much of h ...

Shih Yusan and a further 2,000 men from the forces of Li Chi-chun.Jowett,Rays of the Rising Sun, pg. 39-40 At the end of 1935, with the proclamation of the Autonomous Government of Eastern Hopei, the Peace Preservation Corps was disbanded, and its forces were absorbed into the new East Hopei Army.

Notes

Sources

* Jowett, Phillip S., Rays of The Rising Sun, Armed Forces of Japan's Asian Allies 1931–45, Volume I: China & Manchuria, 2004. Helion & Co. Ltd., 26 Willow Rd., Solihull, West Midlands, England.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Chapter 5: Japanese Aggression Against China
*{{cite book , last = Fenby , first = Jonathan , year = 2003 , title = Chiang Kai-shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost , publisher = Carroll & Graf Publishers , isbn = 0-7867-1318-6 , url-access = registration , url = https://archive.org/details/chiangkaishekchi00fenb Second Sino-Japanese War Peacekeeping operations Demilitarized zones