Sino-German cooperation until 1941

Sino-German cooperation
Sino-German cooperation played a great role in Chinese history of the early and mid-20th century
Chinese name
Chinese	中德合作
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhōng-Dé Hézuò Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Zong1 Dak1 Hap6 Zok3
German name
German	Chinesisch-Deutsche Kooperation

Cooperation between Germany and China was instrumental in modernising the industry and the armed forces of the Republic of China prior to the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Republic of China, which succeeded the Qing Dynasty in 1912, was fraught with factional warlordism and foreign incursions. The Northern Expedition of 1928 nominally unified China under Kuomintang (KMT) control, yet Imperial Japan loomed as the greatest foreign threat. The Chinese urgency for modernising its military and national defence industry, coupled with Germany's need for a stable supply of raw materials, put the two states on the road of close relations from the late 1920s to the late 1930s. Although intense cooperation lasted only until the start of the war with Japan in 1937, and concrete measures at industrial reform started in earnest only in 1936, it had a profound effect on Chinese modernisation and the capability of the Chinese to resist the Japanese in the war.

The earliest Sino-German trading occurred overland through Siberia, and was subject to transit taxes by the Russian government. In order to make trading more profitable, Prussia decided to take the sea route and the first German merchant ships arrived in China, then under the Qing Dynasty, as part of the Royal Prussian Asian Trading Company of Emden, in the 1750s. In 1861, following China's defeat in the Second Opium War, the Treaty of Tientsin was signed, which opened formal commercial relations between various European states, including Prussia, with China.