Shenyang, in northeast China, is a city of historical significance for both Japan and China. Formerly known as Mukden, it was the last battlefield in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. Imperial Japan, emerging as a modern power after the Meiji Restoration, won a do-or-die war with imperial Russia, which had sought hegemony in East Asia.
As the Ching Dynasty was in decline, many Chinese youths studied in Japan at the time to learn something from a newly rising power. People in Western-ruled Asian countries admired Japan as the only Oriental nation to have defeated a Western power. Arrogant and overconfident, Japan emulated 19th-century Western policies of imperialism and colonialism and expanded its military rule to China and other countries.
In 1931, the Manchurian Incident broke out when a group of Japanese Imperial Army officers stationed in northeast China engineered a bomb explosion on a railway at Liutaochu, near Mukden. The Japanese held the Chinese Army responsible for the blast and used it as a pretext for attacking Chinese Army barracks. The incident eventually led to Japanese Imperial rule over China.