"The Sino-Japanese relationship is wholly dependent on the relationship between Japan and the United States."
This simplistic conclusion was drawn by Shigeharu Matsumoto, founding president of the International House of Japan, based on his long journalistic career covering both China and the U.S.
The Shanghai bureau chief of Japan's Domei News Agency in 1936, he sent an exclusive report on the Xi'an incident, in which Chiang Kai-shek was arrested by Zhang Xueliang, a warlord of Manchuria, leading to a truce in the Chinese civil war between Chiang's Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) and the Communist Party, and uniting the two adversaries to fight Japan jointly.