Manchukuo (Manzhouguo) officially existed on the territory of former Manchuria from its establishment on March 1, 1932, until Russian troops marched into its capital Xinjing on August 20, 1945. In Chinese it is usually given the prefix wei (false, bogus) in order to document China's refusal to recognize the Japanese-led puppet regime as a state.

At the Peace Treaty of Portsmouth following the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-05, Japan received the regions on the Liaodong peninsula formerly leased by Russia (the Guandong region), as well as the railway lines south of Changchun…