Professor Duan gives lectures in Japan and thus he considerably realizes how important reconciliations between China and Japan and objectification of research are. Moreover, he, from the viewpoints of sheer history, concentrates on the discussion of the Second Sino-Japanese War for a long time. How the Lugociao Incident became an all-out war? What did it matter to Chiang Kai-shek? Professor Duan re-located the Second Sino-Japanese War from the perspective of the revolutionary view of history. Under this condition, we could discover that the War was a crucial event in the second phase of the national revolution.

There’re different angles throughout the studies for the Lugociao Incident while professor Duan stands in the revolutionary view of history: Chiang Kai-shek started the North Expedition with the spirit of revolution. To begin with, he aimed at sweeping away the local warlords while later he determined to fight against the imperialism and to abolish the unfair treats as well as to help the weak nations be independent. When the Great Powers tended to intervene in and even to invade China, those Powers would become the targets of revolution. In the beginning, Japan was not Chiang’s enemy; however, he felt that there lied a hindrance of China’s unity from Japan after the talks with prime minister of Japan in 1927 and hence he distrusted Japan. The next year the Jinan Incident broke out. Chiang considered that the Jinan Incident was the most shameful occurrence to him. Since then conflicts between China and Japan had been inevitable and the invasion of Japan became the must-to-be -swept-out target of revolution.

Nevertheless, Chiang deeply realized that the power of China still couldn’t contend against Japan at that time. Therefore, tolerance was the foremost instruction. On one hand, he could prepare for the better power; on the other hand, he sought to the possibility of peaceful settlement. The authority concerned of Japan thought that China would be forced to surrender if they showed the tough position. Nonetheless, in Chiang’s opinion, actively preparing to show the resolution was the critical point of peaceful settlement. After the conferences in 1937 participants agreed with the decision of actively fighting against Japan. However, the Second Sino-Japanese War was the passive combat and the undeniable choice for China to fulfill the revolution.

After the War Chiang achieved the goal of the second phase of revolution while the aim of the third phase of revolution transferred to anti-communist and fighting against Russia.