The Marco Polo Bridge Incident provides the Imperial Japanese Army with a pretext for starting the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident, also known as the Lugou Bridge Incident (simplified Chinese: 卢沟桥事变; traditional Chinese: 盧溝橋事變; pinyin: Lúgōuqiáo Shìbiàn) or the Double-Seven Incident (七七事变; 七七事變; Qīqī Shìbiàn), was a July 1937 battle between China's National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army.
Since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, there had been many small incidents along the rail line connecting Beijing with the port of Tianjin, but all had subsided. On this occasion, a Japanese soldier was temporarily absent from his unit opposite Wanping, and the Japanese commander demanded the right to search the town for him. When this was refused, other units on both sides were put on alert, and with tension rising the Chinese Army fired on the Japanese Army which further escalated the situation, even though the missing Japanese soldier had returned to his lines. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident is generally regarded as the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.