This event escalated tensions between China and Japan, contributing to the further deterioration of relations following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
Originally, the Tanggu Agreement of May 1933 established a demilitarized zone to avoid military conflict between Japan and China, prohibiting both sides from entering, and the Chinese police force was to maintain public order.
For this reason, the security force was mainly made up of Han Chinese and horse bandits who had fled from Manchuria to avoid the Japanese army, and these were commonly called "miscellaneous troops."
The East Hebei Anti-Communist Autonomous Government was established as a result of Japan's efforts to separate North China, which was still seeking to expand its influence in the region.
[12][15] At around 7 p.m. on November 20, 1936, about 400 men from the 5th and 6th companies of the Changli Security Force stopped their locomotives on the Beining Railway between Tongzhi and Kaiping, and abducted Major Furuta Ryuzo, commander of the Shanhaiguan garrison, Captain Matsuo Shinichi, commander of the Luanxian garrison, Captain Nagamatsu Kyoichi, medical doctor Katagi Eikyu, and Kazue Kusumi, along with 10 other Japanese passengers.
In addition to Japanese military personnel, approximately 260 non-Chinese civilians living in Tongzhou in accordance with the Boxer Protocol of 1901 were killed in the uprising.
After World War II the Japanese defense team at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) submitted the official statement made in 1937 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan as the inevitable cause of the Sino-Japanese conflicts, but presiding judge Sir William Webb KBE rejected it as evidence.