The Jinan incident (; formerly romanised Tsinan) or 3 May Tragedy () began as a 3 May 1928 dispute between Chiang Kai-shek's National Revolutionary Army (NRA) and Japanese soldiers and civilians in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province in China, which then escalated into an armed conflict between the NRA and the Imperial Japanese Army. Japanese soldiers had been deployed to Shandong province to protect Japanese commercial interests in the province, which were threatened by the advance of Chiang's Northern Expedition to reunite China under a Kuomintang government. When the NRA approached Jinan, the Beiyang government-aligned army of Sun Chuanfang withdrew from the area, allowing for the peaceful capture of the city by the NRA. NRA forces initially managed to coexist with Japanese troops stationed around the Japanese consulate and businesses, and Chiang Kai-shek arrived to negotiate their withdrawal on 2 May. This peace was broken the following morning, however, when a dispute between the Chinese and Japanese resulted in the deaths of 13–16 Japanese civilians. The resulting conflict resulted in thousands of casualties on the NRA side, which fled the area to continue northwards toward Beijing, and left the city under Japanese occupation until March 1929. Background During the Northern Expedition to reunite China under a Kuomintang (KMT) government, foreign concessions and consulates in Nanjing in March 1927 and Hankou in April 1927 were attacked by the KMT's National Revolutionary Army (NRA) soldiers and Chinese civilians respectively in what came to be called the Nanking and Hankou incidents. Following these incidents, NRA commander Chiang Kai-shek made repeated statements to the effect that he would not tolerate anti-foreign attacks by his soldiers, and the KMT foreign minister Huang Fu said that they would "protect to their fullest ability the lives and property of foreigners in China in accordance with international law and usage". Despite these assurances, foreign powers, including the Japanese, remained concerned about the safety of their economic and political interests in China, and resolved that the Nanking incident would not be repeated. When the NRA forced back the Beiyang government-aligned "National Pacification Army" warlord coalition to Shandong province in May–June 1927, the Japanese, who considered the province within their sphere of influence, deployed four-thousand troops of the Kwantung Army to the cities of Qingdao and Jinan in what they called the , ostensibly to protect Japanese civilians in anticipation of an NRA advance. NRA commander Chiang Kai-shek wanted