"A new order in East Asia", a scheme for invading and enslaving China, was proposed by Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe on November 3, 1938, in the "Statement of the Imperial Government". It prescribed that Japan, Manchukuo (the puppet state the Japanese imperialists created after their occupation of China's northeast in 1931) and the Kuomintang government join in opposition to communism, thereby placing China under Japan's political, economic and cultural control.