In 1895, Japan's rise in industrial and military power first found its imperial destiny in its war on decadent China, with its seizure of Taiwan and effective hegemony over Korea. In October 1938, after the fall of Wuhan, Chiang Kai-shek told senior commanders that his initial strategy of aggressive defence had been successfully concluded. In February and then in April 1941, Chiang informed the Americans about operation BARBAROSSA. The Combined Chiefs of Staff of the American and British armed forces would determine worldwide war strategy, except in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but also, in effect, in China. On 7 December 1941, at Pearl Harbor, Japan struck the famous first blow. For Chiang Kai-shek, the threat to China's interests posed by the strategy of Europe first confirmed the value of a Soviet Red Army attack on Japanese forces in China. The civilian economy of Nationalist China was under near-blockade even before the Japanese took Rangoon.