Offers a new interpretation of the Chinese nationalists, placing their war of resistance against Japan in the context of their efforts to establish control over their own country and providing a critical reassessment of regional Allied Warfare.
China’s mid-twentieth-century wars pose extraordinary interpretive challenges. The issue is not just that the Chinese fought for such a long time—from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 until the close of the Korean War in 1953—across such vast territory. As Hans van de Ven explains, the greatest puzzles lie in understanding China’s simultaneous external and internal wars. Much is at stake, politically, in how this story is told. Today in its official history and public commemorations, the People’s Republic asserts Chinese unity against Japan during World War II. But this overwrites the era’s stark divisions between Communists and Nationalists, increasingly erasing the civil war from memory. Van de Ven argues that the war with Japan, the civil war, and its aftermath were in fact of a piece—a singular process of conflict and political change. Reintegrating the Communist uprising with the Sino-Japanese War, he shows how the Communists took advantage of wartime to increase their appeal, how fissures between the Nationalists and Communists affected anti-Japanese resistance, and how the fractious coalition fostered conditions for revolution. In the process, the Chinese invented an influential paradigm of war, wherein the Clausewitzian model of total war between well-defined interstate enemies gave way to murky campaigns of national liberation involving diverse domestic and outside belligerents. This history disappears when the realities of China’s mid-century conflicts are stripped from public view. China at War recovers them.
The Chinese Nationalist Army was at war almost continuously from 1931 until 1949 fighting first against the invading Japanese Imperial Army until 1945. This was followed by a four year civil war in which the Nationalist Army fought the Chinese Communists until its final defeat in 1949. Millions of Chinese soldiers fought and died during this eighteen years of conflict and their sacrifice has been largely overshadowed by the events of the Second World War. This new book presents in a large number of period images the history of the Chinese Nationalist Army and its campaigns.
This is the first comprehensive study of popular culture in twentieth-century China, and of its political impact during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (known in China as "The War of Resistance against Japan"). Chang-tai Hung shows in compelling detail how Chinese resisters used a variety of popular cultural forms—especially dramas, cartoons, and newspapers—to reach out to the rural audience and galvanize support for the war cause. While the Nationalists used popular culture as a patriotic tool, the Communists refashioned it into a socialist propaganda instrument, creating lively symbols of peasant heroes and joyful images of village life under their rule. In the end, Hung argues, the Communists' use of popular culture contributed to their victory in revolution.
This deeply researched book describes one of the great forgotten battles of the 20th century. At its height it involved nearly a million Chinese and Japanese soldiers, while sucking in three million civilians as unwilling spectators and, often, victims. It turned what had been a Japanese adventure in China into a general war between the two oldest and proudest civilizations of the Far East. Ultimately, it led to Pearl Harbor and to seven decades of tumultuous history in Asia. The Battle of Shanghai was a pivotal event that helped define and shape the modern world. In its sheer scale, the struggle for ChinaÕs largest city was a sinister forewarning of what was in store for the rest of mankind only a few years hence, in theaters around the world. It demonstrated how technology had given rise to new forms of warfare, or had made old forms even more lethal. Amphibious landings, tank assaults, aerial dogfights and most importantly, urban combat, all happened in Shanghai in 1937. It was a dress rehearsal for World War IIÑor perhaps more correctly it was the inaugural act in the warÑthe first major battle in the global conflict. Actors from a variety of nations were present in Shanghai during the three fateful autumn months when the battle raged. The rich cast included China's ascetic Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Japanese adversary, General Matsui Iwane, who wanted Asia to rise from disunity, but ultimately pushed the continent toward its deadliest conflict ever. Claire Chennault, later of ÒFlying TigerÓ fame, was among the figures emerging in the course of the campaign, as was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In an ironic twist, Alexander von Falkenhausen, a stern German veteran of the Great War, abandoned his role as a mere advisor to the Chinese army and led it into battle against the Japanese invaders. Written by Peter Harmsen, a foreign correspondent in East Asia for two decades, and currently bureau chief in Taiwan for the French news agency AFP, Shanghai 1937 fills a gaping chasm in our understanding of the Second World War.
This book is a timely and solid portrait of modern China from the First Opium War to the Xi Jinping era. Unlike the handful of existing textbooks that only provide narratives, this textbook fashions a new and practical way to study modern China. Written exclusively for university students, A-level or high school teachers and students, it uses primary sources to tell the story of China and introduces them to existing scholarship and academic debate so they can conduct independent research for their essays and dissertations. This book will be required reading for students who embark on the study of Chinese history, politics, economics, diaspora, sociology, literature, cultural, urban and women’s studies. It would be essential reading to journalists, NGO workers, diplomats, government officials, businessmen and travellers.
East Wind offers the first complete, archive-based account of the relationship between China and the British Left, from the rise of modern Chinese nationalism to the death of Mao Tse tung. Beginning with the "Hands Off China" movement of the mid-1920s, Tom Buchanan charts the mobilisation of British opinion in defence of China against Japanese aggression, 1931-1945, and the role of the British left in relations with the People's Republic of China after 1949. He shows how this relationship was placed under stress by the growing unpredictability of Communist China, above all by the Sino-Soviet dispute and the Cultural Revolution, which meant that by the 1960s China was actively supported only by a dwindling group of enthusiasts. The impact of the suppression of the student protests in Tiananmen Square (June 1989) is addressed as an epilogue. East Wind argues that the significance of the left's relationship with China has been unjustly overlooked. There were many occasions, such as the mid-1920s, the late 1930s and the early 1950s, when China demanded the full attention of the British left. It also argues that there is nothing new in the current fascination with China's emergence as an economic power. Throughout these decades the British left was aware of the immense, unrealised potential of the Chinese economy, and of how China's economic growth could transform the world. In addition to analysing the role of the political parties and pressure groups of the left, Buchanan sheds new light on the activities of many well-known figures in support of China, including intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, R H Tawney and Joseph Needham. Many other interesting stories emerge, concerning less well-known figures, which show the complexity of personal links between Britain and China during the twentieth century.
A Companion to Chinese History presents a collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China’s history from the ancient past up until the present day. Covers the major trends in the study of Chinese history from antiquity to the present day Considers the latest scholarship of historians working in China and around the world Explores a variety of long-range questions and themes which serves to bridge the conventional divide between China’s traditional and modern eras Addresses China’s connections with other nations and regions and enables non-specialists to make comparisons with their own fields Features discussion of traditional topics and chronological approaches as well as newer themes such as Chinese history in relation to sexuality, national identity, and the environment
A rich empirical account of China's foreign economic policy towards Japan after World War Two, drawing on hundreds of recently declassified Chinese sources. Amy King offers an innovative conceptual framework for the role of ideas in shaping foreign policy, and examines how China's Communist leaders conceived of Japan after the war. The book shows how Japan became China's most important economic partner in 1971, despite the recent history of war and the ongoing Cold War divide between the two countries. It explains that China's Communist leaders saw Japan as a symbol of a modern, industrialised nation, and Japanese goods, technology and expertise as crucial in strengthening China's economy and military. For China and Japan, the years between 1949 and 1971 were not simply a moment disrupted by the Cold War, but rather an important moment of non-Western modernisation stemming from the legacy of Japanese empire, industry and war in China.