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1
MacKinnon, Stephen. "The Tragedy of Wuhan, 1938." Modern Asian Studies 30, no. 4 (October 1996): 931–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x0001684x.
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There is a striking disconnect between the imaginative range of interests which preoccupy historians of World Wars I and II in Europe and North America and the much more narrow political concerns of China historians working on the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45. Since Jacoby and White'sThunder Out of China(1946) and Chalmers Johnson'sPeasant Nationalism(1966), Western historiography on the Sino-Japanese War has focused not on the war itself but on the continuing political struggle for supremacy between the Communists and Nationalists. The war is seen as the key to the eventual triumph of the Communists over Chiang Kaishek's Nationalists by 1949. Other issues like the military history of the war itself or its long-term impact on Chinese society and culture have received scant attention.
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MITTER, RANA. "Classifying Citizens in Nationalist China during World War II, 1937–1941." Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (March 2011): 243–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x1100014x.
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AbstractThis paper argues that the first phase of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 saw a significant change in the relationship between state and society in China, leading to a greater use of techniques of classification of the citizenry for purposes of welfare provision and mobilization through propaganda, methods until recently more associated with the Communists than with their Nationalist rivals. The paper draws on materials from Sichuan, the key province for wartime resistance, showing that the use of identity cards and welfare provision regulations were part of a process of integrating refugees from occupied China into the wider wartime society, and that propaganda campaigns were deployed to persuade the local indigenous population to support wartime state initiatives. Although Nationalist efforts to mobilize the population in wartime were flawed and partial, they marked a significant change in the conception of Chinese citizenship.
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Coble, Parks M. "China's “New Remembering” of the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance, 1937–1945." China Quarterly 190 (June 2007): 394–410. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305741007001257.
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AbstractIn today's China, memory of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 is often a front page issue, a source of diplomatic friction between Beijing and Tokyo. Yet in Mao's era, public memory of this conflict virtually disappeared. Only the role of communist forces under Chairman Mao was commemorated; other memories were consigned to historical oblivion. This article examines the process by which memory of the war re-appeared in the reform era. Because the government has emphasized nationalism, the new memory of the war has stressed a patriotic nationalist narrative of heroic resistance. At the same time, a second major theme has been the emphasis on Japanese atrocities, virtually a “numbers game” in historical writing. Thus despite the voluminous publications which have appeared since the 1980s, the new writing on the war has stressed certain themes while neglecting others.
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Howard, Joshua H. "Chongqing's Most Wanted: Worker Mobility and Resistance in China's Nationalist Arsenals, 1937–1945." Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (October 2003): 955–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x03004098.
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Historians of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) have concentrated on rural China to explain how the Communists mobilized the peasantry as a revolutionary force. Although clarifying the CCP's ascension to power in 1949, this focus has impeded our understanding of social change and conflict in the Nationalist controlled territories, especially the wartime capital of Chongqing. Thus, it is difficult to understand how the Nationalists exacerbated the alienation of urban social groups during the 1940s or how the CCP began to find consensus in the cities after 1946. Even standard explanations for the Nationalist collapse—government factionalism, hyperinflation, military blunders, and malfeasance—with their focus on government elites and institutions have rendered invisible the role of social classes as agents of historical change. The few studies of wartime labor have instead emphasized the patriotic contributions of workers and their relative passivity under the four-class bloc envisioned by the united front.
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BOECKING, FELIX. "Unmaking the Chinese Nationalist State: Administrative Reform among Fiscal Collapse, 1937–1945." Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (February 22, 2011): 277–301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x11000011.
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AbstractThe defeat of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 is often explained as a consequence of Nationalist fiscal incompetence during the Second Sino-Japanese War, which led to the collapse of the Nationalist state. In this paper, I argue that from 1937 until 1940, GMD fiscal policy managed to preserve a degree of relative stability even though, by early 1939, the Nationalists had already lost control over ports yielding 80 per cent of Customs revenue which, during the Nanjing decade (1928–1937), had accounted for more than 40 per cent of annual central government revenue. The loss of this revenue forced the Nationalists to introduce wartime fiscal instruments, taxation in kind, and transit taxes, both previously condemned as outdated and inequitable by the Nationalists. Further territorial losses led to the introduction of deficit financing, which in turn became a cause of hyperinflation. The introduction of war-time fiscal instruments led to administrative changes in the revenue-collecting agencies of the Nationalist state, and to the demise of the Maritime Customs Service as the pre-eminent revenue-collecting and anti-smuggling organization. The administrative upheavals of the war facilitated the rise of other central government organizations nominally charged with smuggling suppression, which in fact frequently engaged in trade with the Japanese-occupied areas of China. Hence, administrative reforms at a time of fiscal collapse, far from strengthening the war-time state, created one of the preconditions for the disintegration of the Nationalist state, which facilitated the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) victory in 1949.
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Hutchings, Graham. "A Province at War: Guangxi During the Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1937–45." China Quarterly 108 (December 1986): 652–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305741000037127.
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On the 18 April 1936 General Li Zongren gave a stirring, patriotic interview to the Canton Gazette. In the current situation argued Li, China must stand and resist the Japanese since, “despite sacrifices, a war of resistance may pave the way for the regeneration of our nation.” He was later even more emphatic, ”… a war of resistance is essential for national regeneration.” These seem rather prescient remarks in the light of subsequent events; a new type of society did emerge in parts of China during the war against Japan. Perhaps it should be noted in passing that the form of regeneration expedited by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was nevertheless hardly what Li Zongren had in mind in 1936. Indeed, he felt able to endorse it only late in life.
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Mitter, Rana. "Picturing Victory The Visual Imaginary of the War of Resistance, 1937–1947." European Journal of East Asian Studies 7, no. 2 (2008): 167–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156805808x372412.
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AbstractThe Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1947 has not been sufficiently understood as a narrative in its own right, but rather, as a transitional conflict between Nationalist and Communist rule. The examination of the visual imagery of warfare disseminated through newsprint and books is one way to reinterpret the history of this period. Through a close reading of images printed in a Shanghai newspaper, Zhonghua ribao, during the final days of the battle for the city in 1937, we see how the news was shaped to impose a narrative of order with a positive teleology at a time when China was plunged into chaos with no guarantee of the eventual outcome of the war. The nature of this narrative is explored through examination of images of the body, as well as the positioning of images in the context of the printed page. The conclusion then contrasts these images with a pictorial history of the Sino-Japanese War published during the Civil War, in 1947. It suggests that although this book is able to bring narrative closure to the earlier conflict, its own narrative is imbued with an unease caused by the reality of the new war that had broken out within months of the ending of the war against Japan, and suggests that narrative closure is never truly obtained.
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Lary, Diana. "War and Nationalism in China, 1925–1945. By Hans J. van de Ven. [London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. xii+377 pp. £70.00. ISBN 0-415-14571-6.]." China Quarterly 178 (June 2004): 525–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305741004320291.
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This book may seem to be two books in one. In the first, we are given a cogent, superbly researched description of the creation of the Nationalist Army, of its later history in the reunification of China (1926–1937) and then of its fate during the War of Resistance (1937–1945). In the second book, a European scholar undermines one of the icons of the US presence in China, Joseph Stilwell, the salty, profane commander of US forces in China during the War, whose scathing denunciations of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists set the stage for holding Chiang's incompetence and Nationalist corruption responsible for the Communist victory in China.At first glance the second story might seem a sidebar to the larger topic of the book – war and nationalism in China. But it turns out to be integral to Western academic understanding of modern China. Views of the War of Resistance were so conditioned by Stilwell and his protagonists (what van de Ven calls the Stilwell–White paradigm, referring to Theodore White whose writings made Stilwell a hero) to accept that the Nationalists were the authors of their own downfall that there has been no room for an examination of where the Nationalists were seriously weakened – on the battlefields fighting the Japanese invaders.
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Han, Eric. "A True Sino-Japanese Amity? Collaborationism and the Yokohama Chinese (1937–1945)." Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 3 (August 2013): 587–609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021911813000533.
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Taking the Yokohama Chinese community as an exemplary case, this article delves into linkages between Chinese diasporic identities and collaborationism during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). Using published memoirs, Japanese government and police records, and local newspapers, it examines the wartime experiences of a community struggling to maintain both its Chinese identity and its position in local society. Japanese authorities did not categorically assimilate, intern, or deport this population. Instead, they enforced displays of support for collaborationist regimes in occupied China in order to manufacture what they termed “Sino-Japanese amity.” Public expressions by the Yokohama Chinese contributed to this narrative, but these Chinese were not merely puppets. They actively negotiated the meanings and practices of collaborationism to fulfill local needs. By examining their engagement with Chinese and Japanese national imperatives, this article reflects on the nature of Sino-Japanese friendship, hidden resistance, and local integration.
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Fu, Poshek. "Japanese Occupation, Shanghai Exiles, and Postwar Hong Kong Cinema." China Quarterly 194 (June 2008): 380–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s030574100800043x.
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AbstractThis article explores a little-explored subject in a critical period of the history of Hong Kong and China. Shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945, China was in the throes of civil war between the Nationalists and Communists while British colonial rule was restored in Hong Kong, The communist victory in 1949 deepened the Cold War in Asia. In this chaotic and highly volatile context, the flows and linkages between Shanghai and Hong Kong intensified as many Chinese sought refuge in the British colony. This Shanghai–Hong Kong nexus played a significant role in the rebuilding of the post-war Hong Kong film industry and paved the way for its transformation into the capital of a global pan-Chinese cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on a study of the cultural, political and business history of post-war Hong Kong cinema, this article aims to open up new avenues to understand 20th-century Chinese history and culture through the translocal and regional perspective of the Shanghai–Hong Kong nexus.
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Lee, Tao-Chi. "China and Southeast Asia - Focused on China-Thailand Relations during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945." Korean Studies of Modern Chinese History 80 (December 31, 2018): 111–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.29323/mchina.2018.12.80.111.
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Hung, Chang-Tai. "The Politics of Songs: Myths and Symbols in the Chinese Communist War Music, 1937–1949." Modern Asian Studies 30, no. 4 (October 1996): 901–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x00016838.
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Nie Er (1912–1935), a young Communist musician from Yunnan, could not possibly have imagined that when he wrote this patriotic song (with lyrics by the left-wing writer Tian Han [1898–1968]) for the 1935 filmChildren of Troubled Times (Fengyun ernü) it would soon become one of the most popular tunes in China. The overwhelming success of the song reflected a nation, long frustrated by imperialist (especially Japanese) aggression, thwarted reforms, domestic armed conflicts, and government ineptitude, venting its anger and crying out for a solution. When the Japanese invaded China two years later, ‘The March of the Volunteers’ was rapidly transformed into the quintessential song of resistance against Japan, sung at schools, in the army, at rallies, and on the streets. The song was influential in capturing the hearts and minds of millions during China's eight-year War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945); its impact, in the words of one contemporary song critic, was ‘similar to that of the “Marseillaise” [in the French Revolution]’. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized power in it adopted the song as the official national anthem.
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FRAMKE, MARIA. "‘We Must Send a Gift Worthy of India and the Congress!’ War and political humanitarianism in late colonial South Asia." Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 6 (November 2017): 1969–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x16000950.
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AbstractThe interwar period has recently been described as a highly internationalist one in South Asia, as a series of distinct internationalisms—communist, anarchist, social scientific, socialist, literary, and aesthetic1—took shape. At the same time, it has been argued that the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 drew to a close various opportunities for international association (at least, temporarily). Taking into account both these contradistinctive developments, this article deals with another—and thus far largely overlooked—South Asian internationalism in the form of wartime Indian humanitarianism. In 1938, the Indian National Congress helped organize an Indian medical mission to China to bring relief to Chinese victims of the Second Sino-Japanese War. By focusing on this initiative, this article traces the ideas, the practices, and the motives of Indian political humanitarianism. It argues that such initiatives, as they became part of much wider global networks of humanitarianism in the late 1930s and early 1940s, created new openings for Indian nationalists to establish international alliances. This article also examines the way in which political humanitarianism enabled these same nationalists to perform as independent leaders on an international stage, and argues that humanitarianism served as a tool of anti-colonial emancipation.
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Lim, Chaisung. "The Personnel Management of the North China Railway Company during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945." Keiei Shigaku (Japan Business History Review) 42, no. 1 (2007): 3–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.5029/bhsj.42.3.
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Coble, Parks M. "Chiang Kai-shek and the Anti-Japanese Movement in China: Zou Tao-fen and the National Salvation Association, 1931–1937." Journal of Asian Studies 44, no. 2 (February 1985): 293–310. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2055924.
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AbstractsJapanese imperialism relentlessly besieged the Nationalist government of China during the Nanking decade. Chiang Kai-shek, believing that China was not ready to confront Japanese military power and obsessed with the desire to eliminate the Communists, adopted a policy of consistent appeasement toward the.Japanese. This enraged public opinion in urban China, and Zou Tao-fen, a popular journalist, led the cry for resistance to Japan. He and his associates were continually suppressed by the Nanking government; nevertheless, they published several journals in succession, each of which denounced Chiang's policy toward Japan and all of which achieved enormous circulation. Late in 1935 Zou and his followers helped organize the National Salvation Movement, which demanded that Chiang suspend the civil war against the Communists and fight the Japanese. When Chiang Kai-shek, acting under Japanese pressure, arrested Zou and the leaders of the association in 1936, they became national heroes, the legendary “Seven Gentlemen.” Zou's martyrdom and that of his associates transformed their movement into a powerful political force, one that opposed Chiang and increasingly favored the Chinese Communists.
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Reynolds, E. Bruce. "The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945." Global War Studies 10, no. 2 (August 1, 2013): 78–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.5893/19498489.10.02.07.
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Hess, Christian. "Sino-Soviet City: Dalian between Socialist Worlds, 1945-1955." Journal of Urban History 44, no. 1 (June 14, 2017): 9–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0096144217710234.
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This article explores the building of urban socialism in the port city of Dalian from 1945 through the mid-1950s. Hailed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 as “New China’s model metropolis,” this former Japanese colonial city was occupied by the Soviet military until 1950. Postwar geopolitics situated Dalian and its residents at the forefront of implementing Soviet-inspired reforms that led to an image of Dalian not only as a vanguard city of the People’s Republic, but one intimately connected with the larger socialist world. The article argues that Dalian’s postwar geopolitical position as a Sino-Soviet space led to a cross-pollination of attitudes, actions, and policies that differed from much of the urban scene throughout the People’s Republic of China. It sheds new light on how the complex decolonization process of the early Cold War brought a Chinese city more closely into the Second World.
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Suleski, Ronald. "MANCHUKUO AND BEYOND: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ZHANG MENGSHI." International Journal of Asian Studies 14, no. 1 (January 2017): 77–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1479591416000206.
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Zhang Mengshi died in late 2014 at the age of ninety-two, shortly after his autobiography was published. He was born into a life of privilege because his father Zhang Jinghui was a close confidant of the Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin. Mengshi was a boy in Harbin in the 1930s when Russian influences dominated the city, then when his father became prime minister of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in 1935 he lived with his family in Hsinking, the new capital. He studied in Japan in the early 1940s as war in the Pacific intensified. His father upheld the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, while Mengshi secretly worked with the Communist underground to undermine the occupation. When Soviet troops arrived in 1945 to take over from the defeated Japanese, Mengshi was also arrested and sent to Siberia, though he was willing to help the Russian Communists. In 1950 he returned to the new People's Republic of China, to work with the captured Chinese and Japanese from former Manchukuo, including his own father and former emperor Puyi, teaching them about the crimes they had committed. In this article Mengshi's fascinating autobiography is summarized and commented on.
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Mitter, Rana. "In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation. Edited by Christian Henriot and Wen-Hsin Yeh. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xii +392 pp. £50.00. ISBN 0-521-82221-1.]." China Quarterly 180 (December 2004): 1109–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305741004310763.
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Henriot and Yeh have produced a rich and highly readable volume on Shanghai during the 1937–1945 Japanese occupation period. Many of the path-breaking essays are based on primary sources from newly accessible Shanghai archives.The volume is divided into three sections, broadly on economic, political and cultural history. In the first section, Christian Henriot and Parks Coble both demonstrate that the Shanghai capitalists left in the city were caught in a tight situation: they had little choice but to co-operate with the Japanese, who wanted to make Shanghai into another economic powerhouse in their Co-Prosperity Sphere but who were also exploitative and driven by military rather than commercial needs. On the other hand, the exiled Nationalists considered Chinese businessmen who co-operated with Japan to be collaborators, rendering them vulnerable to assassination during the war and condemnation after it. Frederic Wakeman explores the way in which smuggling became part of the economic and cultural landscape in supplying wartime Shanghai, and Sherman Cochran looks at a “fixer,” Xu Guanqun, who played for high stakes selling medicines across enemy lines, demonstrating that the neutral “island” of the foreign concessions in Shanghai from 1937 to 1941 was hardly an impermeable one. Allison Rottmann completes this section by rethinking the rural narrative of Communist Revolution, showing that Shanghai helped to supply and shape the politics of the central China base area.
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Esherick, Joseph. "RECENT STUDIES OF WARTIME CHINA." Journal of Chinese History 1, no. 1 (November 22, 2016): 183–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jch.2016.3.
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The history of World War II has long been a favorite topic of military, diplomatic, and social historians (even more so for viewers of the History Channel), but the focus has typically been on the European theater. With a more limited archival record, the conflict in Asia has received less attention. This is certainly not because Asia was less important. The war undermined the legitimacy of colonial regimes throughout Southeast Asia, led to the division of Korea into two hostile states, and contributed in fundamental ways to the collapse of the Nationalist regime in China and the triumph of the Communist revolution. The last few years have seen substantial new scholarship on the 1937–45 War of Resistance in China and what Japanese historians often call the Fifteen-Year War, starting with the occupation of Manchuria in 1931. The number of titles falls far short of what has been written on Europe, but the war in China is now being approached in new and interesting ways.
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McCord, Edward A. "The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 (review)." China Review International 17, no. 3 (2010): 361–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cri.2010.0067.
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Wang, Ke-wen. "The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (review)." Journal of World History 23, no. 2 (2012): 469–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2012.0053.
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Huang, Jianli. "Entanglement of Business and Politics in the Chinese Diaspora: Interrogating the Wartime Patriotism of Aw Boon Haw." Journal of Chinese Overseas 2, no. 1 (2006): 79–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/179325406788639084.
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AbstractThis article focuses on the wartime experiences of Aw Boon Haw who was the renowned billionaire peddler of the Tiger Balm ointment and owner of an influential chain of regional newspapers. After the Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937, he traveled from Singapore to the wartime Chinese capital of Chongqing to meet up with Chiang Kai-shek and his Guomindang leaders. But soon after, he opted to stay in Hong Kong throughout the occupation period and became closely associated with the Japanese-sponsored government of Wang Jingwei, even making a trip to Tokyo to meet the Japanese Prime Minister. When the war ended, amidst accusations of him having been a traitor who collaborated with the occupation authorities, he switched his loyalty back to China and the British colonial settlements and resumed his business operations and philanthropic activities. This wartime experience of Aw brings into sharp relief the sort of political entanglement which prominent Chinese overseas business people can be entrapped in. Suspicions about his wartime patriotism initially hounded him and he had to issue denials. However, in the midst of confusion over the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War and the American reversal of occupation policy in Japan, there was an absence of formal governmental or public actions, allowing the issue to fade away and Aw's business and charity to return to normalcy. It was more than 30 years later, at the height of the economic reopening of Communist mainland China and the renewed importance of Chinese overseas capital in the 1980s and 1990s, that Aw's wartime patriotism was re-examined, this time calculated to pass a new and presumably last verdict that Aw had been most unfairly judged and that he was actually an iconic true overseas Chinese patriot. This posthumous honor was conferred on him despite the fact that the supposedly new empirical evidence was far from conclusive. It was an act of political restoration in semi-academic garb and enacted with an eye to facilitating further business ties between a resurgent China and the Chinese diaspora.
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Goodman, David S. G. "Revolutionary Women and Women in the Revolution: The Chinese Communist Party and Women in the War of Resistance to Japan, 1937–1945." China Quarterly 164 (December 2000): 915–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305741000019238.
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On a late winter's day in 1989 a grey-haired, round woman of about 80 in a padded jacket and a black beanie moved across 1st May Square in the centre of Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province. She was presenting awards to the PLA's most recent young “model soldiers” – recruits who had just finished top of their class in basic training. This was Balu mama – the “Mother of the Eighth Route Army,” Bao Lianzi. Now the retired head of a clinic, 50 years earlier she had been part of a women's support group for soldiers during the War of Resistance to Japan, in her native Wuxiang. At that time, Wuxiang, together with Liaoxian and Licheng counties in South-east Shanxi, and Shexian in Northern Henan, was the core of the Taihang Base Area, itself the centre of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region and one of the major base areas behind Japanese lines. It supported the field headquarters of the Eighth Route Army under Peng Dehuai; the offices of the North China Bureau under Yang Shangkun; and Deng Xiaoping, eyes and ears for Mao Zedong on the front line.
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Michielsen, Edwin. "Fighting Fascism with ‘Verbal Bullets’: Kaji Wataru and the Antifascist Struggle in Wartime East Asia." Fascism 9, no. 1-2 (December 21, 2020): 9–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22116257-09010006.
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Abstract This article examines the cultural production of Kaji Wataru, founder of the Zaika Nihonjinmin hansen dōmei [Japanese People’s Antiwar League in China] to illuminate what strategies Kaji used to train prisoners-of-war and to convert Japanese soldiers as a way to counter fascism during the second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Scholars have tended to focus on unravelling the history surrounding Kaji Wataru and the Antiwar League. In doing so, they have often overlooked the constructive role his cultural works played in that history and in his antiwar thought. The author aims to show how Kaji’s reportage works, and plays, were the very media he used to develop and execute his antifascist visions and activities. The focus is on three reportage works and one play that best reflect Kaji’s antifascist strategies. Analyzing the texts, the author highlights descriptions dealing with the organization and activities of the Antiwar League as well as the cooperation with the Chinese resistance as part of the popular front in East Asia.
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LEE, SEUNG-JOON. "The Patriot's Scientific Diet: Nutrition science and dietary reform campaigns in China, 1910s–1950s." Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 6 (February 27, 2015): 1808–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x14000286.
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AbstractThis article explores how nutrition science became a significant part of the nation-building project in both Republican China and the early People's Republic of China within the context of burgeoning popular concerns over bodily health and an increasing sense of urgency. Insofar as nutrition science offered a new type of expertise about what to eat and what not to eat in daily life, it entailed harnessing the state's potential persuasive power to garner willing compliance, if not tacit obedience, from the population. Unlike previous scholarship, which takes the viewpoint of government authorities and the medical elite, this article argues that popular concerns about bodily health and culinary curiosity that were prevalent in major Chinese cities helped to popularize state-led dietary reform campaigns that culminated during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and continued even after the revolutionary regime change in the 1950s.
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Yamamoto, Hajime. "Aerial Surveys and Geographic Information in Modern China." Abstracts of the ICA 1 (July 15, 2019): 1–2. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/ica-abs-1-414-2019.
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<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Today when online satellite images are just a click away, access to geographic information showing the latest images of the globe has dramatically expanded, and historico-geographic research based on such information is flourishing. However, in the study of Chinese history, historical research employing GIS or similar technologies is still in its infancy, since “historical” geographic information with a high degree of precision are lacking. From within the ambit of Chinese geographic information, this report specifically highlights aerial surveys effected during the Republic of China era. To start, we review the history of domestic aerial surveys during R. O. C. period. Then, focusing on Nanjing as an example, we proceed to introduce maps that were actually created based on aerial surveys.</p><p>Chinese aerial surveys date back to around 1930. At the Nationalist Party’s General Assembly in 1929, partisans proposed for the need for aerial surveys. In 1930, the “Aerial Photography and Survey Research Team” was formed within the General Land Survey Department at General Staff Headquarters (National Army of the Republic of China). Consequently, foreign technicians were invited to provide relevant education/training. In June 1931, China’s pioneer initiative in aerial photography took place in Zhejiang province. The aim of aerial surveys in those early days was to create maps for military purposes. Between 1932 and 1939, topographic maps of fortifications located in areas such as the Jiangnan district were prepared. Further, starting from around the same period until the Sino-Japanese War, land registry maps based on aerial surveys were also produced. After the Sino-Japanese War ended, the above-mentioned directorate handed over responsibility for aerial surveys to the Naval General Staff. However, in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party confiscated the maps theretofore produced.</p><p>Although the aerial photographs and the geographic information produced therefrom during the R. O. C. era were seized by the People’s Republic of China, in actuality, some had previously been transferred to Taiwan. The topographic maps of the Nanjing metropolitan area (一萬分一南京城廂附近圖), based on aerial surveys and drawn in 1932, are currently archived at Academia Historica in Taipei. Comprising a total of 16 sheets, these maps were drawn on a scale of 1:10,000 by the General Land Survey Department.</p><p>Similarly, other maps (各省分幅地形圖) produced by the General Land Survey Department, comprising a total of 56 sheets and partly detailing Nanjing, are now in the possession of Academia Sinica in Taipei. There was no information about photographing or making in these maps. But almost the same maps were archived at Library of Congress in Washington D. C. According to those maps at LC, based on aerial photographs taken and surveys conducted in 1933, these topographic maps (1:10,000 scale) were completed in 1936.</p><p>The examples introduced above are topographic maps based on aerial photography. However, starting in 1937, land registry maps were also created. Detailing the outskirts of Nanjing (1:1,000 scale) and comprising a total of 121 sheets, they are now archived at Academia Historica. While the land registry maps were produced in 1937, supplementary surveys were effected following the Sino-Japanese War in 1947.</p><p>Since the geographic information based on aerial surveys during the R. O. C. era in China were precise, they can serve as a source of manifold information. This report only delved into information developed by the Government of the R. O. C., but it is becoming evident that U. S. Armed Forces and Japan also produced geographic information of their own based on aerial surveys. If the comprehensive panorama captured by all three protagonists can be illuminated, further advances in Chinese historico-geographic studies employing geographic information will be forthcoming.</p>
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Yan, Yang. "The formation of the Chinese orchestra of traditional instruments of a new type in the 1920s-1930s." Problems of Interaction Between Arts, Pedagogy and the Theory and Practice of Education 50, no. 50 (October 3, 2018): 165–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.34064/khnum1-50.12.
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Background. The history of the development of orchestral music for Chinese traditional instruments covers more than a thousand years. During this time, the traditional orchestra has undergone significant changes. In the article the modern stage of the development of the orchestra of a new type is considered starting from the 1920s, when its modification began and integration with the principles of the Western Symphony Orchestra. The modernization of the Chinese orchestra of traditional instruments began in the twentieth century after the overthrow of imperial rule and the emerging changes in Chinese society. Nevertheless, the process of integrating the Western musical traditions was carried out in China for several centuries, which prepared the ground for the qualitative changes that began in the 20th century in the field of national musical art. The development of orchestral music for Chinese traditional instruments is not sufficiently studied today in musicology. One of the little studied periods is the initial stage of the formation of the Chinese orchestra of folk instruments of a new type in the 1920s – 1930s. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to reveal the prerequisites and specifics of the formation of the Chinese orchestra of traditional instruments of a new type in the 1920s and 1930s, to determine the role of outstanding Chinese musicians in the process of modernizing the orchestra and creating the appropriate national repertoire. The methodology of research is based on musical-historical approach combined with musical-theoretical and performer analysis. Results. The first shifts in the integration of Western and national traditions in Chinese traditional orchestral music became possible thanks to the activities of the music society “Datong yuehui”, as well as the emergence of higher professional musical institutions in China and the training of Chinese musicians abroad. The most important role in the formation of the Chinese orchestra of traditional instruments of a new type was played by outstanding musicians Zheng Jinwen, Liu Tianhua, Zheng Tisi. Zheng Jinwen was the initiator of the creation of the society “Datong Yuhui” in 1920. He began the process of standardizing various Chinese instruments with the goal of unifying their sound tuning fork. This was necessary for a well-coordinated game in the orchestral ensemble. The musician modernized and developed new methods of tuning traditional instruments for flute dizi, multi-barrel sheng and expanded the orchestra to forty people. Zheng Jinwen adapted the national repertoire to a new type of orchestra, performing as an author of orchestral transcriptions of ancient music for traditional Chinese instruments. Liu Tianhua became the creator of the Society for the Development of National Music at Peking University (1927–1932). The musician reformed the old system of Chinese notation “gongchi” based on hieroglyphs, modernized it and adapted it to the Western musical notation. Substantial achievement of Liu Tianhua was a significant modification of the erhu with the replacement of strings by metal, changing the settings in accordance with the standards of Western stringed instruments. As a result, the erhu acquired the status of a leading or solo instrument in a new type of orchestra. The activity of the first modern Chinese orchestra of traditional instruments, the musical collective of the Broadcasting Company of China, created in Nanjing in 1935, had a great importance. In 1937, from the Second Sino-Japanese War, the orchestra was transferred to Chongqing, and after the victory of the Communists in 1949, he moved to Taiwan. One of the orchestral musicians, Zheng Tisi, played an outstanding role in the formation of this group. The musician carried out the reformation of this orchestra in the field of tuning instruments. The range of the orchestra was expanded by the introduction of additional wooden string instruments dahu and dihu, having a volumetric sound-board and tuned an octave below the violin erhu. Their purpose was to fill the lower register, alike to the cellos and double basses in Western orchestras. For the first time the post of conductor and his assistant was introduced by Zheng Tisi, which was also able to attract professional composers to create a multi-voiced orchestral national repertoire. The innovations of the outstanding musician made his orchestra a role model for all subsequent similar contemporary Chinese orchestras. Conclusions. The process of forming a Chinese orchestra of traditional instruments of a new type in the 1920s and 1930s made it possible to modernize Chinese traditional folk instruments and the ancient Chinese notation system in order to adapt Chinese orchestral music to the integrative processes in musical art. Orchestral music was reformed in accordance with the principles of Western European symphonic and conducting art. In this process, outstanding highly professional Chinese musicians who contributed to the development of orchestral music in their country and the creation of a corresponding national repertoire played the leading role.
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N. Mamayeva. "Yu. Chudodeyev. On the Land and in the Sky of China: Soviet Military Advisers and Volunteer Pilots in China during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945." Far Eastern Affairs 45, no. 004 (December 31, 2017): 151–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.21557/fea.50213824.
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Tanner, Harold M. "The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945. Mark Peattie, Edward J. Drea, and Hans van de Ven." Journal of Chinese Military History 1, no. 1 (2012): 99–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/221274512x631167.
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Seybolt, Peter J. "The Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945: The Current Status of Research and Publication in the People’s Republic of China, and Prospects and Problems for Foreign Researchers." Republican China 14, no. 2 (January 1989): 110–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08932344.1989.11720141.
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Barnhart, Michael A. "The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 ed. by Mark Peattie, Edward Drea, Hans van de Ven (review)." Journal of Japanese Studies 39, no. 2 (2013): 469–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jjs.2013.0045.
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Benton, Gregor. "The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino–Japanese War of 1937–1945, edited by Mark Peattie, Edward Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. xxvi + 614 pp. US$65.00 (hardcover)." China Journal 67 (January 2012): 189–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/665752.
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Mitter, Rana. "The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945. Edited by Mark Peattie, Edward Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. xxv + 614 pp. $65.00 ISBN 978-0-8047-6206-9." China Quarterly 207 (September 2011): 738–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305741011000877.
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Farrell, Brian P. "Book Review: The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937—1945. Edited by Mark Peattie, Edward Drea and Hans van de Ven. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2011. xxv+614 pp. US$65 hbk. ISBN 978 0 8047 6206 9." War in History 18, no. 4 (November 2011): 566–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09683445110180040809.
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Zhu, Fengdaijiao. "Zhu Jian’er’s life creativity: the historiography of the composer’s personality." Aspects of Historical Musicology 18, no. 18 (December 28, 2019): 190–212. http://dx.doi.org/10.34064/khnum2-18.11.
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Background. The article is devoted to the study of the personality of the outstanding Chinese composer Zhu Jian’er (1922–2017) – the leading figure of the national musical art of the twentieth century. It is proved that the presented problematic makes it possible to most deeply and accurately explore the musical heritage of the artist. In order to better understand the meaning of the composer’s creations, it is necessary to consider his environment, the stages of creative formation, the characteristics of character and personal qualities, his civic position and the characteristics of his worldview. Most of Zhu Jian’er’s life was in times of great turmoil associated with the Sino-Japanese liberation war, with the rigid ideological line of the Communist Party, with the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, etc. Consideration of the work of an outstanding composer through the prism of his personality became possible only in the twenty-first century, when Chinese society was completely freed from the pressure of ideology, which had long been felt after the policy of the Cultural Revolution in the country. Objectives. The purpose of this article is to systematize the historiographic information about the life-making of Zhu Jian’er in the context of the general trends in the development of Chinese musical culture of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Methods. The methodology of the research is based on the scientific approaches necessary for the disclosure of the topic. The integrated research way is used that combines the principle of musical-theoretical, musical-historical and performing analysis. Results. The composer’s youth passed in Shanghai, occupied by the Japanese invaders. Great importance to the young man had a twenty-four-hour musical radio program, through which he became acquainted with European classical music. In 1945, the composer became the leader of the musical group of the Corps of Cultural Art of the Suzhou military district, and then the director and conductor of the orchestra. As soon as the country was liberated, the composer returned to Shanghai with many musicians from the military orchestra. He was appointed to the position of the head of the musical ensemble of the state film studio. In the summer of 1955, at the age of 33, Zhu Jian’er enrolled in the graduate school of the Moscow Conservatory. Returning to China in the summer of 1960, Zhu Jian’er was full of ambition and a desire to serve his homeland and people. However, the subsequent years of the Cultural Revolution for a decade deprived him of the possibility of full-fledged creativity. Own feelings receded into the background, the collective ousted the personal. In his music the composer presented the Cultural Revolution – with its false goals, ugly human relations, distorted values, unjustified sufferings. This idea formed the basis of the First Symphony. Many outstanding masterpieces of the composer have won major awards at home and abroad, bringing glory to Chinese music on the international music scene. People close to Zhu Jian’er noted that the composer was rarely seen among friends or acquaintances, he was silent and did not like to talk. He was very thin, and it was not clear how a fiery passion and great creative energy lived in such a weak body. The composer had a mild temperament, he never became angry with people and was careful in his statements. However, even such a kind and conflict-free person, faced with unhealthy trends in the music industry, was embroiled in legal proceedings related to “violation of rights” and was forced to fight for his reputation. But he was not afraid of reprisals, his energy and strong enthusiasm gave him strength. Despite the fact that Zhu Jian’er was always an ordinary person, immersed in his own affairs, he was not indifferent to the events in his country and the fate of the national culture. In addition, he was also worried about the international situation and the influence of China outside. The composer has always been interested in politics and collected information about musical culture abroad. He had his own understanding of the world, and he tried to hold an independent opinion, although, as a real creator, he was often visited by the spirit of doubt. Despite his painful body, Zhu Jian’er was a very tough and courageous man. In the years when China was shook by events that he considered as the national catastrophe, the composer retained loyalty to the power. It was not conformism, the musician sincerely loved his homeland and was ready to die for it, his position was that the mistakes would be corrected and the country would gain strength. These inner experiences deeply touched the composer’s mind and feelings, and were subsequently reflected in his music, being formed the unique musical style of his works. In recent years, as an elderly and painful man, Zhu Jian’er continued, in his words, “to pay off debts” – writing articles for various Shanghai music publishers, editing symphonic, orchestral and piano music, and writing a monograph. In most cases, this was underpaid or completely unpaid work. However, the composer was doing such work, considering it his duty. Conclusions. We can observe important milestones in the life-making of Zhu Jian’er, which radically influenced his multifaceted musical creativity. The outlook and civil position of the musician was formed during the years of the Sino-Japanese war of liberation. This enforced his ardent love for his native land and his people. Since he himself was physically unable to be in the ranks of the army, the desire to defend their homeland was expressed in the military songs by Zhu Jian’er. The critical attitude of the musician to the policy of the Cultural Revolution did not change his positive attitude towards life, but only made him think about the meaning of the artist’s life and purpose in society. The activities of the composer in the team of the military ensemble led him to realize the need for further professional development. The passionate desire to gain the highest stages of composer skills prompted Zhu Jian’er insistently to possess by this knowledge at the Moscow Conservatory and then at the Shanghai Conservatory. The composer honed his skills in the field of vocal, instrumental, chamber and choral music, however, the genre of the symphony in which the musician expressed his civic creed and view of the world became the pinnacle of his work.
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Liu, Qingjun. "Reinterpreting the Chinese Revolution: The Balance between Radical and Moderate Approaches, 1937–1945." Modern China, December 6, 2020, 009770042097510. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0097700420975102.
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The success of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by the end of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) has generally been credited to its moderate approach to mobilizing the local peasantry through appeals to anti-Japanese nationalism and programs of social justice. However, the evidence presented in this article demonstrates that during late 1939 and early 1940 in some counties of the Southwest Shanxi Base Area and other major North China base areas the CCP abandoned its moderate approach and promoted a radical and violent class struggle. Based on its experiences in 1939–1940, the CCP created a model for mobilization in early 1942 that balanced radical and moderate approaches, which was then gradually applied to all Communist base areas. This article argues that the CCP relied on a combination of two contrasting and complementary approaches—radical and moderate—both of which played an indispensable role in its success by 1945.
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"Антияпонская война китайского народа (1937–1945 гг.) на страницах газеты Тихоокеанского флота «Боевая вахта»." Азиатско-Тихоокеанский регион: экономика, политика, право 55, no. 2 (2020): 91–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.24866/1813-3274/2020-2/91-106.
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Рассматривается освещение событий антияпонской войны китайского народа (1937–1945 гг.) газетой Тихоокеанского флота «Боевая вахта» (г. Вла-дивосток). В это время Советский Союз предоставлял Китаю не только военную, материальную помощь, но и оказывал моральную поддержку, в том числе через средства массовой информации, рассказывая о национально-освободительной войне китайского народа. Отмечено, что во время войны Гоминьдан и Коммунистическая партия Китая создали антияпонский национальный единый фронт и объединились против японских захватчиков. Китайский народ мужественно боролся за свою свободу и национальную независимость. Газета высоко оценила деятельность Коммунистической партии Китая и её борьбу с японскими захватчиками в трудных условиях. Но во время антияпонской войны правительство Гоминьдана не отказывалось от антикоммунистической политики. Газета критиковала коррупцию в правительстве Гоминьдана и его неспособность вести активные действия в середине и конце войны; публиковала факты, как Ван Цзинвэй вступил в сговор с японскими захватчиками. 26 января 1940 г. «Боевая вахта» приводила текст соглашения, подписанного между Ван Цзинвэем и японцами. Подчёркивается, что газета «Боевая вахта» цитировала сообщения из китайских газет, то есть показывала дальневосточникам, как китайские газеты осуждают предательские действия марионеточного режима Ван Цзинвэя. «Боевая вахта» в подробностях сообщала также и о причинах, процессе и результате советско-японской войны – последних военных действиях в рамках Второй мировой войны. Ключевые слова: газета «Боевая вахта» (г. Владивосток), публикации, национально-освободительная война китайского народа, Гоминьдан, Коммунистическая партия Китая, Ван Цзинвэй, сговор с японскими захватчиками, марионеточный режим, советско-японская война, последние военные действиях в рамках Второй мировой войны. Abstract. The coverage of the main events of the anti-Japanese war of the Chinese people (1937–1945) by the Pacific Fleet newspaper Battle Watch (Vladivostok) is considered. At that time, the Soviet Union provided not only military and material assistance to China, but also provided moral support, including through the media, telling about the national liberation war of the Chinese people. It is noted that during the war the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party created an anti-Japanese national united front and united against the Japanese invaders. The Chinese people fought bravely for their freedom and national independence. The newspaper praised the activities of the Chinese Communist Party and its struggle with the Japanese invaders in difficult conditions. But during the anti-Japanese war, the Kuomintang government did not abandon anti-communist policies. The newspaper criticized corruption in the Kuomintang government and its inability to take active steps in the middle and end of the war; published the facts as Wang Jingwei colluded with the Japanese invaders. On January 26, 1940, Battle Watch cited the text of the agreement signed between Wang Jingwei and the Japanese. It is emphasized that the Battle Watch newspaper quoted messages from Chinese newspapers, that is, it showed the Far East how Chinese newspapers condemn the treacherous actions of the puppet regime of Wang Jingwei. The Battle Watch also reported in detail about the causes, process and result of the Soviet – Japanese war – the latest military operations in the framework of World War II. Keywords: Battle Watch newspaper (Vladivostok), publications, the national liberation war of the Chinese people, the Kuomintang, the Chinese Communist Party, Wang Jingwei, conspiracy with the Japanese invaders, puppet regime, the Soviet-Japanese war, recent military operations within World War II.
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Lin, Jacqueline Zhenru. "Remembering forgotten heroes and the idealisation of true love: Veteran memorial activism in contemporary China." Memory Studies, May 18, 2021, 175069802110179. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/17506980211017952.
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Recent research on collective memory and war commemoration highlights the ‘conspicuous silence’ of war veterans in Chinese history. Studies of the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945) typically reflect either a state-centred approach, which emphasises the official history constructed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or the alternative narratives constructed by intellectual elites in post-socialist China. In response to these top-down narratives, this essay focuses instead on a historical redress movement led by ex-servicemen of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The former PLA members, the participant volunteers of this movement, devote themselves into seeking and supporting a group of forgotten Kuomintang (KMT) veterans who fought against the Japanese invaders in the Second World War but now struggle with impoverished living conditions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from 2013 to 2015, I will show how the daily interactions between these two groups of veterans embody a more private and internalised sense of commemorative yearning for a lost past, highlighting in the process the value of ethnographic research in breaking through the wall of silence constructed by hegemonic histories around veteran communities and their role in making war history.
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Xia, Yun. "Traitors in Limbo: Chinese Trials of White Russian Spies, 1937–1948." Nationalities Papers, October 28, 2020, 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/nps.2020.69.
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Abstract Following the October Revolution, tens of thousands of White Russians sought refuge in China and became inevitably involved in the escalating Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945). The Japanese deployed measures of coercion, material incentives, and ideological indoctrination to recruit White Russians for Japan’s military and political maneuvers in the China theater of WWII. With the conclusion of the war, the Chinese Nationalist government launched a legal campaign against all collaborators with Japan and labeled them hanjian, “traitors to the Han Chinese,” regardless of the race and nationality of the defendants. Based on archival materials in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Russian, this article examines the context and process of the incrimination of White Russians in China’s postwar trials of traitors. With no consular support and little diplomatic significance, the White Russians became the ideal foreigners for the Chinese government to exercise its newly recovered judicial sovereignty and to claim its legitimacy in administering justice related to war crimes. Dozens of White Russians were convicted of the crime of hanjian and sentenced to prison terms of varied lengths.
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Yang, Taoyu, and Hongquan Han. "When a Global War Befell a Global City: Recent Historiography on Wartime Shanghai." Journal of Chinese Military History, May 26, 2021, 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22127453-bja10008.
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Abstract Shanghai was the first Chinese city to bear the full brunt of Japanese aggression during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). This historiographical article reviews the development of the study of wartime Shanghai in Chinese- and English-language academia in the past two decades. In the People’s Republic of China, Shanghai’s history during World War II has long been a favorite topic for academic historians. In the English-speaking world, however, the history of Shanghai’s wartime experience has only recently become a popular research topic. This article introduces many significant works related to wartime Shanghai, lays out important areas of inquiry, and identifies key historiographical trends. Its conclusion offers some suggestions on how the study of wartime Shanghai can be further advanced in the future.
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Chang, Vincent K. L. "Recalling Victory, Recounting Greatness: Second World War Remembrance in Xi Jinping's China." China Quarterly, June 29, 2021, 1–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305741021000497.
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Abstract The recent surge in public remembrance of the Second World War in China has been substantially undergirded by a centrally planned and systematically implemented discursive shift which has remained overlooked in the literature. This study examines the revised official narrative by drawing on three cases from China's school curriculum, museums and formal diplomacy. It finds that the once dominant trope of “national victimization” no longer represents the main thrust in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rhetoric on the Second World War. Under Xi Jinping, this has been replaced by a self-assertive and aspirational narrative of “national victory” and “national greatness,” designed to enhance Beijing's legitimacy and advance its domestic and foreign policy objectives. By emphasizing national unity and CCP–KMT cooperation, the new narrative offers an inclusive and unifying interpretation of China's war effort in which the victory in 1945 has come to rival the 1949 revolution as the critical turning point towards “national rejuvenation.” The increasingly Sino-centric and centrally controlled narrative holds implicit warnings to those challenging Beijing's claim to greatness.