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Searching for common themes, this afterword questions the meaning and experience of nostalgia in Asia today. The collected essays show the important roles that conflict, trauma, and the need to create a new modernity shape, and are shaped by notions of nostalgia through much of Asia. Perhaps more so than in Europe, nostalgia in Asia seems very national. The case studies in this collection are excellent examples of how nostalgic longings are deployed to enhance national power, as well as a demonstration of the enduring influence of the nation-state over individual imagination across the region.

The term ‘presentism’ has a variety of applications, but in this piece I shall adapt the analysis made by S. A. Smith in his article within this forum, making reference to Hartog’s idea of a ‘regime of historicity’, of a ‘sense that only the present exists’, to propose a specific argument with regard to one topic: the historical analysis of China’s experience during the Second World War. In the high Cold War era, the topic of China’s wartime experience was taken by many American historians to be part of a continuum that informed a wider debate on the US presence in Asia. In the post-Cold War era, the same topic has been taken up by Chinese historians as a means of creating a new continuum between a wartime past and a politically turbulent present by elision of the revolutionary past. If, in Hartog’s terms, the present is all that exists, the present ‘regime of historicity’ in China creates that present in part by a deliberate removal of some parts of the past which suggest difference rather than similarity with the present.

Post-World War II reconstruction in Europe and Asia is a topic of growing interest, but relatively little attention has been paid to the relief and rehabilitation effort in China in the immediate post-1945 period. This article reassesses the postwar program implemented by the Chinese Nationalist (Guomindang) government and the UNRRA (the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), not just in terms of humanitarian relief, but also as part of a process that led to new thinking about the nature of the postwar state in Asia. It focuses on the ideas and actions of Jiang Tingfu (T. F. Tsiang), head of the Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration that worked with UNRRA. Chinese ideas for reconstruction in China were simultaneously statist, international, and transnational, and were shaped by high modern ideas drawn from Soviet and American examples. They were also influenced by China's poverty and wartime vulnerability, which made locally directed solutions more relevant in areas such as public hygiene. Success was unlikely because of the incipient Chinese Civil War and the huge demands of reconstruction on a state that was near-destitute, with a destroyed infrastructure. Nonetheless, its characteristics still bear examination as a first, tentative chapter in a longer story of post-imperialist and Cold War state-building that would shape countries in Asia and beyond.

The end of the Second World War in Asia came so quickly that there was no time for the Allies to work out the shape of the new regional order. Indeed, the subsequent fall of the Nationalist Chinese regime and the isolation in Asia of the People's Republic of China meant that no such integrated order was established, with the US instead playing the dominant organising role. In this article, Rana Mitter explores how, in the years since the end of the Cold War, a rising China has started to use the previously downplayed legacy of wartime victory in 1945 to make claims about territory in present-day East Asia.

Editor's Introduction: This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II, an event that had profound implications for many Asian countries. This “Asia Beyond the Headlines” feature focuses on the impact that the Japanese surrender, which came several months after the German one, had across East Asia. I put a series of questions to three scholars—modern Japan historian Carol Gluck, China specialist Rana Mitter, and Koreanist Charles Armstrong—who have thought deeply about 1945 and its aftermath. Contacting them initially before the seventieth anniversary of VE Day had come and gone in early May, and then following up after that first big commemorative date had passed but well before the mid-August and early September dates associated with Japan's surrender, I invited them to reflect on the following issues: (1) how discussions associated with this year's anniversary have been and are likely to carry forward or break from those of one, two, three, or four decades ago; (2) what we should expect from the statements and other activities to come in mid-August and in early September; and (3) the varying ways that 1945 can be understood, depending on the part of the region in question, as bringing one era to a close, beginning another, or doing both of these things. Their responses, which engage to greater or lesser degrees with the three themes flagged in my initial questions, can be read as standalone short essays. They also fit together neatly to offer a collective window onto the varied meanings of the war and the wide-ranging debates that continue to swirl around how it should be understood, remembered, and commemorated.

Although the 1989 protests in China did not lead to a regime-changing revolution as did the protests in Eastern Europe, the influence of a changing global order had a profound impact on the country throughout the 1980s and beyond. In particular, the politics of transition fuelled a new fascination with the past in China, marking a deep ambivalence about the effects of globalization and foreign influence on China in the era since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The historical myths which sustained China during the Cold War have undergone a radical shift for reasons rooted largely in the present day.1 This is not unprecedented. In the late nineteenth century, too, the ambiguity of reform provoked by the impact of western-driven globalization marked a serious problem for the Chinese imperial state. Mostly resentful of the West, partly admiring it, China remained unsure of its status in the world until the communist victory in 1949. Even today, the keenly-remembered 'national shame' of humiliation by foreigners is a rhetorical constant everywhere from top leaders' speeches to the ranting monologues of taxi drivers.2 Now once again, during another era of globalization, China is ruled by half-willing, halfresentful reformers who are unsure how much of the outside world to let in. The era of reform in contemporary China, broadly considered to have started in 1978 with the ascendancy of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, has seen a multitude of new interpretations of Chinese history. These stretch from the ancient (the revival of Confucianism after the condemnation of Confucius as 'feudal' for much of the twentieth century) to the very recent past (the presentation of Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution not as socialist triumphs but as chaotic disasters).3 However, in this article, I shall

This 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.

The cult of personality surrounding Mao Zedong peaked during the initial phase of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR, 1966–1969). China’s youth was mobilised behind the Chairman’s call to ‘bombard the headquarters’, and eagerly took part in Mao’s revolt against his own party. The role of the young Red Guards caught not only China but the world’s attention. It seemed that they followed Mao not as a political leader, but rather as a god, ‘the reddest of red suns in all our hearts’. This chapter will examine the case for interpreting this phenomenon in terms of ‘political religion’. It will suggest that there is a strong case for arguing that the irrational and totalistic nature of the mass movement during the GPCR can be interpreted fruitfully as a secular theology. It urges caution, however, in using the term wholesale when considering the elite discourse which initiated the Cultural Revolution, and which did not seek actively to create a secular priesthood and religious community. It also suggests that the religious models most appropriate for comparison are not those of pre-modern China, but rather the European derived religious models which shaped Western political religions, and were well-known and understood by Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 was perhaps the single most destructive event in twentieth-century Chinese history. However, there has been relatively little attention paid to how war was experienced in the Nationalist-controlled area (‘Free China’) under Chiang Kaishek. Two autobiographical texts are examined here, one a sequence of reportage from the early war years by the journalist Du Zhongyuan, and one abiji(notebook) written immediately after the war's end by the social scientist Xu Wancheng. By choosing particular modern or anti-modern genres and styles to write in, the authors expressed a wider sentiment about the war's ambiguous role in modernising China. Du's work hopes to create modernity from destruction; Xu's suggests that modern warfare has created chaos.

One hundred years after the 1911 Revolution (Xinhai Revolution) in China, its meaning continues to be highly contested. Paradoxically, the more time that passes, the less certain either political actors or scholars seem to be about the significance of 1911 for the path of Chinese revolutionary history. This essay examines three phenomena: the appropriation of 1911 in contemporary political and popular culture; the use of 1911 as a metaphor for contemporary politics by PRC historians; and the changing meaning of 1911 over the past ten decades, particularly during the years of the war against Japan. The essay concludes that it is precisely the “unanchored” nature of 1911, separated from any one path of historical interpretation, that has kept its meaning simultaneously uncertain and potent.

China's long war against Japan from 1937 to 1945 has remained in the shadows of historiography until recently, both in China and abroad. In recent years, the opening of archives and a widening of the opportunity to discuss the more controversial aspects of the wartime period in China itself have restored World War II in China (‘the War of Resistance to Japan’) to a much more central place in historical interpretation. Among the areas that this issue covers are the new socio-political history of the war that seeks to restore rationality to the policies of the Guomindang (Nationalist) party, as well as a new understanding in post-war China of the meaning of the war against Japan in shaping Cold War and post-Cold War politics in China. In doing so, it seeks to make more explicit the link between themes that shaped the experience of World War II in China to the war's legacy in later politics and the uses of memory of the conflict in contemporary Chinese society.

In The 1930s, two wars captured the imaginations of western progressives. One of them, the Spanish Civil War, still lives in popular historical memory. The other, the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45, ...

China is the world’s most populous country with a rapidly growing economy, an expanding political presence, and at the beginning of the 21st century, 1.3 billion people lived there. ‘What is modern China?’ looks at what China looks like today. China is going through a massive period of change. It is a major actor in the world markets. Despite its image of prosperity, it is fast becoming one of the world’s most unequal societies. China is also suffering from a resource and environmental crisis. China today is a mix of indigenous social influences and customs and external influences. Does China regard itself as modern?

Chinese 20th-century politics appears as a story of constant conflict. The clash between the Nationalists under Chiang Kaishek and the Communists under Mao Zedong lasted for decades. ‘Making China modern’ looks at the legacies of Mao and Chiang and the context surrounding them. The early 20th century could be seen in terms of their clash, or as a long modernizing project by two parties that agreed on as many issues as they disagreed. The parties had shared goals, such as reducing rural poverty, maintaining a one-party state, creating a powerful industrialized infrastructure, and establishing a strong centralized state. What can be said about the Chinese political system since 1989? How much has changed?

Twenty years ago, the study of modern China in the west was heavily focused on rural China. It used the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party as its overarching narrative, and treated the communist victory of 1949 as a watershed. This review surveys several recent trends in the writing of Chinese history in the west which have challenged these models. Among the changes of emphasis in the field that are noted are: a new interest in China's place in global history, urban history, and the history of consumption; a rethinking of the significance of nationalism and imperialism; warfare as a vehicle of sociocultural change; and a reinterpretation of Chinese modernity that stresses the similarities, as well as the differences, between the Chinese Communist Party and its predecessors, the Nationalists, and also stresses continuities as well as changes across the ‘barrier’ date of 1949. The review highlights areas of interest to non-specialists in Chinese history, and concentrates on studies of the Republican period (1912–49) published since the 1990s, although it also covers work covering topics in the late imperial and early People's Republic periods.

(2003). The Individual and the International ''I'': Zou Taofen and Changing Views of China's Place in the International System. Global Society: Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 121-133.

Manchuria is slowly beginning to rival Shanghai in popularity as a topic for new work in Republican Chinese history. As in Shanghai, it is clear that the most crucial questions about nationalism, war, stability and modernization all came to a head in the north-eastern provinces of China. Ronald Suleski's book is a welcome addition to the studies on these topics, providing an innovative and well-supported argument to show that, far from being merely a desert of endless warlord battles, the early Republic (1911–1928) was a time when differing ideas of the way forward for China battled for supremacy.

The politics of the Republican period in China (1912-49) are often interpreted as a battle between the Nationalists of Chiang Kaishek and the Communists of Mao Zedong, with the transformative ideology of the latter given credit for their eventual victory. However, the political disunity of the Republic actually gave rise to a whole variety of redemptive ideologies whose aim was to redefine 'the people' and 'save the country'. In considering ways forward for China, some political actors took paths ignored or rejected by both the Nationalists and Communists, such as harnessing enthusiasm for popular religion or experimenting with collaboration with the Japanese, both before and during the Second World War. The triumph of secular, progressivist ideology in China was by no means inevitable, and terms such as 'democracy', and 'nation' were strongly contested by rival ideologues who sought to promote their versions of modernity. The article attempts an overview of the varying paths to 'national salvation' in Re...

Contents and Abstracts1France's Deluded Quest for Allies chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on France's efforts to maintain a role in East Asian affairs and protect its control of French Indo-China. The chapter traces the decline of French influence to WWI, examines France's efforts to maintain a collective security approach before the outbreak of war, and analyzes how France tried to hold on to Indo-China during the war by following a policy of accommodating Japan while not alienating China - an impossibility. 2British Diplomacy and Changing Views of Chinese Governmental Capability across the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 chapter abstractMitter traces an important change in UK Foreign Office attitudes during WWII. If before the war the British official mind was contemptuous of China, by the end of the war British Foreign Officials had developed a grudging respect for China and had accepted its status as one of the Big Five Powers. The war with Japan caused official Britain to accept British decline and move on to the unwinding of its imperial role. 3An Imperial Envoy chapter abstractChina's relations with Tibet have been, and are, a frequent source of difficulty. During WWII, they achieved a nadir, leading the Nationalists to appoint a high level representative who set out, with some success, to improve relations and push back againt growing British influence. Shen Zonglian was successful, but not to the degree that after the end of WWII Tibetan representatives accepted full incorporation into the Nationalist body politic. 4The Evolution of the Relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Comintern during the Sino-Japanese War chapter abstractDuring WWII, Stalin's policy in East Asia aimed at drawing Japan into a quagmire in China so as to avoid fighting a war on two fronts. This meant supporting the Nationalists in China, the only force capable of providing serious resistance to the Japanese. However, the Soviets naturally also maintained relations with the Chinese Communists. Yang Kuisong analyzes how the CCP managed the frequently difficult relationship with the Soviets and how Mao Zedong was able to maintain a delicate balance between preserving the interest of the Chinese Communists and accommodating Soviet wishes. 5Canada-China Relations in Wartime China chapter abstractMost scholarship on China's foreign relations during WWII has focused on US-China relations. While this volume breaks fundamentally with that tradition, Diana Lary demonstrates that even a small country such as Canada had a role to play. Individual Canadians such as Norman Bethune were at work in China during WWII, as did missionaries, diplomats, and journalists, while Chinese living in Canada, such as Quan Louie became significant public figures there. In developing a China policy, Canada also moved away from Britain. 6Declaring War as an Issue in Chinese Wartime Diplomacy chapter abstractChina declared war on Japan only after Pearl Harbor, while Japan never followed suit. Tsuchido Akio demonstrates that contrary to generally held opinion, China did not decline to declare war on Japan after 1937 because it feared triggering the provisions of the USA's neutrality laws. Domestic political factors were far more important. By discussing the debates about this contentious issue within Chinese politics, 'Declaring War' provides important insight into the making of Nationalist foreign policy, demonstrating that Chiang Kaishek regularly listened and accepted the advice of his foreign policy advisors and Chinese diplomats. 7Chiang Kai-shek and Jawaharlal Nehru chapter abstractDuring WWII, Chiang Kai-shek and Nehru visited each other while India and China began to think through what a post-imperialist Asia might look like. While the strengthening Indian independence movement was a concern for Britain, Chiang Kai-shek worried that the British refusal to accept India independence demands would weaken the Allied position in South and Southeast Asia. Yang Tianshi analyzes the Nationalist policy of expressing support for Indian aspirations for independence while maintain workable relations with the British. He also demonstrates how early enthusiasms on both sides gave way to tensions. WWII did not end with amity between China and India. 8Chiang Kai-shek and Stalin chapter abstractUsing official sources, rather than memoirs or diaries, Li Yuzhen reconstructs attempts by Chiang Kaishek to secure the direct participation of Soviet forces in China. Chiang appealed to Stalin to order his forces into China on three occasions at moments of great crisis. Although Stalin rejected Chiang's requests, Li Yuzhen concludes that the limited cooperation that the two established, which was based on the national interest of the countries Stalin and Chiang led, nonetheless was important to the defeat of Japan and for WWII in general, making possible the grand alliance between China, the USSR, Britain, and the USA. 9Reshaping China chapter abstractMost historians of the Sino-US relationship have focused on such issues as the Stilwell Incident, the Dixie Mission, and Lend-Lease. Liu Xiaoyuan demonstrates that in US foreign policy to China, China's ethnic frontiers was an important issue, just as much as the future of China's former dependencies or tributary states. He also shows that the future of China as a multinational and unified country was important US State Department concern. He thus shows that US strategy was far more sophisticated and comprehensive than earlier analyses have allowed us to conclude. 10Northeast China in Chongqing Politics chapter abstractChina's Northeast (formerly known as Manchuria) was contested territory since the late 19th century, fought for by Russia, Japan, and China. It became a Japanese client state in 1932. Until WWII, it was by no means clear that China would end up controlling the area. Nishimura demonstrates how Northeasterners mobilized support in Chongqing for their struggle against the Japanese and how the Nationalists came to invest so much political capital in the area that they could not abandon it after the war, although their military and governmental weakness possibly made that the better option. 11The Nationalist Government's Attitude toward Postwar Japan chapter abstractWu Sufeng demonstrates that the policy of the Nationalists toward post-war Japan was based on the principle of 'repaying aggression with kindness', in stark contrast to US and British approaches. Wu argues that in pursuit of this policy, Chiang Kaishek encountered many setbacks and had to put up with dismissive attitudes of his two major Allies which resulted in China's exclusion from major Allied conferences in the last year of WWII. Chiang Kaishek even had to plead for the inclusion of China as one of the three countries demanding Japan's unconditional surrender in the Potsdam declaration. However, on such key issues as the position of the Japanese emperor and wartime reparations, Chiang's views were nonetheless influential. His careful manouevering also ensured that China did emerge out of WWII as one of the victorious Allies. 12Postwar Sino-French Negotiations about Vietnam, 1945-1946 chapter abstractYang Weizhen's examination of Sino-French negotiations about Vietnam complement Bastid-Bruguiere's account of the fading French influence in East Asian international relations. After Japan's surrender, Chinese troops entered Vietnam Japanese commanders handed over to Chinese officials. However, the Chinese retreated quickly from Vietnam, in part because they did not have the forces to occupy Vietnam and were already overextended. Conflicts between the central government and local powerholders in south China meant that it was in the interest of the central government to halt China's engagement in Vietnamese affairs. Moreover, the Chinese Foreign Ministry had maintained good relations from 1944 with the Free French of Charles de Gaulle, whom Chiang Kaishek had assured that China had no interests in Vietnam. Chiang needed his collaboration in securing the ending of French privileges in China. And so, France ended the war in Vietnam, although Ho Chi Minh had already achieved major succeses. 13The 1952 Treaty of Peace between China and Japan chapter abstractVan de Ven argues that the 1952 Peace Treaty between the Republic of China and Japan was less a peace treaty than one of a series of US-inspired treaties to contain communism in East Asia. It was important because it meant that the Nationalists would be regarded as one of the victorious allies because it turned Japan away from concluding an agreement with the PRC and steered it toward Taiwan and other states in South and Southeast Asia and, finally, because it would form a cornerstone of a political order in East Asia which remaind in place today. Van de Ven demonstrates that many issues that bedevil interstate relations in East Asia, such as the status of Taiwan, have their origins in the negotations leading up to this treaty.

At Wanping, around 50 kilometres from the centre of Beijing, the shots that began the eight-year war between China and Japan were fired in 1937. On the site there now stands the Memorial Museum of the Chinese People's War of Resistance to Japan (the museum's own translation of its title, Zhongguo renmin kang-Ri zhanzheng jinianguan). Inside, a wide array of materials is displayed, but among the most prominent are the waxwork diorama reconstructions of Japanese atrocities against the Chinese. One such display shows a Japanese scientist in a white coat, intent on carrying out a gruesome bacteriological warfare experiment, plunging his scalpel into the living, trussed-up body of a Chinese peasant resistance fighter. But just in case this is not enough to drive the message home, the museum designers have added a refinement: a motor inside the waxwork of the peasant, which makes his body twitch jerkily as if in response to the scalpel, an unending series of little movements until the switch is turned off at closing time.

This a remarkable book, both in its content and in its formation. Its origins lie in the work of two scholars, Isabel Brown Crook and Yu Xiji, who lived and worked together in rural Sichuan provinc...

This chapter examines the role of China in the Cold War. It describes the origins of Cold War in China and the participation of nationalist China in World War 2 and the Cold War, and suggests that China played a pivotal role as the third (albeit shorter) leg of a cold war tripod. The chapter contends that the Cold War era in China is inseparable from the political supremacy Mao Zedong, and highlights the impact of the split between China and the Soviet Union on the role of China in the Cold War. It also argues that the 1972 Sino-United States rapprochement contributed to the fading of China from the Cold War narrative.

Is China’s status in the 21st century economic superpower that moves the world’s markets, impoverished developing country—or both? China’s economy has seen amazing growth in recent decades. In 2014, the IMF listed China as the world’s largest economy. ‘Is China's economy modern?’ defines the characteristics of a modern economy and relates them to China’s situation by looking at Chinese economic patterns during the last thousand years. If the characteristics are enthusiasm for growth, capital investment, and industrialization then the answer is ‘yes’. The greatest challenge for Chinese policy makers has been how to maintain the current growth rates without accelerating inflation. Environmental pollution is also a growing concern.

In the twenty-first century it is commonplace for leaders to fly all around the globe at a breathtaking pace. It is easy to forget that just a few decades ago, it was much more unusual for national leaders to be well-travelled. Nonetheless, even by those standards, China’s two paramount leaders for much of the twentieth century, Chiang Kaishek and Mao Zedong, were not great international travellers. Famously, Mao only ever left China twice, both times on visits to the USSR to visit Stalin. Chiang travelled more — military and political training in Japan and Russia in his youth, Cairo for the Allied Summit of 1943 and India, where his pro-independence comments in 1942 caused ructions with the British — but he spoke no English, and his view of the world remained an essentially cautious one. Both men, of course, became much more familiar with the geography of China, whether on tours of inspection as rulers of the country, or else when forced to flee, as Mao did in the Long March of 1935–1936, and Chiang during the retreat to the interior in the face of the Japanese invasion in 1937.

The story of twentieth-century China has been written, particularly in retrospect, as the collapse of various hegemonic systems, in particular the ‘traditional’ Confucian society and the imperialism of the western (and Japanese) powers, in the face of an ultimately victorious Chinese Communist Party. The grand narrative of Chinese modernization through radicalization of the peasantry and the establishment of a Chinese state that, in Mao’s words, ‘stood up’ has been a staple of liberation discourse in the global South for decades, even at a time when the Maoist economy has long since disappeared under a corporatist marketization in both urban and rural China.

A powerful element in twentieth-century Chinese politics has been the myth of Chinese resistance to Japan's seizure of Manchuria in 1931. Investigating the shifting alliances of key players in that event, Rana Mitter traces the development of the narrative of resistance to the occupation and shows how it became part of China's political consciousness, enduring even today. After Japan's September 1931 military strike leading to a takeover of the Northeast, the Chinese responded in three major ways: collaboration, resistance in exile, and resistance on the ground. What motives prompted some Chinese to collaborate, others to resist? What were conditions like under the Japanese? Through careful reading of Chinese and Japanese sources, particularly local government records, newspapers, and journals published both inside and outside occupied Manchuria, Mitter sheds important new light on these questions.

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007. pp. 240, £11.99, ISBN 0253219086. What is China these days? Readers of this journal in particular are used to thinking about...