Book at Lunchtime: China’s Good War

A TORCH Book at Lunchtime webinar on ‘China's Good War: How World
War II is Shaping a New Nationalism’ by Professor Rana Mitter. Book
at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held weekly
during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines.
The events are free to attend and open to all. About the book: For
most of its history, the People’s Republic of China limited public
discussion of the war against Japan. It was an experience of
victimization - and one that saw Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek
fighting for the same goals. But now, as China grows more powerful,
the meaning of the war is changing. Professor Rana Mitter argues
that China’s reassessment of the World War II years is central to
its newfound confidence abroad and to mounting nationalism at home.
China’s Good War begins with the academics who shepherded the
once-taboo subject into wider discourse. Encouraged by reforms
under Deng Xiaoping, they researched the Guomindang war effort,
collaboration with the Japanese, and China’s role in forming the
post-1945 global order. But interest in the war would not stay
confined to scholarly journals. Today public sites of
memory—including museums, movies and television shows, street art,
popular writing, and social media—define the war as a founding myth
for an ascendant China. Wartime China emerges as victor rather than
victim. The shifting story has nurtured a number of new views. One
rehabilitates Chiang Kai-shek’s war efforts, minimizing the bloody
conflicts between him and Mao and aiming to heal the wounds of the
Cultural Revolution. Another narrative positions Beijing as creator
and protector of the international order that emerged from the
war—an order, China argues, under threat today largely from the
United States. China’s radical reassessment of its collective
memory of the war has created a new foundation for a people
destined to shape the world. Speakers: Professor Rana Mitter is
Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the
University of Oxford. His books include China’s War with Japan: The
Struggle for Survival, 1937-1945 (Penguin, 2013), [US title:
Forgotten Ally] which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal
for Military Literature, and was named a Book of the Year in the
Financial Times and Economist, and China’s Good War: How World War
II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard, 2020). His recent
documentary on contemporary Chinese politics "Meanwhile in Beijing"
is available on BBC Sounds. He is a regular presenter of BBC Radio
3’s Free Thinking/BBC Arts and Ideas Podcast. Professor David
Priestland is Professor of Modern History at St Edmund’s College
Oxford. His research specialises in communism and market
liberalism, especially in the communist and post-communist worlds.
His publications include a comparative history of communism, The
Red Flag: Communism and the Making of the Modern World, and
Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A New History of Power, a study of the
history of market liberalism and its place in global history.
Professor Vivienne Shue is Professor Emeritus of Contemporary China
Studies and Emeritus Fellow of St Anthony’s College Oxford. Her
current research examines certain distinctively 21st century
Chinese governance techniques and practices, including high-tech
national development planning. Her publications include The Reach
of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic, and most
recently To Govern China, co-edited with Professor Patricia
Thornton. She is the former director of Oxford’s Contemporary China
Studies Programme.