Why World War II Is So Important to China

China has pulled out all stops to celebrate and commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Aside from a major military parade on September 3 – the first time such a parade has been held to commemorate the anniversary of Imperial Japan’s surrender – China has highlighted the war in its state media for the past year, emphasizing its contributions to World War II and Japanese war crimes in equal measure. Meanwhile, Chinese historians have published confessions from war criminals, files relating to the forcible recruitment of “comfort women,” and accounts of evidence that Japan tried to destroy research facilities related to the notorious Unit 731 headquarters.

Generally, outside observers tend to dismiss China’s emphasis on the war as Communist Party propaganda. The conventional wisdom is that the CCP stokes the fires of nationalism to boost its own legitimacy, and to divert attention from troubling economic issues. Such nationalism is particularly effective when invoking memories of the horrors of the Japanese invasion and the ferocity of the Chinese resistance. In fact, in China the conflict between China and Japan from 1937-1945 is formally known as the “People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression,” touching ably on both those themes. (Note: In this piece, I adopt the less-loaded term, “Second Sino-Japanese War,” to differentiate this conflict, which predates the war between the European powers, from World War II in the global sense.)

Zheng Wang outlines the role of nationalist education in Chinese historical memory in his book Never Forget National Humiliation, arguing that the CCP used “patriotic education” (including a heavy emphasis on China’s “humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers, culminating in the Second Sino-Japanese War), to restore its damaged legitimacy in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.

Yet an emphasis on the CCP’s use of historical narratives often results in downplaying the possibility of “real,” more organic nationalist sentiments arising from China’s people. In practice, it is impossible to separate the CCP’s “patriotic education” campaign from “natural” nationalism – the point is that both forces are at play in how Chinese conceive of and understand the Second Sino-Japanese War. CCP efforts to manipulate nationalism do not mean that all Chinese nationalism is a product of government policy, a point made by Jessica Chen Weiss in her book Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations.

Defining Moment

In a historical sense, the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War was a defining moment for China. It was the first time Chinese troops had emerged victorious from a war in over 100 years. Since the First Opium War began in 1839, China (under the Qing dynasty, then later the Republic of China government) had lost battles to seemingly every country who cared to attack: Great Britain, France, the United States, Russia, and Japan. September 2, 1945 (September 3, Beijing time) marked the first time in a century that China experienced the surrender of a foreign military adversary, rather than the other way around.

Added to the historical importance of the victory was its psychological impact. As Wang pointed out in his book, “[m]any Chinese consider the greatest humiliation during the century of humiliation to be China’s defeat by Japan, a former tributary and vassal state.” That defeat came in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. China’s losses to the European powers were bad enough, but being forced to sign an unequal treaty with a state many Chinese considered as inferior – a “little brother” always trailing behind China culturally and politically – was a telling blow to China’s national identity.

Thus in the Chinese conception, the conclusion of the Second Sino-Japanese War was the end of an aberration, righting the order that had been overturned with the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. This time, Japan was forced to accept defeat – and in doing so, handed back the Chinese territories it had occupied from 1895-1945 (including Taiwan, Manchuria, and eventually most of China’s eastern coast). In this context, it’s easy to understand the furious reaction in China to mention of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands – in China, these are seen as the final territories “stolen” by Japan and yet to be returned.

In considering the role of the Second Sino-Japanese War in modern Chinese history, it’s important to note that the war was a crucial part of the Chinese narrative well before “patriotic education” began in the 1990s. The war has always been central in historical narratives of modern China – it’s the focus of the narrative that has changed dramatically.

In the 1990s, as the CCP changed its rhetoric and ideological basis, Wang argues, “the official Maoist victor narrative was superseded by a new victimization narrative that blamed the West for China’s suffering.” Under Mao, who wanted to emphasize the CCP’s role in defeating enemies – from Japan to the Nationalist government and “reactionaries” in the 1950s and beyond – there was little emphasis on Japanese war crimes or atrocities. That would belie Mao’s victorious narrative – and also, Wang points out, would have raised the awkward point that the Nationalists were far more active in fighting the Japanese.

Still, the war was not absent from historical narratives or historical memory; under Mao, as now, the war period made many appearances in popular literature and entertainment. But the war was linked to national redemption under the CCP. In effect, national suffering during the Second Sino-Japanese War was given a happy ending tied to the rise of “new China” in 1949.

Prior to the “patriotic education” campaign, which introduced an emphasis on victimization, the Second Sino-Japanese War was still an important part of the Chinese historical narrative, as the first Chinese victory against foreign imperialism. But it was merely one defining event among several, particularly the victory over the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War that followed.

In the new historical narrative, as defined by the Chinese Communist Party, the focus on victimization brings the Second Sino-Japanese War into sharp focus. It was the last, and arguably the greatest, of all the Chinese “humiliations” at the hands of foreign powers. It is also considered the least resolved of China’s past humiliations, perhaps because it is recent enough that resolution seems like it should be plausible (there have been some movements, for example, to reclaim artifacts looted from China during the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the century, but none have gained the emotional resonance of campaigns to demand apologies from Japan for its actions during the war).

As China remembers the war this month and beyond, it’s important to understand the role the CCP and its “patriotic education” have played in shaping historical narratives – but not to attribute the war’s importance entirely to these factors. The Second Sino-Japanese War was bound to play a seminal role in China’s history, given the events that came before and after: the 100 year experience with foreign imperialism, and the founding of “new China” in 1949. Still, the CCP has actively shaped and defined exactly how the war fits into Chinese history, and that has implications for China’s relations with Japan and the world.