Exemplifying National Unity and Victory in Local State Museums: Chongqing and the New Paradigm of Official World War II Memory in China

The literature on World War II memory in China is skewed toward the history of the occupation and victimization of the eastern provinces. This study shifts the focus to the southwestern city of Chongqing, which served as China’s temporary wartime capital and the seat of the CCP–GMD united front. Comparing narratives of four thematic state museums—respectively commemorating the Communists, Nationalists, U.S. allies, and the city—this research shows that Chongqing is not an outlier in China’s memoryscape, as is often presumed. On the contrary, it finds that these distinctive narratives draw selectively and purposefully from local experiences and bottom-up impulses to instantiate and hence reaffirm the evolving central line. Chongqing’s story of unified resistance and joint triumph exemplifies the more inclusive and empowering, yet highly stylized, new norm of war remembrance under Xi Jinping, which stresses national cohesion and patriotic loyalty as the key to Chinese ‘victory’ and ‘greatness’. Asian Studie

Vergeten ontmoetingen tussen Nederland en China

Asian Studie

Nederland en de CCP: de gelederen gebroken

History and International Studies 1900-presen

Nederland en de CCP: nadagen in Nanjing

History and International Studies 1900-presen

Remembering friends, not allies: World War II memory in contemporary China

Despite efforts in the People's Republic of China (PRC) to normalise and refashion the memory of World War II for the purposes of domestic and international self-legitimation, the Chinese party-state has refrained from embracing the notion of 'Allies' in its official remembrance, barring a few notable exceptions. This article revisits the wartime relations between the Republic of China and the Commonwealth of Australia to outline the history, local memory and official remembrance of China's onetime Allied cooperation, while highlighting related trends in academic scholarship and heritage work.Asian Studie

Nederland en de CCP: het verleden in het heden

History and International Studies 1900-presen

Welke oorlog? Herdenken en vergeten in China

Asian Studie

The frail foundations of the China-Russia friendship

Asian Studie

China's new historical statecraft: reviving the Second World War for national rejuvenation

There is a common perception that the Chinese state promotes fabricated accounts of the Second World War and Communist Party's role in that conflict. Despite a growing scholarly interest in the history and collective memory of China's war experience, this perception has rarely been scrutinized, and the field has been slow to recognize recent shifts in China's memoryscape. This study draws on the concept of historical statecraft to compare official accounts with the historical record and explore how the Chinese party-state uses war memory for political purposes. It finds that its desire for national unity and international recognition have led Beijing to espouse a narrative of the Second World War that, despite significant gaps, is more representative and historically accurate than ever before. Simultaneously, the analysis shows that the Chinese leadership, at what it sees as a high-stakes juncture in China's nation-building project, increasingly monopolizes and mobilizes the memory of the war for the purposes of self-legitimation, control and strategic posturing. Although there are signs of China normalizing and globalizing its history, its official war memory reinforces an inwardly-directed form of Chinese nationalism. Analysts should take Chinese war memory seriously and study the implications of Beijing's new historical statecraft.Asian Studie

Review of Rühlig, T.N. (2022) China's foreign policy contradictions: lessons from China's R2P, Hong Kong, and WTO policy

Asian Studie