KEITHBARNESHistory is still current affairs in China.
Whether it’s the thoughts of Confucius
or the legacy of the violent Opium Wars
of the 19th century, China’s past shapes
the thinking of its politicians, artists and
thinkers. But outside observers sometimes
don’t spot one of the parts of the past that
has loomed ever larger in popular culture
over the past three decades: China’s expe-
rience in the Second World War.
China was at war with Japan for eight years from 1937 to
1945, and a formal ally of the United States and the UK after
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. During those
years, it suffered more than 10 million deaths, saw 80 million
or more Chinese forced to flee their homes, and experienced
the destruction of its still fledgling systems of railways and
roads. The war created the basis for the Communist revolu-
tion of 1949.
After 1949, there was relatively little mention of the war
in Mao’s China. This was because his government found it
politically inconvenient to point out that the leader he had
defeated in the civil war, Chiang K ai-shek of the Nationalist
party, had borne the brunt of the fighting against the Japa-
nese. That taboo began to fade in the 1980s after Mao’s death.
Today, endless soap operas on Chinese television show
both Communist and Nationalist warriors in a positive light;
what matters is that they are anti-Japanese patriots. China’s
internet is awash with keyboard warriors (mostly male, it has
to be said) who use text messages to debate the finer points
of the battle of Shanghai in 1937 or Taierzhuang in 1938,
expressing patriotic sentiments along the way. Schoolchildren
are taken in their hundreds of thousands to Beijing’s unsubtly
named Museum of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance
Against Japanese Aggression.
Today, China provides its people with urban lifestyles
unimaginable to previous generations. Reviving memories
of China’s wartime experience is a way of creating a new
nationalism that speaks to something beyond the attractions
of consumerism.Rana Mitter is professor of the history and politics of modern
China at the University of Oxford. Author of China’s War with Japan,
1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival (Allen Lane, 2013), he is currently
writing a book on war and memory in contemporary ChinaCHINA“Reviving memories of
China’s wartime experi-
ence is a way of creating
a new nationalism”
Rana MitterIn 1944, the renowned British econo-
mist John Maynard Keynes gave a
landmark speech at the famous Bretton
Woods conference. The Allies, he said,
had proven that they could fight
together; now it was time to show they
could also live together. If they could
achieve this, a genuine “brotherhood of
man” was within their grasp.
The Second World War was such a vast catastrophe
that by 1944 the need for global change was obvious to
everyone. At Bretton Woods, the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and an element of the World Bank were created
to promote peace and prosperity, and to prevent the kind
of economic shocks that had led to war in the first place.
The United Nations (UN), created the following year, was
founded on the same noble principles.
But at the same time as trying to save the world from the
scourge of future war, these organisations were also a perfect
way to cement the powers and privileges of the major Allies.
It was the UK and the United States that set the agenda
for Bretton Woods 75 years ago. Since then, the IMF has
always been headed by a European, and the World Bank
always by an American.
The U N is also in thrall to vested interests. The Securit y
Council is dominated by the five permanent members – the
US, the UK, France, Russia and China – whose privileged
position is nothing but a throwback to the power structures
of 1945. Our collective memory of the war allows us to in-
dulge the idea that nations like Russia are still great powers,
and that economic giants such as Germany and Japan do
not deserve a leading role in world affairs. Huge emerging
powers such as India do not even get a look in.
The Second World War was once a catalyst for global
change. Today it is a series of myths and memories that
entrench old ideas and old power structures. Our inability
to let go of its legacy now prevents us from any progress
towards the “brotherhood of man” that, in 1944, even a
hard-nosed economist such as Keynes dared to dream of.
Keith Lowe is a historian and author. His latest book is The Fear and
the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
“Today, the Second World
War is a series of myths
and memories that
entrench old ideas and
old power structures”
Keith Lowe