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

Abstract

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.

Mnemonic Soft Power: The Role of Memory in China's Quest for Global Power

“…Recent Chinese speech and thoughts about China's place in the world reveal memory – constructed narratives and symbols of the past – everywhere. As Mayer (2018: 1217) argues, “Chinese leaders are increasingly mobilising historical narratives as part of a broader trend that challenges Fukuyama's thesis of the end of history.” One prominent example is a reconstituted narrative of the Second World War as a triumph of the Chinese people under the guidance of the communist party (Chang, 2022; Mitter, 2020). As Rana Mitter writes, most memory is for the consumption of China's own elites and public rather than propaganda for foreigners; “[the discourse] defines China's place in the world to itself, rather than to others” (Mitter, 2020: 9).…”