Redefining Wartime Chongqing: International capital of a global power in the making, 1938–46

Abstract

This article examines the historical role and legacy of the foreign establishment in China's temporary capital Chongqing during the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan and the Second World War. This extraordinary episode, lasting from 1938 to 1946, ushered in a new era for China's foreign diplomacy and laid the foundation for its rise to world-power status. Placing Chongqing at the very heart of this epochal chapter in modern Chinese history, this article describes the major events, trends, and actors that directly or indirectly were instrumental to China's wartime transformation from a partitioned, de facto colony to a first-rate global power with a permanent seat among the ‘Big Five’. Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, this article presents fresh perspectives on a near-forgotten episode of China's war experience. Moving beyond the traditional typecasting of ‘Chungking’ as a primitive backwater in China's remote hinterland, this article reappraises wartime Chongqing as a major international centre at the spearhead of global change and as an important cradle of the modern power that China is today.

Torn between the nation and the world: D. F. Karaka and Indian journalism in the Second World War

“…81 In Chongqing Karaka became acquainted with 'the press gang'-the war correspondents from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, taking part in their daily routine of press conferences, shared meals, and political conversations. 82 His first war assignment in Chongqing made a huge impact on him, as he wrote explicitly-and divulged implicitly by the large amount of space allocated to Chongqing in subsequent, even much later, books. His visit coincided with the Japanese occupation of Burma, which cut off the Burma Road, but also with the first Allied air raid on Tokyo (18 April) and the American victory in the Coral Sea Battle (8 May).…”

Allies as adversaries: China, the Netherlands and clashing nationalisms in the emergence of the post‐war order, 1942–1945

“…This is problematic for two reasons. First, focusing exclusively on the major powers and their continual attempts to shape China's destiny is bound to produce an incomplete understanding of the multi‐faceted and multi‐layered efforts, challenges, and achievements of the Nationalist government in its dealings with the 23 states (including 14 original treaty powers) represented in China's wartime capital (Chang & Zhou, 2017: 589–92). Second, a singular focus on the great powers not only neglects the qualitative transformation of China's relations with “lesser” powers during this critical period, but also limits our understanding of World War II's global legacies by obfuscating the implications of this transformation for the trajectory of nationalist movements in the region and the shaping of the post‐war regional and global orders.…”

Foreign Friends and Problematic Heroes: Remembering a Global World War Two in Early Twenty-first Century Chinese Cinema

“…This was manifested in a plethora of areas, including its diplomatic, social, and intellectual experiences (e.g. Chang & Zhou, 2017), as well as in the realm of film criticism and exhibition (Bao, 2009). Other works centre on rural areas, including a major famine in Henan province generated by a flood caused by the Nationalists' decision to break the Yellow River dikes to stall the invading Japanese forces (Muscolino, 2015).…”