Old ghosts, new memories: China's changing war history in the era of post-Mao politics

Journal of Contemporary History

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2003, Pages

  Mitter, Rana ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247446241     PISSN: 00220094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0022009403038001967     Document Type: Review

References (26)

1. For an excellent analysis of the word 'myth' in this context, see Jonathan F. Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War (Vancouver 1997), 8
2. See William Callahan, 'Humiliation, Salvation, and Chinese Nationalism', Alternatives (forthcoming 2003)
3. For a wider variety of ways in which the 1980s Chinese state co-opted history, see Jonathan Unger (ed.), Using the Past to Serve the Present: Historiography and Politics in Contemporary China (Armonk 1993)
4. Mark Eykholt, 'Aggression, Victimization, and Chinese Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre' in Joshua Fogel (ed.), The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (Berkeley, CA 2000), 27
5. 'Introduction' in Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon (eds), Scars of War: The Impact of Warfare on Modern China (Vancouver 2001), 6
6. Hans van de Ven, 'The Military in the Republic', The China Quarterly, 150 (June 1997), 372
7. For the era's politics, see Richard Baum, Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (Princeton, NJ 1994)
8. I take the term 'vectors of memory' from Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge, MA 1991), chap. 6
9. See Yang Daqing, 'Convergence or Divergence?: Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing', American Historical Review, 104.3, 842-65, and Eykholt, op. cit., 11-69
10. Liu Ye, Bo Liechen (eds), Nanjing datusha tuzheng (Photographic evidence of the Nanjing Massacre) (Jilin 1995)
11. See Arthur Waldron, 'China's New Remembering of World War II: The Case of Zhang Zizhong', Modern Asian Studies, 30, 4 (1996), 869-99
12. Lu Yi, 'Qianxian caifang' (Covering the Frontline) in Song Shiqi, Yan Jingzheng (eds), Jizhe bixia de kang-Ri zhanzheng (The War of Resistance in Journalists' Writings) (Beijing 1995), 1-22
13. Geremie Barme, 'History for the Masses' in Unger (ed.), Using the Past, op. cit., 278. On official moves in 1994 to temper the praise of the Nationalist armies
14. see Chang Jui-te, 'The Politics of Commemoration: A Comparative Analysis of the Fiftieth-Anniversary Commemoration in Mainland China and Taiwan of the Victory in the Anti-Japanese War' in Lary and MacKinnon, op. cit., 150
15. Fang Jun, Wo renshide guizibing (The devil soldiers I knew) (Beijing 1997), 288
16. 'Xianggang' (Hong Kong) in Chen Xiangmei, Chunshui dongliu (The Spring Waters Flow East) (Beijing 1992), 66
17. I have discussed one of these institutions in much more detail in Rana Mitter, 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Nationalism, History, and Memory in the Beijing War of Resistance Museum, 1987-1997', The China Quarterly, 161 (March 2000), 279-93
18. See Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York 1994)
19. and Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia (London 2000). In Night of Stone, 415-23, Merridale warns against too simplistic a usage of metaphors such as 'wound' and an uncomplicated use of the language of victimology to understand the nature of contemporary understanding of Russian attitudes toward the second world war. This is a very fruitful thought to bring to the Chinese example too
20. Beijing bowuguan nianjian 1995-1998 (Yearbook of Beijing Museums) (Beijing 2000), 107
21. Joseph Fewsmith and Stanley Rosen, 'The Domestic Context of Chinese Foreign Policy: Does "Public Opinion" Matter?' in David M. Lampton (ed.), The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform, 1978-2000 (Stanford, CA 2001), 162
22. Interview with director and staff of the museum, August 2000
23. See Lai Tse-han, Ramon Myers, Odoric Wou, A Tragic Beginning: The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947 (Stanford, CA 1991)
24. See, e.g., 'Taiwan lishi yinggai ruhe dingwei' (How Should We Decide What Taiwan History is?), Ziyou shibao (21 July 1997), 4
25. Ronald Robinson, 'Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration' in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds), Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London 1972)
26. Chang, op. cit., 155