In Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945, Rana Mitter, a professor of the history and politics of modern China at Oxford University in Britain, gives a balanced account of the country’s eight-year conflict against Japan. Whereas most Western histories date the outbreak of the world war to the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Mitter reminds that the Republic of China (ROC) had been fighting since the summer of 1937, locked in a brutal struggle for the nation’s very existence.
While the war took the lives of at least 14 million Chinese and left the country’s major cities and infrastructure in ruins, it played a significant role in the overall Allied victory by holding down an enormous number of Japanese troops in China, hampering Japan’s operations in the Pacific theater, and preventing it from invading Australia or British-ruled India. Mitter also points to fundamental, positive changes brought about by the conflict, as Chinese increasingly embraced modern concepts of nationalism and experimented with progressive reform in ways unthinkable before the war.
Mitter’s book begins in 1931 with the Manchurian Incident, when Japanese forces responded to a railway bombing—an attack staged by the Japanese themselves—with the invasion of Manchuria. Over the next several years, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石, 1887–1975), head of the Nationalist government, attempted to strike a difficult balance between arming the country for war, avoiding provocation with Japan, and satisfying growing anti-Japanese public sentiment.
In July 1937, Chiang decided to confront the Japanese after skirmishes at the Marco Polo Bridge southwest of Beijing. He understood Japan’s encroachment on the city—a former capital—to be an attack upon the heart of China. As Chiang wrote in his diary, “This is the turning point for existence or obliteration.”
As the Japanese invasion unfolded, the Nationalist leader chose to take a stand at the vital commercial city of Shanghai. By early November 1937, it became clear that ROC forces would have to retreat from Shanghai, the beginning of a string of defeats. Mitter tells of the significance of the Nationalist victory in the spring of 1938 at Taierzhuang near Wuhan, which broke the myth of Japanese invincibility. However, defeat followed again at the strategically important city of Xuzhou. Still, China—unlike France in 1940—did not surrender in the face of overwhelming odds.
While Japanese atrocities were abundant during the war, Mitter finds no easy answer as to why the events in Nanjing in 1937–38 occurred on such a large scale and for so long. Instead, he suggests a variety of causes, including the resentment of ordinary Japanese conscripts toward both their superiors and the surprisingly resistant Chinese.
While determined to stop Japanese aggression, Chiang knew that help from the West was unlikely to materialize, a lesson learned through observation of the Spanish Civil War and Fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) included China in the Lend-Lease program, but it received a miniscule amount of the aid given to the Allies. In 1941 and 1942, the nation received just 1.5 percent of the total, and this figure dropped further to 0.5 percent in 1943 and 1944.
As Mitter notes, relations between the ROC and the other Allies were fraught with self-deception. “The British and Americans wished to give the impression that China was a serious ally without actually putting much effort into the relationship, while Chiang overestimated what he was worth to the Western Allies.”
The author adroitly locates the seeds for China’s renewal within the wartime emergencies. The war saw a shift in power from eastern China, the capital at Nanjing and port cities, to the relative backwater of Chongqing. Mitter notes that an unintended consequence of moving the capital to Chongqing in the interior was that it “helped to consolidate ideas of a united China that spanned the whole of the country’s landmass.”
From Chongqing, the Nationalists continued their programs of modernization begun at Nanjing before the war. Reformist initiatives included the introduction of a refugee ID program and the first large-scale development of government welfare assistance.
Other consequences of the war effort were less positive. Mitter finds that the conflict and resulting chaos created a dominating fear of disorder. The practice of mass mobilization—and coercion—forged during the war would reappear in Maoist China during land-reform campaigns and the Cultural Revolution. As a consequence of the war, as well as the refusal of some Japanese to accept responsibility for wartime atrocities, virulent anti-Japanese sentiment persists in mainland China seven decades after the end of the conflict.
As Mitter points out, historians have not always been fair to Chiang Kai-shek. While Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東, 1893–1976) Long March of 1934–35 has become the stuff of legend, Chiang’s similarly arduous trek to Chongqing has been lost to historical memory. Mitter refutes what he calls the “bizarre accusation”—the claim that Chiang refused to fight Japan. The Nationalists did most of the fighting—and dying—to save China.
Chiang’s decision to flood the Yellow River region in order to stop the Japanese advance on Wuhan was problematic. The floods cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Chinese. Chiang’s government blamed the catastrophe—which enabled the Nationalist military command to retreat to Chongqing and spared the city of Wuhan, though only for five months—on the Japanese. Henan province would suffer again in 1942–43 through a horrific famine, the result of drought and resulting poor harvests combined with government incompetence and the pressures of war.
Mitter masterfully balances his narrative of the conflict between stories of China’s leaders and ordinary Chinese. While the Japanese encroachment into Manchuria and northern China had been seen by many Chinese as a far-off concern, as the war advanced deeper into the country, local attachments yielded to national sentiment. As Mitter writes, China was becoming “one entity, united by war.” The refugee experience shaped understandings of modern China for tens of millions, as they traveled and lived in different parts of their country. The maelstrom of war had made identification with the vast Chinese nation real and personal.
While Chiang is the key figure in Forgotten Ally, Mitter’s account also highlights China’s other wartime leaders, Chiang’s rival Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party; and Wang Jingwei (汪精衛, 1883–1944), the prominent Nationalist leader turned Japanese collaborator and head of the Japan-backed puppet government in Nanjing.
Many middle-class progressives favored the Communists and chose to join Mao’s forces in Yan’an, while poorer Chinese typically opted to remain in Japanese-occupied areas. Mitter examines the question of collaboration with sympathy. Ordinary citizens were forced to judge the consequences of their everyday decisions about how to gain food, shelter and safety.
The author notes that the Nationalist government resonated both “light and darkness”—a modernizing side that sought to boost the war effort and provide relief to the population as well as a shadowy side, exemplified by spymaster Dai Li (戴笠, 1897–1946). Wang’s regime in Nanjing, lacking sources of legitimacy, depended upon coercion. In Yan’an, Mao went even further, effectively shutting off the region and stifling any remaining free spirit.
While Mao’s base at Yan’an achieved mythical status in the minds of Western leftists, Mitter paints a complex picture. The relative size and isolation of Yan’an allowed the Communists to experiment with little interference. And while the Communist system of taxation proved more effective and benign to the population, Yan’an, like the Nationalist regions, faced dreadful inflation.
Mitter traces the motivations of Wang, a former heir apparent to Sun Yat-sen (孫中山, 1866–1925) as Nationalist leader. Notorious for his collaboration with the Japanese, Wang was unable to overcome his fears for China—that it would suffer total destruction at the hands of the Japanese, fall under Soviet Communist control, or end up being dominated by British or American imperialism. Tellingly, Wang insisted that his regime use the Nationalist flag.
At the end of the war, China had regained the autonomy lost to colonial powers in the 19th century. As Mitter states, the war, despite the horrific destruction, “marked a vital step in China’s progression from semi-colonial victim of global imperialism to its entry, however tentative, on the world stage as a sovereign power with wider regional and global responsibilities.” After the war, the ROC took its place as a permanent member of the Security Council in the newly created United Nations.
With Forgotten Ally, Mitter has given readers a superb overview of the ROC’s vital contributions to the Allied war effort as well as suggestions on how the war continues to impact Chinese society. Forgotten Ally is recommended for both scholars and general readers alike.
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Joseph Eaton is an associate professor of history at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
Copyright © 2015 by Joseph Eaton
Internationalization of History
In a recent interview with the Taiwan Review, Rana Mitter discussed his book Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945 and Western perspectives on China’s involvement in the global conflict.
TR: What is the connection between the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the emergence of modern Chinese consciousness?
Mitter: I would say that the Second World War may be the single event in the 20th century that had the biggest effect on shaping modern China. China changed fundamentally because of the rise of the Communist party during the war, and the war also created a competition between different ideas of what China should be.
There were three main political paths during the war against Japan. One was the path of the then-government, the Nationalist or Kuomintang [KMT] government as an authoritarian, anti-communist model. The second model was the Communist revolution of Mao Zedong. The third model that people tend to forget about was the possibility of China being part of the Japanese empire, which was symbolized by Wang Jingwei of the KMT who collaborated with Japan. In that sense, it’s the war about the major political paths China could have taken and the forced confrontations between those paths.
Eventually, the war became so violent and so brutal that it forced a choice between them rather than letting them compete with each other. We know that eventually communism triumphed, but we must remember that the war provided the competition between the ideas in the first place.
TR: Given the differing wartime roles of the ROC government and communists, today how should both sides go about gaining greater recognition for their respective contributions? And if this goal is achieved, how would it change international perceptions toward the participation of Taiwan and mainland China in global affairs?
Mitter: One thing that the Nationalists and Communists during the war had in common was their contribution to winning the war against Japan, which is not really remembered that much in the outside world. People in the West know a little bit sometimes about China’s role, but rarely do they know much of the detail. Therefore, I think one of the things that is very important is trying to gain recognition for China’s contribution. How can that be done? I think the answer is the internationalization of history.
If people just see the Second World War from the perspective of their own country, they won’t really understand the role that other countries played in that history. For a long time, Europeans and Americans tended to concentrate more on the war in Europe or the Pacific, and China’s war wasn’t really understood. At the same time in China, much of the concentration has been on the Chinese contribution and only recently has there been discussion of the Allies’ role as well. It’s important for both sides to acknowledge the importance of each other’s contribution during the war. The West ought to know more about the Chinese contribution in holding down many hundred thousands of Japanese troops during the war.
At the same time in China and Taiwan, particularly in China, it’s becoming much more important to talk about the very important role of the United States and the British Empire in helping China to defeat the Japanese. Both sides need to know more about each other’s history. That way both sides will gain more recognition of how the war rallied international efforts against the Japanese.
TR: Are you optimistic in this respect?
Mitter: Yes, I’m optimistic. More books are being published in the West that talk about the importance of China’s role, and there are also mentions in television programs and even sometimes in comic books. In China, there’s also a greater understanding of the Western role. In Taiwan, it has been understood for a long time because of connections with the United States. In mainland China, it’s a realization that has come more recently, and that has been an important part of a growing sense of understanding each other.
TR: How does the warming cross-strait relationship help with that understanding?
Mitter: One of the reasons why we now have a more complete and objective history of China’s role in the Second World War is that scholars and academics from the mainland and Taiwan talk to each other quite often in cross-strait conferences, influencing each other’s thinking. That’s a very important part of reaching a more objective view of China’s role during the war.
TR: Compared with other similar historical works, your book devotes more space to Wang Jingwei. Why do you attach such significance to this figure?
Mitter: The book concentrates on three men—Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong and Wang Jingwei, and people often ask me, ‘Why the third one?’ It’s really important to understand why Wang Jingwei did what he did because, thinking about his life, it’s quite a strange development that he would cooperate with the Japanese. In his early life, he was a very close friend of Sun Yat-sen. He was a great Nationalist speaker and a great patriot at that time. Therefore, it was not natural that he would hope to make peace with Japan. So it seems very interesting to understand why he would do that.
When you look at the diaries of people like his close friend Zhou Fohai and documentaries of the [collaborationist Nanjing] government, you come to know it’s a complicated story. He decided to work for the Japanese partly because of his own personal ambition in the game of power, but he also genuinely believed in 1938 that China could not win the war against Japan. His widow Chen Bijun, who was put on trial after the war, said that her husband wanted to protect the Chinese people and to make sure that Shanghai, Nanjing and other cities would be at peace and never be attacked again.
Because the Japanese lost the war, his position is now condemned and we understand why that is. He was very naïve and foolish to believe that he could have a genuine part to play with the Japanese. At the same time, we have to understand that in 1938 it seemed that there was no way that China could win and that Wang Jingwei believed that he could save China. I think his decision was wrong, but we also have to understand him and not just condemn him.
TR: Please explain your approach to research and applying the results to historical writing. What tips do you have for aspiring authors in the field?
Mitter: Several things are important in writing history. First of all, there are many different sources and if you are just telling one side of the story, you are giving a very narrow viewpoint. That’s the reason why in Forgotten Ally I put forward three main viewpoints and introduced different materials, trying to work out how they were different from each other.
The second thing is to combine analysis and narrative. It’s important to remember that you have to take materials and bring them together in a way that people can access and understand. The last thing is that when you are writing history, it’s important to remember that history is about facts and also about arguments, putting forward your viewpoints. That’s the reason why when you write a book, not everyone will agree with you. You can expect any important book to have quite a lot of debates around it. The most boring thing for a historian is that everybody agrees with you and nobody disagrees.
TR: What are your suggestions for Taiwanese readers concerning understanding history?
Mitter: History influences a lot of debates in Taiwan and China today. Therefore, for the debates to be objective, frank, honest and fair, people must understand history in as much detail as possible. One thing very important in the last 20 or 30 years for democracy in Taiwan is that a lot more details are exposed about, famously, 228 [the February 28, 1947 anti-government uprising] and the history of indigenous peoples and other issues about Taiwan’s politics. Even if the history is painful, difficult or embarrassing, you have to discuss it in an open way. You don’t want history to be controlled by any political party. That’s why it’s heartening that these things are debated very freely and usually in a very liberal way in Taiwan.
—by Pat Gao
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Rana Mitter’s book is titled Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945 in North America and China’s War with Japan, 1937–45 outside North America. In Taiwan, it has been published as 被遺忘的盟友.