3 As the Chinese state eases its claim on war leadership, diversification of narrative occurs in both the Chinese public sphere and Internet communities. Mitter identifies the Chinese discourse on the war as having both liberal and restricted elements. 2 The necessity of a narrative shift partly explains China’s memory vacuum in the immediate postwar era, a period in which European nations actively pursued reconciliation leading to a study of collective European trauma. The post-1980 shift in Chinese historiography allowed discussions of nationalist war efforts to enter the Chinese academy and society. Mitter is correct that before the Deng era, the Chinese official and social memory of the Second Sino-Japanese War largely revolved around Communist leadership in war efforts, as many Chinese citizens would recall. 1 The author crafts firstly a historiographical chapter on the evolution of the Chinese-state narrative regarding the war.
Mitter aims to analyze the modern discourse surrounding World War II in China, specifically the manifestations of the war in historiographical arguments, diplomacy, online communities, movies, and museums. Mitter’s newest work, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism, portrays the postwar historiographical shift in China’s war narrative and how memories contribute to the longevity of war legacies in modern Chinese policymaking, popular culture, and diplomatic strategies. His previous publications, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945, and China’s War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival, all contributed to the arguably less-discussed Chinese war of resistance in the English-language literature. Rana Mitter, a prominent historian in Britain who specializes in modern Chinese history, has put forth his newest work on China’s rediscovery of its wartime memory. For more than seventy years after World War II, the Second Sino-Japanese War remains a lively topic in China.
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