In China’s Shifting Historical Narrative, “War of Resistance” with Japan Retains Key Role
Publication: China Brief Volume: 21 Issue: 19
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Last month, China commemorated the 90th anniversary of the September 18 incident— the false flag railway explosion that sparked Imperial Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In China’s official historical narrative, the incident, which is colloquially known simply as “9-18” (
Always a key date in modern Chinese history, 9-18 has assumed additional political significance in the Xi era. In early 2017, party-affiliated historians reached a consensus that the war with Japan began on September 18, 1931 and not on July 7, 1937 with the Lugou Bridge incident that ignited full scale conflict between Japan and Nationalist China, and was previously considered the war’s start date (Xinhua, January 17, 2017). Based on this determination, the war’s official name was changed from the “Eight-year War of Resistance against Japanese aggression” to the “14-year War of Resistance against Japanese aggression”. The Ministry of Education ordered revisions of all text books to reflect the war’s new name and start date (Peoples’ Daily, January 11, 2017).
“Never Forget”
Putting aside questions of historical accuracy, the 2017 decision to revise the dates of the second Sino-Japanese war to 1931-1945 indicates the increased emphasis on the conflict in China’s official historical narrative. As People’s Daily acknowledged, the historical revision refocuses China’s account of the 1930s away from the civil war between Nationalist and Communist forces to the conflict with Japan (Peoples’ Daily, January 11, 2017). This is evidenced by the consistently high-level of official and popular ardor for commemorating not only 9-18, but also other key dates in the War of Resistance. In July, China observed the 84th anniversary of the Lugou Bridge Incident, which is now termed “the beginning of China’s whole-nation resistance” against Japan (Xinhua, July 7). The anniversary of the allies’ victory over Japan on September 3 is another key date of remembrance. Last year on the 75th anniversary of allied victory in the “World Anti-Fascist War”, General Secretary Xi Jinping addressed a historical symposium held by the CPC Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Commission, where he recalled China’s “great victory” as “a historic turning point at which the Chinese nation rose from severe crisis in modern times and embarked on a journey toward great rejuvenation.” (Xinhua, September 4, 2020). Each year on December 13, which was designated as a National Memorial Day in 2014, candlelight vigils are held across China to remember the victims of the 1937 Nanjing massacre (Xinhua, December 14, 2020).
China’s increased historical emphasis on the legacy of Japanese imperialism traces back to the party’s efforts to address the legitimacy deficit it faced following the 1989 Tiananmen crisis. In the early 1990s, China launched the patriotic education campaign, which sought to ground the party-state’s legitimacy in popular nationalism by emphasizing unresolved historical grievances, particularly toward Japan. In the narrative that emerged, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plays a starring role in leading China to national rejuvenation after a century of humiliation at the hands of the Western colonial powers and Japan. The campaign effectively shifted China’s historical account away from the triumphalist Marxist-Leninist narrative of the Mao era wherein the party defeated its adversaries through class struggle, to a new narrative centered on national humiliation and rejuvenation. [1] This humiliation-cum-rejuvenation narrative is epitomized by the slogan: “Never forget the national humiliation, undertake self-strengthening for our generation” (勿忘
The CCP has a tradition of re-evaluating or emphasizing elements of its past to shape the politics of the present; this in turn informs popular conceptions of China and its place in the world. A recent example of this phenomenon is the greater public attention that the Korean War (1950-1953)- the “War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea” has received amidst China’s intensifying strategic rivalry with the United States. Presently, the film The Battle at Lake Changjin (长津
History as a Mirror
Throughout 2021, Xi has devoted great effort to reshaping the party’s history in order to consolidate the ideological foundation of his leadership ahead of next year’s 20th Party Congress. In February, Xi launched a campaign at the Party History Study and Education Mobilization Conference to study the party’s history (China Brief, June 18). The campaign will set the stage for the sixth plenum this November, when Xi will oversee the release of only the third resolution on the CCP’s history since its founding in 1921. The resolution will likely rehabilitate much of the party’s Mao-era past, and provide further ideological basis for a system predicated on “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” (习近
Experts have taken up Xi’s call to use “history as a mirror” to reflect on Sino-Japanese relations, which have worsened in 2021. For example, Huang Jiping (
Conclusion
In the post-Tiananmen era, the CCP has sought to use patriotic education to nurture historical grievances, particularly toward Japan, and to cultivate popular nationalist sentiment as a source of regime legitimacy. In the coming years, nationalism is liable to become even more salient to the CCP’s legitimacy as economic growth slows, and the party-state imposes a growing array of restrictions on personal behavior. However, for China’s leaders, stoking popular nationalism is a double-edged sword as compromise or retreat in a crisis involving Japan, Taiwan and/or the United States is likely to generate immense popular anger. This Catch-22 heightens the risk of conflict in an already volatile region.
John S. Van Oudenaren is Editor-in-Chief of China Brief. For any comments, queries, or submissions, please reach out to him at: cbeditor@jamestown.org.
Notes
[1] For an explanation of this shift see Zheng Wang, “National Humiliation, History Education, and the Politics of Historical Memory: Patriotic Education Campaign in China,” International Studies Quarterly, Volume 52, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 783–806, https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/52/4/783/1797043?login=true