How China’s view of its past informs its choices in the present, with Rana Mitter

Um, you have extensively researched and written about China's modern history, and especially about World War II, uh, which is also known as the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in China.

How does China understand the Second World War, and how does this differ from our understanding?

Well, I have to say that I feel particularly conscious of the similarities and differences in Chinese and European understandings of the war sitting here because, uh, although podcast listeners can't immediately tell, um, you can look out the window here and see the beautiful greenery of this park here in Berlin, and it's wonderful to actually be here on the spot in the MERICS headquarters.

But every time I come to Berlin, which is a city I, you know, love, uh, you can't help feeling history under your feet the entire time, and I think I don't need to go into any details to remind everyone what a central place this was in the history of Europe in the mid-20th century, including the horrors of World War II.

And there are many messages, many lessons that have been learned in Europe and in Berlin from that war, but perhaps one of them is the idea that, in particular, ideas of liberty and democracy would eventually win out, but at great cost after the experience of war.

Now, in China, I think that one of the things that is very similar in terms of the way in which the Chinese remember what, to this day, they call the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, is that feeling that they were fighting for liberation from an invading enemy, uh, and in their case, of course, it's the invasion by Japan.

But a significant difference is that I don't think that certainly the Chinese Communist Party would argue that it was a war for democracy, or at least not liberal democracy.

Of course, their own interpretations of socialist democracy would be, would be different.

But rather, they would see it as one stage into what they still argue today is the inevitable rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party.

And I think one of the things that is interesting about the understanding of the war more broadly in China today is that there's an official story, which comes very much from the party, uh, at the top levels, about the rise to power of the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, and the importance of going through the war experience to achieve that aim, and I think a much, much more complex, much more nuanced story that exists at the grassroots.

Yes, of people wanting to remember fighting back against the Japanese even 80 years later, but also thinking about the many groups in society who don't tend to get mentioned in that official story.

Perhaps most notably, the nationalist government of China, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Generalissimo of China.

He, of course, went into the, uh, the historical memory hole, you might say, because, of course, he was defeated in the Civil War just a few years later in 1949, fled to Taiwan, never returned to the mainland.

But the fact that he and his armies actually played the most significant role in what you might call the set piece battles as opposed to guerrilla warfare, that, for a long time, wasn't mentioned very much in China.

And also, even more complex, even perhaps darker stories for some, such as the period of collaboration between Wang Jingwei, a major Chinese nationalist leader who worked with the Japanese and not against them, as well as the stories, for instance, of ethnic minorities, of women, of all sorts of other sectors of Chinese society that also played a very important part in the war.

Those are harder, not impossible, but harder to uncover in the China of today.

So for me, I would say that one of the things that's most important in understanding how China remembers World War II, uh, 80-plus years on, is that the story told by the Chinese Communist Party isn't irrelevant.

Of course, it's very important for this governing party of this huge nation.

But we should remember that wartime China was many stories, not just one story.

What you mentioned right now is a conception of the Second World War where China is like, even though it is, uh, streamlined rather than more diverse and all the diverse or the more diverse stories also are happening on, on this place, China.