Professor Rana Mitter

 

The year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of China's triumph against Japanese invasion in World War II. Pivotal to the Allied victory, China's heroic resistance is still relevant to contemporary international politics as well as regional and world orders, said Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Centre. In his book Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945, Mitter recounts China's wartime predicament and analyzes why China's role as an Allied power has been given short shrift in the Western world. Mitter shared his insights with Chinese Social Sciences Today (CSST) recently.

CSST: How would you comment on China's endurance in the Second World War?
 

Mitter: We need to consider the alternatives during one of the worst years of the war, 1938. By autumn of that year, China was suffering from military hardships. Most of eastern China lay in Japanese hands. There had been an impressive victory at Taierzhuang, Shandong Province. However, this advantage was soon lost when Japanese armies rallied and took the city of  Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province.
 

In late October, the temporary military headquarters at Wuhan fell to the enemy. Many outside observers assumed that China could not hold out. One British diplomat even declared that it would be irresponsible for the Chinese to carry on fighting. Why continue a battle that was already lost? It also seemed to many observers that the most likely scenario was a Japanese victory over China.
 

CSST: Defying that widely held assumption, China did not surrender. Instead, the country persisted until the end. However, China's sacrifice and contributions were forgotten in the West. In your book, you indicated that this attitude is attributable to the Cold War. Could you elaborate on that point?
 

Mitter: In 1945, China was a wartime ally of the Western powers—the United States and the British Empire. But just four years later, China had taken a different path, and the revolution brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in 1949. Because of this, relations between China and the West remained difficult for many years. This meant that there was much less opportunity for Westerners to meet Chinese politicians, diplomats and scholars during the Cold War era. Without access to archives and documents in China, it was hard for Westerners to write histories of the world war that included the Chinese story. Of course, that situation has changed in recent years.
 

CSST:  Why is it important for the West to understand China's wartime sacrifice and contributions?
 

Mitter: China did not have the resources or military strength to provide the kinds of contributions that the USSR, the US or the British Empire did. But if China had made a different decision in 1938, and surrendered, then China's fate would have been very different. Japan would have treated China as a colony. It would have had dominance over politics and trade on the mainland of East Asia for decades to come. Japanese forces would also have been freed for an all-out assault on the USSR, Southeast Asia, or even British India. World War II might never have happened at all in the way that we know it today. These things are still not fully appreciated in the West.

CSST: Japan's revisionist tendency is unmistakable. It might engender even more tensions in the region in days to come. How would you comment on Japan’s perceptions of its militaristic past?

Mitter: It is true that some conservative figures in Japan are trying to downplay the country's wartime crimes, including massacres in China and the "comfort women" scandal. While it is understandable to condemn the revisionists who do try and downplay the war in Japan, it is also important to understand that there are many Japanese who do not share this viewpoint. Some Japanese journalists and academics have been at the forefront of examining their own country's history, and many professors and teachers have done a great job producing excellent research that has forced the Japanese public to understand the war crimes committed by their soldiers.

 

Jiang Hong is a reporter at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.