China's Good War

A Foreign Affairs Book of the YearA Spectator Book of the Year"e;Insightful...a deft, textured work of intellectual history."e;-Foreign Affairs"e;A timely insight into how memories and ideas about the second world war play a hugely important role in conceptualizations about the past and the present in contemporary China."e;-Peter Frankopan, The SpectatorFor most of its history, China frowned on public discussion of the war against Japan. But as the country has grown more powerful, a wide-ranging reassessment of the war years has been central to new confidence abroad and mounting nationalism at home.Encouraged by reforms under Deng Xiaoping, Chinese scholars began to examine the long-taboo Guomindang war effort, and to investigate collaboration with the Japanese and China's role in the post-war global order. Today museums, television shows, magazines, and social media present the war as a founding myth for an ascendant China that emerges as victor rather than victim. One narrative positions Beijing as creator and protector of the international order-a virtuous system that many in China now believe to be under threat from the United States. China's radical reassessment of its own past is a new founding myth for a nation that sees itself as destined to shape the world."e;A detailed and fascinating account of how the Chinese leadership's strategy has evolved across eras...At its most interesting when probing Beijing's motives for undertaking such an ambitious retooling of its past."e;-Wall Street Journal"e;The range of evidence that Mitter marshals is impressive. The argument he makes about war, memory, and the international order is...original."e;-The Economist