Review | China’s Good War: Rana Mitter explores how national – and nationalist – narratives shape history

In his latest book, Rana Mitter, director of the China Centre at Oxford University, plots the diverging course of China’s World War II narrative, which has shifted to portray the nation as strong and victorious

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In China's Good War, historian Rana Mitter chronicles the changing tides of official wartime narrative in China. Photo: Shutterstock

Paul French

Published: 5:15am, 5 Sep 2020Updated: 9:26pm, 5 Nov 2020

China’s Good War by Rana Mitter, Belknap Press. 4/5 stars

Wars, hot and cold, have come and gone, but World War II remains a constant presence, hovering over our culture and politics, its myths recycled and repurposed to meet individual ends: consider Boris Johnson on Brexit, Donald Trump with Make America Great Again or Vladimir Putin and Russian exceptionalism.

Having been all things to all people, The War has inspired shelves of novels, endless movies and constant references to the “greatest generation” or the “Blitz spirit”. But despite our seeming obsession with the conflict, no definitive World War II has emerged.

China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism is essentially Rana Mitter’s companion volume to his concise, valuable 2013 book, China’s War With Japan, 1937-1945, which placed China in its rightful place as a victorious Allied nation and highlighted its devastating eight long years of all-out war.

Two immediate outcomes of the Sino-Japanese war are still with us today – the Chinese revolution of 1949 and Beijing’s permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. A third, more nebulous, consequence is China’s collective memory of The War.