St Cross Fellow Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, has published China's Good War (HUP, 2020), examining the country's reassessment of World War II.
He discusses the changing meaning of World War II as China grows more powerful, and more confident abroad. The country's brutal experience was little discussed, but is now celebrated as a 'victory' - a key foundation in its rising nationalism.
In addition to discussion of recent historiography that ushered this subject to the fore, Rana also considers sites of memory - museums, movies, street art and social media - as a medium for this new discourse of wartime China as victor rather than victim.