About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

100 Foreign Aff. 192 (2021)
The Stories China Tells: The New Historical Memory Reshaping Chinese Nationalism

handle is hein.journals/fora100 and id is 410 raw text is: The Stories China Tells The New Historical Memory Reshaping Chinese Nationalism Jessica Chen Weiss China's Good War: How World War I Is Shaping a New Nationalism BY RANA MITTER. Harvard University Press, 2020, 336 pp. On September 3, 2015, a proces- sion of Chinese missile launchers and more than 12,000 soldiers paraded through Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Some 850,000 civilians were deployed to patrol Beijing; in parts of the city, busi- ness, traffic, and all wireless communica- tions were shut down. But lest anyone get the wrong impression, President Xi Jinping delivered an address meant to assuage those alarmed by all the firepower and manpower on display. No matter how much stronger it may become, China will never seek hegemony or expansion, he assured his audience, which included a few dozen world leaders. In fact, Xi argued, China had played an important part in defeating fascism in the twentieth century, and China was JESSICA CHEN WEISS is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China's Foreign Relations. now helping maintain the international order in the twenty-first. Employing the terms that the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) uses to describe World War II, Xi hailed China's commitment to uphold the outcomes of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Antifascist War and called on all coun- tries to respect the international order and system underpinned by the pur- poses and principles of the UN Charter, build a new type of international relations featuring win-win coopera- tion, and advance the noble cause of global peace and development. Under Xi, the ccp has tried to project an image of seeking peace through strength, neither picking fights nor shying away from confrontation. In recent years, however, China's increas- ingly assertive and often abrasive conduct has undercut its attempt to claim international leadership. Xi's appeals to the past represent one way to offset this inherent tension. But China's interest in commemo- rating World War II began much earlier, in the 1980s. The chaos and trauma of the Mao-era famine and the Cultural Revolution had left scars on the national psyche and had laid bare the flaws of Marxism-Leninism as a governing philosophy. When Deng Xiaoping took the helm after Mao Zedong's death in 1976, the ccp stifled the flames of class struggle and stoked capitalist fervor and consumerism instead. Yet even as the party adapted its ideology, its search for popular legit- imacy remained tethered to national- ism and became increasingly rooted in China's role in World War II, which Chinese leaders routinely held up as 192 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most