Over 65 years have elapsed since the end of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, yet in China, public memory of the conflict is more visible than ever. A wealth of academic publications has been matched by popular histories, movies, and television programmes set in the war era. The Chinese government has invested heavily in museums to commemorate the war. The ‘history question’ even impacts contemporary diplomacy between China and Japan. As Caroline Rose has noted in her study of this issue, ‘emerging in the 1980s, problems reappeared on an almost annual basis in the form of protests over textbook content, the nature (or lack of) Japanese apologies to the Chinese, ‘gaffes’ by Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Diet members relating to events of the war, Japanese prime-ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, and so on’.Footnote ¹ The latter, in particular, led to public protests by Beijing authorities. In April, 2009, when Japanese Prime Minister Aso Taro, rather than visit the Shrine, merely sent a gift to the Yasukuni shrine at the spring festival, Beijing protested anew. ‘China has already used diplomatic channels to express its strong concern and dissatisfaction, and stress the high sensitivity of historical issues’, stated a spokesperson for the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs.Footnote ²

War atrocities—the unspeakable cruelties inflicted by the invading Japanese military on the Chinese people—are a key theme in much of China's contemporary ‘remembering’ of the war. The rape of Nanjing, the chemical and biological experiments of Unit 731, and the use of poison gas are just some of the issues which have received the most visible treatment in books, movies, television, and museums. A recent big-budget film about the rape of Nanjing, ‘City of Life and Death, has brought renewed popular attention to that atrocity. As Kirk A. Denton has written, ‘since the 1990s, the discourse surrounding the War of Resistance has shifted. . .toward an obsessive attention to China's victimization at the hands of the Japanese: tragic tales of horror are displacing the heroic narrative of resistance’.Footnote ³

But what of writing done during the war itself? Did war atrocities feature prominently in war reportage and fiction of the day? Chinese newspapers, journals, and literary publications had been centred in Shanghai when the war erupted in the summer of 1937. Although the loss of the coastal cities and the retreat inland to Wuhan and then Chongqing by the Chinese government deeply disrupted the publishing industry, demand for news about the war remained strong. Most journals and newspapers relocated, consolidated, and survived. As Chang-tai Hung noted in his study on the war, the ‘conflict with Japan awakened a voracious appetite for information’. As public demand for stories about the war grew, newspapers such as Dagong bao and Shen bao began to send their own men and women to the front. The Battle of Taierzhuang in April, 1938, for instance, drew an unprecedented 20 war correspondents.Footnote ⁴

Yet reading through this reporting from the war era reveals that coverage of Japanese war atrocities was much less prominent than writing on the war in today's China. Certainly the suffering of the Chinese people and the cruel nature of modern war were key themes, but the contrast with the public memory of the war in China today is striking. What accounts for this great difference? Censorship was certainly an issue. Reporters covering the conflict were not permitted to reveal military details which might aid the enemy. Yet in many ways, journalists faced fewer restrictions in the early war period than they did during the Nanjing decade. In the period up to the outbreak of war, the government of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) had attempted to rigidly censor newspapers and journals. Yet particularly in the months between the fall of Nanjing in December, 1937, and the loss of Wuhan in October, 1938, China experienced what Stephen MacKinnon has termed the ‘flowering of free expression’.Footnote ⁵ At the very time when details of the rape of Nanjing and other atrocities were becoming available, reporters had perhaps the greatest freedom from censorship in the whole of the war era.

Following the loss of Wuhan and Guangzhou in October, 1938, conditions did change. Guomindang authorities began to tighten their control over the press. Writers such as Fan Changjiang, who had established himself as a famous war correspondent working for the Dagong bao, became disillusioned with the Nationalists. But in attempting to report what he saw as shortcomings of Guomindang (GMD) leadership, Fan faced increasing censorship. In the fall of 1938, according to Chang-tai Hung, Fan left the Dagong bao after many of his articles had been censored and in the following year joined the Communist Party.Footnote ⁶ After the New Fourth Army Incident in January 1941, controls over the press tightened further as the United Front between the Communists and the Nationalists virtually disintegrated. Nonetheless, censorship was probably not a key factor in determining how Chinese reporters covered Japanese atrocities.

Perhaps another factor which limited the coverage of Japanese atrocities during the war was that many were not fully revealed until after the conflict. Information about Japanese chemical and biological warfare, particularly Unit 731,Footnote ⁷ was closely guarded. Even after the war many of these records were censored by the American Occupation authorities and not entered into the record of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Details about these programmes and the ‘comfort-women’Footnote ⁸ issue leaked out only many years after the war. The events in Nanjing in December, 1937, were hardly a secret, but their scale was unclear at the time. The best reporting was actually done by foreigners, including diplomatic personnel. Accounts by John Rabe, ‘the good Nazi’, were a centrepiece in Iris Chang's famous 1997 book, The Rape of Nanjing: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.Footnote ⁹

Yet neither censorship nor lack of information were the major factors in limiting the coverage of Japanese atrocities in the wartime press. Fundamentally, most Chinese reporters were unwilling to depict their fellow countrymen as merely helpless victims of the Japanese attack. They saw their task as not simply to report ‘objective’ facts, but to foster the unity and strength of the Chinese people. As Chang-tai Hung has noted ‘reporters like Fan Changjiang and Qiujiang seemed to believe that a frontline dispatch could be both objective and involved at the same time. . . .The War of Resistance called for commitment; journalistic detachment could be interpreted as avoidance of responsibility’.Footnote ¹⁰ For most journalists, especially those on the left, writing on the war meant helping to motivate, mobilize and unify the people of China. War atrocities could be discussed, but not to the extent that they would demoralize the population. As Kirk Denton has observed, ‘even before 1949, the leftist political world was uncomfortable with representations of Japanese atrocities’.Footnote ¹¹

So how did wartime reporters cover the war? Most stressed the heroic resistance theme—after years of appeasement the Chinese people had stood up to the Japanese. As Yang Ji reflected on the fight at Shanghai:Footnote ¹²

Heroic resistance was the dominant theme.

When Chinese suffering was detailed, writers often stressed that it mobilized the population. Ba Jin wrote an open column ‘For My Japanese Friends’ during the last days of the fighting at Shanghai. ‘Outside my window is a bright light; it is this old city in flames. Many people's lives, many people's property are being consumed by this fire’, he wrote. Nearly 100,000 refugees from Nanshi (the south city) were trying to get into the International Settlement in Shanghai. Ba Jin suggests that most Japanese are honourable but that an evil minority has directed this attack. But why were the Japanese attacking? One of the stated purposes of the Japanese invasion was to eliminate anti-Japanese elements in China. Ba Jin suggests that most of the people fleeing the Japanese Imperial Army had not previously been anti-Japanese. But the Japanese assault had created a mobilized population which now hated Japan. The cruelty inflicted on the people of China was making them stronger.Footnote ¹³

A survey of Chinese reporting shows that within the context of heroic resistance, the suffering of ordinary Chinese at the hands of Japan barbarity occurred, but rarely to the extent that they appeared as hapless victims. The Chinese were fighting back. As the popular Dongfang zazhi [Eastern Miscellany] wrote in its 1 January issue in 1938, ‘since August 13 the enemy has used new style weapons to kill us, and we have suffered grievously. . .. But the enemy has also had big sacrifices. There have been heavy enemy losses in both south and north China’.Footnote ¹⁴ Chinese might be dying, but they were fighting back.

Fan Changjiang's reporting on the battle of Shanghai and its aftermath

One of China's most famous wartime reporters was Fan Changjiang.Footnote ¹⁵ Writing for the Dagong bao, as noted earlier, he had covered the 1936 fighting in Inner Mongolia and interviewed Mao Zedong in February, 1937. But he achieved his greatest fame with his coverage of the early months of the conflict. Fan provided vivid images of the fighting at the front, although he believed that in wartime a reporter had to arouse the people to support the nation. In the face of personal hardship and danger, Fan often travelled with the troops, and his writing reflected the view that China must remain unified and fight on to final victory.

Some of Fan's most dramatic reporting was of the battle of Shanghai, particularly in the aftermath of the Chinese retreat. Fan typically stressed the suffering of ordinary Chinese caught in the midst of battles. He recalled the scenes of panic as refugees from Nanshi tried to enter the International Settlement or board boats on the Huangpu River. White Russians blocked the refugees escape, while Japanese planes threatened from the sky.Footnote ¹⁶ After Shanghai fell, Fan managed to reach the small Yangzi port city of Tiansheng which served as a harbour for the industrial centre of Nantong. He found 3,000 refugees huddled on the tiny dock at Tiansheng, fearful of attack by Japanese ships and planes. Deciding that the river route was too dangerous, Fan hired a small vehicle in Nantong for land transportation to Zhenjiang, and then by boat to Nanjing and upriver. The new enemy was mud which worsened as they moved inland, with many overturned vehicles. Dirty and wet, his party finally arrived at Zhenjiang.Footnote ¹⁷

Fan's reporting—part military, part human interest, part even travelogue—was perhaps one reason he was such a popular writer. Indeed, his style had been developed in his writings before the outbreak of the conflict in July, 1937, and seemed to have influenced many writers. Although detailing the suffering of refugees under the cruel Japanese attack, Fan and most reporters were careful not to depict Chinese as merely helpless victims. He tried to demonstrate the enormous potential of the Chinese people if they had proper leadership and organization. Fan includes a brief human interest story, an account of one of the truck drivers in his party who was only 17 years old (sui). Fan was struck by his indomitable spirit—in the face of mud, bad tyres, or other disasters—he had the ‘you banfa’ (can do) attitude. The implication was that China was filled with such daring youth—but that energy had to be mobilized by a competent government.Footnote ¹⁸

Another theme of Fan's reporting was the need to mobilize all Chinese. At one point in their journey, Fan's party stopped at a small village school. Asking the students and the teacher if they knew of the big anti-Japanese battle at Shanghai, they replied that for country people, none of this was clear. They had no chance to see a Shanghai newspaper.Footnote ¹⁹ The ignorance of rural Chinese about the momentous events often but a few miles away struck virtually all Chinese writers and reporters as they retreated inland.

Another of China's most famous wartime writers, a self-styled ‘woman warrior’, was the fiery Xie Bingying. Shortly after the fighting erupted at Shanghai, she organized a group of women who worked at a field hospital near Jiading to treat wounded soldiers.Footnote ²⁰ Like Fan, Xie found much of the rural population were unaware of the conflict or the threat to their nation. They seemed to know little of the war, or the nation, or why they should fight:

Xie felt that immediate steps must be taken to mobilize the people if China were to survive this conflict. This deep concern informed most wartime writers who would strive to create a sense of national identity.

In covering the war, writers like Fan Changjiang and Xie Bingying felt that their role was not impartial reporting but contributing towards China's survival. They had to report events, but they also needed to mobilize the people to resist, pointing out problems with China's leadership when necessary. As Fan wrote, when discussing the fall of Nanjing:

Fan's reports from the front brought not only personal danger and hardship but forced him to confront China's long series of defeats. Yet Fan always seemed to exude great hope for the ultimate victory, because he felt that the war was mobilizing the Chinese people in ways never before achieved. In April, 1938, he wrote, ‘war is a great destroyer of strength, yet at the same time it is a great builder of strength’. He believed that War could lead to the creation of a new, stronger China, and that reporters could play a key role in that process.Footnote ²³

After the fall of both Guangzhou (Canton) and Wuhan in October, 1938, Fan acknowledged that the war had been a string of defeats—Shanghai, Nanjing, Xuzhou, and now two more crucial cities. But he argued that the war had simply entered a new phase. Now Chinese must rely on guerrilla warfare and must operate behind enemy lines and convert the enemy's rear into China's front lines.Footnote ²⁴ Hu Yuzhi, another prominent leftist writer who joined forces with Fan to set up the International News Agency in Guilin, wrote a column on the second anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.Footnote ²⁵ Hu stressed that two years of conflict had unified the Chinese people. Except for a handful of traitors like Wang Jingwei, Chinese were determined to fight on even though everyone realized it would be a long struggle.Footnote ²⁶

Fan and most leftist journalists emphasized the need to mobilize China's vast rural population for the fight against Japan. In his writing about the war in Anhui, Fan praised the efforts of the educated youth who came with the troops to provide propaganda work in the countryside. They sang patriotic songs and spread news about the war among the people, gaining support for the guerrilla campaign.Footnote ²⁷

In covering the early phase of the war, journalists like Fan faced displacement and personal hardship as well as defeat after defeat of their nation's forces. What is remarkable is the degree to which they displayed (in their public writings at least), continued high morale. China had resisted, the people were being mobilized. The foundation for ultimate victory had been laid. As one of Fan's fellow reporters wrote, ‘We believe that China will not fall into Japanese hands. I believe that everyone must believe this’.Footnote ²⁸ Within this context, discussion of Japanese atrocities against Chinese had to be restrained.

Covering Nanjing: how to handle an atrocity

But what of the rape of Nanjing? Although the full extent of the tragedy was perhaps not fully understood at the time (indeed it remains contentious today), how did Chinese writers discuss the situation? Some explicit coverage of the atrocity appeared in the domestic press, and international reports of the atrocity circulated widely, sometimes with the assistance of the GMD government.Footnote ²⁹ Often these accounts detailed horrific violence against Chinese. In May, 1938, in Hankou, for instance, the Duli Publishing Company printed an anonymous letter (said to have been written in blood) from Nanjing. It detailed the arrival of the Japanese in Nanjing on 14 December, 1937, and the murder of many women who had taken refuge there.Footnote ³⁰ Among famous writers, Guo Moruo often mentioned Japanese atrocities in Nanjing, especially attacks on unarmed civilians and the rape of Chinese women and girls.Footnote ³¹

The journal Qiyue [July] published by Lu Xun's protégé, Hu Feng, carried grim news from Nanjing in its 1 February, 1938, issue. ‘Dang Nanjing bei nuesha de shihou’ [In Nanjing during the Cruel Slaughter] detailed the harrowing days of the Japanese occupation. The most horrific story is a vivid recounting of the invasion of a home by Japanese soldiers and the subsequent murder of a four-year-old boy and the rape of his 17-year-old (sui) sister. The flag of Japan flew everywhere, the author observed, and the sun image was the colour of blood.Footnote ³²

What is somewhat surprising, however, is how few of these reports appeared in the domestic press, particularly when contrasted with the central role that Nanjing plays in today's remembering of the war. The Damei wanbao which was published in the unoccupied foreign settlement in Shanghai, for instance, carried a two-part article on 3 and 5 April, 1938, entitled ‘Rijun zhanzhu hou zhi Nanjing’ [Nanjing after being occupied by the Japanese military]. This was a translation of an account which had originally appeared in the English-language China Weekly Review on 19 March, 1938, as an unsigned article entitled ‘Nanking—What Really Happened—and the Japanese “Paradise”’. It began by quoting a Japanese account describing an idyllic situation in Nanjing, reading in part, ‘one sees a playground for Nanking children, with soldiers and Chinese children happy together, playing joyfully on the slides’. The article then gives the real story which was an orgy of looting, mass executions and rape when the Japanese entered the city. ‘The Japanese combed the former Chinese capital looking for money, loot and women’. Women from 16 to 60 were victims, and the protests of foreigners to Japanese diplomatic authorities were of no avail. With 50,000 Japanese forces in the city, the report stated, only 17 military police had been deployed to control the anarchy. The report concluded that more than 10,000 people had been killed and 8,000–20,000 women raped. Few Chinese would have read the English-language original, so by including a translation, the Damei wanbao brought this information to a much wider audience. Yet the two articles were relatively short and both placed on the lower section of page three of the paper. The coverage of the events in Nanjing was not prominent in the Chinese press of the day.Footnote ³³

When reports of Japanese atrocities in Nanjing did appear, they were often linked with stories of Chinese resistance. The journal Yuzhou feng [Cosmic Wind] in July, 1938, for instance, reported on the entrance of Japanese troops into the refugee zone on 13 December, 1937, and how they completely ignored the sanctity of the Red Swastika Society. But the article notes that ‘Although Nanjing is occupied, if you go but 5 li from the city, Japanese forces dare not tread. . . . Our guerrilla forces are there. If you get to Pukou, even 100–200 Japanese forces would not dare—they need 1,000–2,000’.Footnote ³⁴ The account thus balances details of the atrocities with accounts of successful and ongoing resistance by Chinese.

When the leftist journal Kangzhan sanri kan [The War of Resistance, Published Every Three Days] carried an article with photos of victims of Nanjing, the title was ‘Kuai ba gaoyang biancheng tie de duiwu’ [Quickly takes these lambs and makes them into iron soldiers]. While the writer Liu Liangmo acknowledged that the victims in the photos appeared as helpless as lambs being taken to slaughter, he argued that Chinese need not be victims. ‘The brave heroic soldiers fighting at the front, they are not lambs are they? In the enemy's rear, the mobile bands of guerrillas, they are not lambs are they?’ ‘But the key’, he argued, ‘is that all Chinese people must be mobilized and organized to resist. They must become iron soldiers’.Footnote ³⁵ Atrocities might be discussed, gory details might be given, pictures reprinted, but the dominant feature should never be victimhood. Resistance or the potential for resistance was critical.

The unwillingness of wartime writers and authorities to be too explicit in discussing the rape of Nanjing and similar atrocities was evident in the handling of the novel Nanjing by A Long (Chen Shoumei). The author spent several months in Yan'an in late 1938–1939 where he studied at Resistance University (Kangda). He later moved to Xi'an for medical treatment to recover from an injury. During that period he wrote the novel which detailed the battle for Nanjing and the first days of the Japanese occupation. Although the author had fought in the battle at Shanghai, he had not personally witnessed events in Nanjing, so it is unclear what sources he used for his novel. When the magazine Kangzhan wenyi [Resistance Literature] organized a literary contest, A Long submitted the manuscript in December, 1939. The selection committee decided to give him first prize which would have led to publication of the work, but its publication was cancelled. Before the award was announced, the committee suspended the competition. A Long revised the work in 1940, hoping to get it published, but it was rejected a second time. Ken Sekine, who translated the novel into Japanese, has argued that ‘Nanjing was just too controversial to be discussed in print at that time because it did not promote a strong image of China's resistance. The novel finally appeared in 1987 under the title Nanjing xueji [Nanjing Blood Sacrifice]’.Footnote ³⁶ The author himself, in an afterword written in October, 1939, had argued that his work was not ‘defeatist’ because of its subject matter.Footnote ³⁷

In strong contrast with today's China, where the Nanjing massacre is at the centrepiece of much of war memory, writers during the war period itself published a limited amount on the event, especially in domestic publications. Excessive attention to the atrocity was thought to undermine Chinese morale, and the heroic resistance approach remained dominant.

Bombing

Bombing and aerial attack posed the gravest threat to ordinary Chinese during the early phases of the war. Particularly in the battle for Shanghai, civilians suffered numerous casualties from bombing, a pattern repeated elsewhere from Guangzhou to Chongqing. Interestingly, the Chinese press covered the impact of bombing rather extensively, showing little of the reticence when describing other atrocities like the Nanjing massacre. Reporters would often give gruesome details of the aftermath of an aerial attack. Liu Liangmo, who was so insistent that Chinese victims at Nanjing would not be seen as mere lambs, was much more forthcoming in October, 1937, when he commented on a picture of child missing an arm. ‘All China and all mothers of the world: please look at this lovable small child! You are all saying, why does this small child lack an arm! It has already been blown off by a bomb dropped from a Japanese airplane’.Footnote ³⁸

Why the difference in coverage? Perhaps one factor was that aerial bombardment of civilian populations was at that point a relatively new phenomenon. Reporters found it essential to inform people of this new weapon. Writing in the aftermath of the bombing might have been easier than reporting on atrocities such as Nanjing, since the bombing usually occurred in areas held by the Chinese. In covering Nanjing, Chinese reporters had to rely on accounts given by those who had survived and escaped Japanese control, or at least smuggled out a report.

Chinese writers, especially those on the left, were very conscious of promoting China's cause internationally. When the battle erupted at Shanghai, bombing of civilians, especially in a dense urban area, was relatively novel. By publicizing Japan's use of this new tactic to a foreign audience, writers hoped to gain sympathy for China.Footnote ³⁹ One early example of this was the Japanese aerial attack on the South Railway Station in Shanghai on 28 August, 1937. The Japanese claimed that Chinese soldiers were occupying the station, whereas the Chinese stated that only civilian refugees were located there. Ba Jin published an article on the attack stating that 600–700 civilians had been killed or injured, the majority being women and children. ‘This is not warfare, this is murder! What the Japanese air force has shown the world is not its power but its cruel insanity’.Footnote ⁴⁰

The most visible bombing of civilians in the fighting at Shanghai was on Nanjing Road on 23 August, 1937. This was the heart of the International Settlement, with the bombs landing in front of the Sincere and Wing On (Yong'an) department stores. Over 500 civilians were killed or wounded. Although the Chinese press quickly labelled this an atrocity committed by the Japanese, the bomb was actually dropped by a Chinese pilot trying to hit a Japanese ship docked in the Huangpu River. When photos or accounts of this bombing were published, the implication was always that the Japanese were responsible.Footnote ⁴¹

Japanese dominance of the air grew in the first years of the war. In May, 1938, Japanese bombers operating out of Taiwan killed 600 civilians and wounded 900 in an attack on Guangzhou (Canton). A year later, in May, 1939, the Japanese began two years of intensive bombing of Chongqing.Footnote ⁴² In discussing the bombing of Guangzhou, Ba Jin acknowledged that daylight raids made it difficult for workers to accomplish much work. But he argued that China would not be destroyed by bombing. It had given people the spirit to press on to final victory.Footnote ⁴³ Zhang Mingyang, writing in Dongfang zazhi, echoed these sentiments stating that the bombing of Guangzhou, which commenced on 28 May, and lasted several days, had destroyed hospitals and schools, and left 8,000–9,000 casualties. The goal was to break Chinese morale, but it was not working. It only made hatred of the enemy greater than ever and made the people more determined.Footnote ⁴⁴

Still, in more honest moments, some writers revealed how frightening air raids really were. When the planes flew over, it was the uncertainty that was especially trying. One could die at any moment. Fang Jiada, writing from Wuhan in early 1938 noted, ‘when enemy planes come, there is always the possibility of being blown up. The people in the three cities (Wuhan) are all on the front line of death. We do not know what tomorrow brings. Every person's life is given to fate’.Footnote ⁴⁵

Unquestionably, Chinese officials felt that some publicity about Japanese bombing would provide sympathy overseas while not undermining morale at home. Even Buddhist connections could be used. As Xue Yu notes in his study of Buddhists in the war, when the Japanese made overtures to Southeast Asia, Chinese Buddhists loyal to the Chiang government tried to play on the sympathy of Buddhists in the area. In November, 1940, a group of four Buddhist monks began a journey to Southeast Asia, carrying with them pictures of temples and Buddhist icons which had been destroyed or damaged by Japanese air raids. The night before they left Chongqing, local Buddhist groups hosted a dinner in the grounds of the Luohan temple which had recently been bombed by the Japanese. Photographs of the temple were taken to be used for propaganda purposes on their visit to Burma.Footnote ⁴⁶

Earlier reporting about the horrors of bombing did not seem to have increased Chinese preparedness later in the war. The Japanese Imperial Navy began its major campaign of bombing Chongqing in May, 1939, with an attack by 27 bombers carrying incendiary bombs. The massive firestorm in the city resulted in numerous casualties.Footnote ⁴⁷ Air raid preparations were made after the first attack, significantly reducing the number of casualties in later raids. Nonetheless, since the first attack occurred almost two years into the conflict, perhaps greater publicity about the devastating effects of bombing might have made the population of Chongqing more prepared.

Following the attacks on Chongqing on 3–4 May, 1939, Zou Taofen wrote a condemnation of the bombing using the same approach taken earlier in the war. Chinese forces had been achieving some success on the battlefield of late, he argued, so the Japanese retaliated with a disgraceful new method of attack, bombing areas of the city where ordinary people lived. Yet despite this suffering he further argued, as Zhang Mingyang had a year earlier, that this method was backfiring. Bombing attacks on civilians were causing an international reaction against Japan, and great sympathy for China, and the bombings were uniting ordinary Chinese in resistance. ‘I pain to see the suffering of the people of Chongqing in the past two to three days. But in bearing the tears of suffering, this has strengthened their hatred of the enemy’. Even those who have not heard of the war of resistance, ‘are now changed into people with an unwavering commitment to the war of resistance. It will cause us to pursue our resistance fervour more fully.’Footnote ⁴⁸

Chinese writers were thus more willing to discuss the horrors of Japanese bombing than to dwell on other Japanese atrocities such as the rape of Nanjing. Nonetheless, they still followed the basic line that Japanese cruelty was uniting the Chinese people to fight to the bitter end and to achieve the ultimate victory. Resistance, not victimhood, was the message.

Fear of collaborators

From the very beginning of the conflict there were Chinese who were willing to collaborate with the Japanese. Although national figures such as Wang Jingwei have attracted the most comment, an array of individuals in virtually every village or county in the occupied zone worked with the Japanese. In addition, peace rumours were rampant throughout the war. Many writers, particularly those on the left, attempted to prevent collaboration and talk of appeasement. Reminding the Chinese of Japanese atrocities became one tool by which to do so.

Qian Junrui, a leftist writer whose columns often appeared in Zou Taofen's journals, labelled the latest peace rumour, ‘a poisonous snake’, in October, 1937. He then described in detail for his readers the humiliation of the people of Tianjin when the Japanese army occupied the city, and warned that a similar fate awaited others. He also noted the prominent role that traitors had played in Tianjin and urged everyone to be on the lookout.Footnote ⁴⁹ Wang Jiyuan, writing in Dikang sanri kan in November, 1937, as Chinese forces were withdrawing from both Shanghai and Taiyuan, stressed that Chinese must accept the difficulty of war and persist to the end. Chinese had to be particularly vigilant against traitors in their midst who would collaborate with the enemy. As a warning, Wang reminded readers of the atrocities perpetrated by Japanese soldiers at Chinese educational institutions. Surrender would mean extermination.Footnote ⁵⁰

Reference to Japanese atrocities was thus paired with the need for continued resistance, even though the early battles had gone against China. In fact, China did make some diplomatic overtures to Japan. But leftist writers were determined that China should not sign a treaty with Japan which would have left Tokyo in control of much of China. Shi Fuliang, writing in early October, 1937, urged the government to squelch the peace rumours by eliminating any possibility of wavering. Nanjing needed to proclaim domestically and internationally a policy of resisting to the end, to break all diplomatic and economic relations with Japan, and to confiscate all Japanese property in China. Such a step would halt the continuation of peace rumours.Footnote ⁵¹

The writer Ba Jin, noting the reports of peace terms being offered by the Japanese, queried, ‘should we now accept humiliatingly the terms the enemy demands for a bitter peace? No, we cannot do so after all we have undergone. After this bitter sacrifice which we have made, we cannot think of enduring this humiliation; this cannot be done. . .We want to resist; we want to continue this bloody struggle’.Footnote ⁵² He later composed a poem which ended with this stanza:Footnote ⁵³

• Six years of humiliation are born on my shoulders,

• A people's fate is held in my hands.

• Advance bravely, the resistance flag is held high.

• Several thousand warriors have taken their blood and sprinkled it on the northern territory.

• Yet the calls for peace rise up from every nook and cranny.

• Alone in the dark, I weep without restraint.

Ba Jin thus counterpoises the sacrifice and glory of the resistance fighters with the cowardice of those calling for appeasement. To writers like Ba Jin, the atrocities committed by Japanese forces in China made appeasement impossible. If China caved in, it would fail to avenge the victims of Japan and leave China's population vulnerable to further atrocities.

Contemporary views: the new remembering of war atrocities

The war of resistance against Japan produced an enormous literature of both war reportage and editorial writing during the conflict. In this writing, reporters often mentioned the suffering of the Chinese people at the hands of the Japanese invaders. The cruel nature of aerial attacks on civilian populations, and the general lack of regard for non-combatants were the most frequent topics. Despite this, reporting on Japanese atrocities was relatively constrained, particularly when contrasted with discussion of the war in today's China. Writing in the midst of war, a conflict which China was losing, seemed to carry special responsibility. Reporters and editorial writers felt a strong need to boost morale among Chinese. As a consequence, they did not want to overstress the helplessness of Chinese victims in the face of the Japanese military.

In Maoist China, the government promoted a narrative of revolution over remembrance of the war against Japan. When the war was celebrated, Beijing ‘remembered’ the leadership of Chairman Mao, the Eight Route Army, and the New Fourth Army, not resistance by GMD forces. Mao preferred to downplay atrocities suffered by the Chinese. Resistance, not victimization, was the dominant narrative. When war atrocities were publicized, as with the trials of Japanese POWs in the mid-1950s, this was done with specific diplomatic goals in mind, not to stir up domestic opinion.Footnote ⁵⁴

Mao's reluctance to highlight Chinese victimization was much closer to wartime accounts than the current approach in China. Ironically, it has only been in recent times when China has emerged as a global power with a vibrant economy, expanding military, and successful space programme that the memory of Chinese victimhood is publicly celebrated. What accounts for this new focus on war atrocities? Beijing's stress on nationalism as an ideological prop for one-party rule is the key factor. As Yongnian Zheng has noted, the Chinese leadership encourages Chinese nationalism, ‘because a new ideology is necessary as faith in Marxism and Maoism declines, and nationalism, if handled properly, can justify the potential legitimacy of the leadership’.Footnote ⁵⁵ The elevation of nationalism among Chinese intellectuals increased during the 1990s. As Zheng commented, ‘it was not until after the Tiananmen Square Incident, especially after Jiang Zemin took power in 1992, that nationalism became a dominant discourse among Chinese intellectuals’.Footnote ⁵⁶

At the foundation of China's new nationalism is an emphasis on the victimization which China suffered at the hands of imperialists during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with Japan being the focus. As Peter Gries has argued:

The atrocities committed during the Sino-Japanese War several decades earlier have become a key component for the new nationalist identity in today's China.

The Beijing government has had a direct hand in encouraging the development of nationalist sentiment, one tied to a victimization narrative. As Rana Mitter has noted in his discussion about the war,

In the current ‘remembering’ of Japan's actions in China victimization is the dominant narrative. As I have argued elsewhere, Chinese writing on the war has become a virtual ‘numbers game’ in which the emphasis of historical writing is to maximize the sheer number of victims, as the set figure of 300,000 for the rape of Nanjing.Footnote ⁵⁹ The contrast between the writing on atrocities done during the war (when intellectuals and journalists preferred to emphasize resistance rather than victimhood), and the current narrative, is striking.