In the late 19th and early 20th century, the military served as a vital node of state development for a wide range of nations, such as Meiji Japan, Ottoman Turkey and Republican-era China. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, the Chinese military was simultaneously seen as a source of problems, with frequent military interventions in politics, and as a key site to re-shape the Chinese state and society. In the past several years, younger scholars have re-focused the narrative of military history in the 1900–1945 period to highlight cultural and ideational shifts. Nicholas Shillinger's The Body and Military Masculinity in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Lexington Books, 2016) is perhaps the most noteworthy example, and Clemens Bruttner at Goethe University and Chi Man Kwong at Hong Kong Baptist University have also added greatly to our understanding of identity and cultural affinities within the early 20th-century Chinese military. Yan Xu's The Soldier Image and State-Building in Modern China, 1924–1945 examines the difficult process through which the soldiers’ image was remade by political leaders, urban intellectuals, and women. Although Xu offers a fascinating glimpse into the fractured and complex cultural milieu of the Republican period, readers will find it challenging to draw out the key points.

As an analysis of how cultural representations are shaped and contested, the majority of Xu's research focuses on understanding the cultural norms and values expressed in memoirs, speeches, journal articles and drama. Xu traces the path of the soldier-image through several key groups. In chapter one and two, the Kuomintang (KMT) party, and later the Republic of China government, worked to make the military more dutiful and obedient by cultivating new values and conceptions. In this top-down process, leaders like Chiang Kai-shek strove to discipline soldiers’ personal behaviour and emotion as part of an attempt to create a new military that could represent itself as defending the nation and leading society by positive example. Chapter three delves into the post-1937 wartime response of urban professionals, who supported the Chinese military in the war against Japan, but remained ambivalent to the KMT attempt to create a heroic aura around soldiers. The intellectual challenge to KMT propaganda by urban elites reveals the limits of the top-down process, as society pushed back with more realistic cultural depictions of military life and behaviour. Chapter four, dealing with gender issues, is the most intriguing of the book, highlighting the contradiction between the often hyper-masculine values of the military, and the need for a wartime effort to be inclusive across genders. Chapter five traces the impact on military roles as students and educated youth began to enter the KMT military during the war. This group was less susceptible to KMT indoctrination, and subtly re-shaped martial values from inside the military institution. To provide contrast, the final chapter briefly examines the situation in Chinese Communist Party (CCP), controlled areas.

A significant issue with the book is the frequently imprecise language that makes it difficult for a reader to feel they are clearly and accurately following Xu's line of thought. For example, at multiple points Xu notes that “larger social masses,” were a factor, but she does not define this group. Similarly, chapter six repeatedly refers to the “yangge” movement as vitally important; however, what this movement was, and did, is never explained or even translated. At other times the syntax is jumbled, such as “recruited conscripts,” which are two contrasting methods of adding personnel to a military: one voluntary, one involuntary. These issues should have been identified and corrected by the publisher. Cultural analysis and parsing out deeply embedded values and meaning from essays and speeches is inherently difficult, but the reader is forced to work very hard to follow the argument, detracting from the impact of the work.

Overall, Xu has improved our understanding of a critical period, when warfare and militarization by both the KMT and CCP led to a radically changed Chinese martial identity, and a strengthened Party-state. More work remains to be done in this field, and her talents for cultural assessment, particularly in dealing with gender and the military, are laudable. While this work is appropriate for specialist audiences, I hope that continued research in the field by Xu and others will clarify the narrative, streamline the key points, and make it more accessible to a broader audience.