Project Chinese Military History Papers (Recent Publications, an on-going list) (PRIVATE ALBUM)

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The aim, to collect and create as comprehensively as possible, a collection of academic papers on Chinese Military History.  This is a collective effort so you are strongly urged to join in and help make it happen.

| 2007 |

Wallacker, Benjamin E., Studies in Medieval Chinese Siegecraft: The Siege of Chien-k'ang, A. D. 548-549.1971, Vol. 5:35-54

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"War Without Question: Policy Debates in the Founding of the Song Dynasty"
Peter Lorge  (Vanderbilt University, author of War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China 900-1795, New York: Routledge; 2005, and editor of Warfare in China to 1600, Ashgate, 2005)

Traditional Chinese historiography portrays China as naturally unified under a single regime, and the periods of multi-state rule over that same territory as anomalous, but always temporary, interregnums. As such, once it became clear that a particular regime was on its way to unifying, or reunifying, China, all of the rulers of lesser states would accept the inevitable and capitulate without fighting. Yet the Later Zhou and Song dynasties' conquest of the individual polities to its north, south and west in the late 10th and early 11th centuries was resisted at every step. Moreover, even within the Later Zhou and Song governments, high officials frequently argued against the wars of conquest that established the dynasty. These debates turned on many factors rather than an overall split between pacifistic civil officials and belligerent military officials. I will argue that the very diversity of objections demonstrates an underlying acceptance of war per se, as well as considerable confusion, or at least ambivalence, about the territorial and political scope of a Chinese empire.

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"Legislating for Victory (or: Half of Everything is Showing Up): Military Law in Japan's Warring States Period"
Ronald Frank (Pace University)

The paper focuses on two types of documents issued by regional rulers in 16th century Japan, namely domain law codes and so called "house rules," and the emphasis placed therein on military discipline, subordination, and etiquette. Along with a steady stream of legislation restricting the privilege of self-redress, there appears to be a growing number of exhortations and admonitions regarding matters of rank, dress, upkeep of equipment, timeliness, and the like. These tendencies suggest a significant shift away from a model of close personal relationships between lord and vassal and towards a more bureaucratic system of subordination in organized military units. Although the paper examines exclusively evidence derived from normative sources, the emerging pattern supports the thesis that the exponential growth in the size of armies had a direct correlation with the process of state building on the local and regional level in 16th century Japan.

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"Sages and Savages: War and Society in 17th Century Qufu"
Christopher Agnew (University of Dayton)

This paper discusses the ways in which the Kong family of Qufu, the recognized descendents of Confucius, experienced the challenges of social upheaval in the wars that marked the period of transition from Ming to Qing rule in north China in the seventeenth century.  What began as an elite struggle for control over land and trade routes evolved into a genuine social upheaval that fundamentally challenged the pillars of Kong family control in the countryside of western Shandong province.  As the Duke for Fulfilling the Sage faced the social ramifications of wars between Ming princes, bandit kings, and Manchu armies, he pursued a policy of entrenchment and strategic alliance that enabled him to weather political challenges from both within and without the Kong family.  The paper shall engage the theme of "Experiencing War in East Asia" in two ways.  First, by examining the ducal responses to the crises of the late Ming, the paper will discuss the impact of war on the strategies of social and political reproduction embraced by one of north China's most powerful families.  Second, through a study of family genealogies and local histories, the paper will ask how the sociopolitical impacts of war necessitated the production of new historical narratives of the Kong family past.

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"Victims and Victimizers: Warlord Soldiers and Mutinies in Republican China"
Edward A. McCord  (The George Washington University, author of  The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Chinese Modern Warlordism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)

Mutinies by warlord armies were common occurrences in Republican China.  Such mutinies, however, were rarely limited to a refusal to obey orders or a rejection of military authority.  Usually mutinies were acted out through assaults against the homes, shops, and persons of the general population.  Thus for the people of China, mutinies were one of the many tribulations they were forced to endure in an era of military ascendancy. In her study of warlord soldiers, Diana Lary reminds us that common soldiers in this era were very often both the perpetrators and the victims of violence, and that these two roles were strongly interconnected. This paper explores the ways in which soldiers could be both victims and victimizers through a case study of a mutiny that devastated Wuchang, the capital of Hubei province, in 1920-and which led to a massacre of over one-thousand mutinous troops by military authorities.  The paper seeks to reveal the special role that mutinies, real or threatened, played in the complicated intra-military and military-civil politics of warlord China. Certainly there were real troop grievances (arrears in troop pay and the threat of disbandment) that provoked the mutiny at Wuchang.  At the same time, the mutiny was also the direct result of a broader contest among Hubei's military governor, his officers, and the people of Hubei province for military, political and financial power.  Thus, it will become clear that while seemingly the main actors in mutinies, mutinous soldiers were frequently also pawns in political struggles over which they had very little control.

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"From Heroes to Bureaucrats: Viewing the Chinese Nationalist Experience of War through Field Diary Writing, 1937-1945"
Aaron William Moore (Harvard University)

In Western and Chinese historiography, the Chinese Nationalist (GMD) military is often portrayed as simply incompetent or a force for brutal repression. Historians of modern China, however, should not rely exclusively on the writings of the Chinese Communist Party, leftist observers, or American servicemen stationed in China. Chinese Nationalist field diaries (zhenzhong riji) are available-primarily the Ministry of Defense Archives in Taiwan and the Second National Archives in Nanjing-and thus it is time to view Nationalist conduct in the war from their perspective. The story that emerges from these documents is one of disillusionment and transformation of leadership style within the GMD. This paper will show how GMD officers, through the self-disciplinary act of field diary writing, mobilized themselves for revolution and warfare, particularly after their victory over invading Japanese forces in Shanghai (1932). From 1937, when the GMD was being systematically eradicated from its bases of power, diaries that were previously replete with details of heroism became progressively dry and empty. Although historian Chang Jui-te has already detailed the deleterious effect of rapid advancement within the GMD during the war, this paper will use diaries to consider changes in their discourse and identity. GMD servicemen's writings concerning their defeat at the hands of the Japanese are crucial to understanding how this led to their inefficacy as a military force in later years. The paper will conclude with a brief comparison to Japanese and American servicemen's diaries during their own experiences of military defeat.

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"Experiencing War from Afar: the Battle of Siping as Viewed from Yan'an, Nanjing, and Washington, D.C."
Harold M. Tanner (University of North Texas, author of Strike Hard: Anti-Crime Campaigns and Chinese Criminal Justice, 1979-1985, Cornell East Asia Series, Cornell University East Asia Program, Ithaca N.Y., 1999)

From 6 April to 19 May 1946, Communist forces fought the Nationalists in an attempt to hold the strategic railway city of Siping. Historians consider this battle a key turning point in the civil war between Communist and Nationalist forces in the Northeast. The Communists, who had been steadily retreating before the superior Nationalist armies, decided to make a firm stand at Siping. The loss at Siping contributed to a re-thinking of Communist strategy. For the Nationalists, the victory seems to be a high point. Within a month a truce went into effect, negotiated under the auspices of American General George C. Marshall. Some argue that if not for the truce, General Du Yuming could have carried on to gain a final decisive victory over Communist forces. This paper will look at the battle of Siping as it was experienced by those who were looking from afar and making decisions before and in the aftermath of the fighting. How did the engagement look from Yan'an? From Jiang Jieshi's headquarters in Nanjing? How did General Marshall and his superiors in Washington, D.C. see it? Does the battle and its aftermath indeed represent a lost opportunity for Jiang Jieshi? Or were the Nationalists, in the summer of 1946, presented with an impossible task: consolidating control over a vast, tenuously-held territory without enough resources to get the job done?

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"Making the News: Guomindang Media Policy during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945"
Edna Tow (University of California, Berkeley)

A striking but understudied feature of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 is the role played by Chinese mass media organs in influencing popular perceptions of the conflict.  In a time when the proliferation of print and broadcasting outlets enabled ordinary citizens to see and experience war with an immediacy that had never before been possible, such developments had profound implications for how state and society viewed and responded to Japan's invasion and subsequent occupation of China. My paper focuses attention on one critical aspect of this media dynamic: the efforts by state-sponsored information agencies and media organizations to shape public views on the war.  While the Nationalist government has been much maligned for its use of strict censorship controls and press laws to curb dissent and opposition, less well-known is how Chiang Kai-shek and high-level members of his administration deployed a variety of media strategies and tactics as part of a calculated plan to create national unity and solidarity against Japanese aggression.  In this regard, the wartime capital of Chongqing was a focal point for such  initiatives, which ranged from formal press events to official photo-opportunities.  By highlighting the communication networks and institutional arrangements that supported these activities, this study underscores how media constructions played an equally significant and no less critical role than the struggle on the frontlines in defining domestic and international opinion about the Sino-Japanese conflict.

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"War, Rebellion, and Hanjian in Qing China's Southwestern/Southern Borderlands during the Early Qianlong Period (1736-c.1750)"
Alexander Ong (Independent Historian, Republic of Singapore)

"Frontiers" or "borderlands" are dynamic places where individuals residing within meet and interact, be it in the form of trade or war.  The frontiers of China are no exception.  By the eighteenth century, there were substantial groups of Han people (Ch. Hanren) settling in Qing China's southwestern and southern borderlands.  These individuals, apart from being beyond the reach of official jurisdiction, did not necessarily pledge their loyalties towards the Qing imperium.  Consequently, there were often politically suspect in the eyes of the Qing. My paper examines and builds upon existing scholarship concerning these Han personalities who were officially branded as traitors by the Qing (the term often used is Hanjian or "Han traitor"), specifically within the context of frontier wars and disturbances in Qing China's southwestern/southern borderlands during the reign of the Qianlong emperor.  These characters of obscure origins were generally perceived as potential collaborators in times of unrest occurring within Qing China's borderlands.

Three cases in point are used to analyze Qing attitudes towards these frontier settlers, namely the Miao-Yao uprising in Hunan and Guangxi (1740-1741), the first Jinchuan war (1747-1749) and finally, the Qing-Annam borderlands.  The Miao-Yao rebellion, from the Qing perspective, was thought to have been incited by Hanjian.  In the case of the first Jinchuan war, the Qianlong emperor's suspicion of treason and collaboration with the enemy (including frontier traitors) to undermine Qing military efforts in Jinchuan led to the execution of Zhang Guangsi, a high-ranking war veteran. As for the Qing-Annam frontier zone, the danger of Qing borderlands subjects collaborating with politico-military forces in Annam became an issue of great concern for the Qing authorities.

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"From Bac Lé to Haiphong: Sino-French Conflict in Vietnam and Chinese Military Modernization"
Peter Worthing (Texas Christian University, author of Occupation and Revolution: China and the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945, Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2001, and A Military History of Modern China: From the Manchu
Conquest to Tian'anmen Square, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Security International, 2007)

This paper examines two clashes between Chinese and French military forces in northern Vietnam.  Although separated by sixty-two years, these two clashes were remarkably similar in that both took place after the conclusion of a negotiated settlement at the governmental level.  In 1884, Chinese and French forces fought near the village of Bac Lé, although the Chinese and French governments had over a month earlier agreed to terms that would have ended the Sino-French War.  This "Bac Lé Incident" led to the continuation of the war until 1885.  In 1946, Chinese occupation forces and French colonial forces returning to Vietnam after the Pacific War clashed at the port city of Haiphong.  The "Haiphong Incident" took place despite the fact that Chinese and French negotiators in Chongqing had already reached an agreement that called for the peaceful return of French troops to northern Vietnam.  This paper examines the causes and consequences of these two "incidents."  It then analyzes them in the context of China's larger program of military modernization.  While others have focused on technology, weaponry, and training to assess China's military development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this paper considers issues of civil-military relations, command and control, and communications to reveal the limits of China's military modernization between 1884 and 1946.

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"Pan-Islam in the Far East: Chinese Muslims and the Japanese All-China Muslim League"
Victor Seow  (The University of Pennsylvania)

On February 7, 1938, more than five hundred Chinese Muslims were reported to have attended the inauguration of the All China Muslim League in Japanese-occupied Beiping. Formed under Japanese auspices, the league was to facilitate Japanese activities among Chinese Muslims throughout China. Although it was ultimately only fully active in the north, the league, in its formation and activities, was nevertheless representative of an important aspect of Japanese wartime policy. With professed goals which included preserving Islam, opposing Communism, improving relations between China, Japan, and Manchukuo, extending Asian culture, and unifying all Muslims worldwide, the league and, by extension, the larger Japanese Islamic project in China concurrently appealed to and reflected a strong pan-Islamic impulse consistent with Japan's efforts to forge ties with the Near East and the rest of the Islamic world. In this paper, I am interested in looking at the All-China Muslim League and other related means by which the Japanese had tried to mobilize Chinese Muslim support at the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War. More specifically, I am keen on examining what the tone and tenor of these efforts and various Chinese responses to such might say about the relations between Chinese Muslims and their non-Muslim counterparts and about the place of Chinese Muslims in the wider Islamic world. In doing so, I wish to put together a compelling case study demonstrating the complex interplay between ethnic differences, religious sentiments, and national loyalties in Republican China.

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"Training for War and the Nation: Hu Zongnan, Military Training and Xunlian in the Wartime Northwest"
Alan Baumler (Indiana University of Pennsylvania, author of Worse Than Floods and Wild Beasts: The Chinese and Opium Under the Republic, SUNY Press, 2007)

This is a preliminary study of Hu Zongnan's training apparatus in Northwest China, a series of schools and training organizations centered on the Number Seven Military school in Shaanxi. The paper will examine the nature and effectiveness of this training apparatus from a number of angles. First is military effectiveness. To what extent did these institutions apparatus improve the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army in the Northwest? Related to this is the issue of what type of army this was supposed to be. Number Seven school in particular was aimed at producing a modernized, technological army. Second is the role of this training apparatus in the factional politics of the period and particularly in the regional ambitions of Hu Zongnan. Hu was a graduate of the Whampoa Military Academy, and both he and his mentor Chiang Kai-shek were aware of how military training could help to create factional bonds.  Third is the relationship between the military training and the broader issue of xunlian, or the creation of better Chinese citizens. Formal military training was only the centerpiece of a training effort that also included mobile educational teams and anti-communist re-education camps. 

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"An East Asian NATO: The Nationalists and Regional Military Cooperation"
Steven Phillips (Towson University, author of Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945-1950, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003)

It is not surprising that Jiang Jieshi's Nationalist Chinese government desperately sought support.  In 1949, his regime collapsed on the mainland and retreated to Taiwan, which became the final redoubt for approximately two million soldiers, bureaucrats, businessmen, and their families.  While military ties between the Republic of China and the United States naturally have attracted the most attention from scholars, newly available materials suggest that the Generalissimo's ambitions were greater than that.  Jiang's agenda became clear during his 1949 visits to South Korea and the Philippines.  He and his generals dreamed of creating a regional anti-communist alliance, an East Asian North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that would include the United States, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan.  Besides Jiang and his son, Nationalist diplomats and generals presented a variety of proposals to build military ties and reports on progress toward their goals.  Despite these efforts, only the alliance with the United States came to fruition in the mid-1950s.  The Nationalists' failure to forge a multilateral anti-communist alliance does expose barriers to regional cooperation that continue to today. Over the past several years, the Academia Historica, Taiwan's national archives, has made available correspondence and reports from Jiang and his top civilian and military advisors.  These materials also include reports from South Korea, the Philippines, and Japan detailing talks with the leaders of these countries.  Last year, I was able to spend months researching these documents, which offer the best insight available to date on the Nationalists' hopes for regional military cooperation.

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"Japan's 'Defense' Policy in the Abe Era: Strengthening Conventional Offensive Capability"
Ke Wang (University of Pennsylvania)

Recently much attention has been focused on East Asia, where the security tension suddenly elevated due to North Korea's nuclear detonation test on October 9, 2006. Shortly after North Korea's nuclear test, Japan's newly appointed Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, called for a strengthened premier's office to quicken response time in the event of a crisis with North Korea, and he has also established a taskforce to build up his country's National Security Council. Subsequently, Japan's Defense Agency has been upgraded into a full ministry - Japan's Defense Ministry - on Jan. 9, 2007 and about 55 million Yen has been used to this transformation. As the second biggest economic power in the contemporary world and North Korea's nearest 'enemy,' Japan's relevant response has naturally drawn observers' attention to its defense policy. People wonder how Japan will adjust its defense policy and grand strategy in new fluid regional and international environment. Will Japan quickly pursue nuclear weapons technology and change its status to that of a nuclear superpower?

Briefly speaking, there are two main arguments about Japan's security policy. First, the constructivists argue that Japan's national security policy is influenced by the structure of Japanese state and the incentives it provides for policy, and the context of social and legal norms that define policy interests and standards of appropriateness for specific policy choices. Thus it is impossible for a strong military establishment to emerge in Japan under the constraints both from state structure and anti-militaristic social norms, which is reinforced by the provisions of Japan's Peace Constitution. Second, the realists argue that Japan has used and will continue using the "buck-passing strategy", which means Japan asks its ally, the U.S., to do the work for it.  Although it is true that domestic structure and norms play a significant role in Japanese security policy-making, and it is also true that Japan has gained great benefits from its close relationship with the U.S., I would like to propose the third view of Japan's postwar military development based on my observation of Japan's postwar history. I argue that first there are always two driving-forces that push Japan's defense policy to break through the limitations of Peace Constitution and make a big shift. Second, based on the analyses of these driving-forces, I think Japan will further pursue a more independent and strong offensive military capability.
 
In this paper, I first explain how the historical events, especially the Gulf War and 9/11 attack, have successively spurred Japan not only to set up its Ground, Maritime-, and Air Self-Defense Force, but also developed these defense forces steadily. Japan's defense capability has had a both quantitative and qualitative development in the postwar era. Second, I point out that behind these historical events it was the American pressure based on the U.S.-Japan alliance that has kept urging Japan to change its defense policy. Third, I stress that similarly to former historical events working as a catalyst in Japanese defense policy transition, current threats from China and North Korea are pushing Japan to go further in the direction of military improvement. Meanwhile and more importantly, the Japanese nationalism has been gradually replacing American pressure to become the new behind-the-scenes driving-force for Japanese military development. Japanese state is increasing the military capability much more actively than before due to the swelling of Japanese nationalism. Finally, I predict the next goal of Japan's military development is to pursue a more independent and stronger conventional offensive capability. Japan will eventually have nuclear power, but it will not rush to nuclear power in current stage.


| 2006 |

"Learning from Defeat: Sui and Tang Intervention in the Korean Peninsula, 598-670"
David A. Graff (Kansas State University),

During the space of seventy years, two successive Chinese dynasties launched repeated invasions of the Korean peninsula, with major efforts in 598, 612, 613, 614, 645, 660, 661, and 667. Most of these offensives ended in failure, and even after unprecedented success in the 660s China's Tang dynasty found it expedient to withdraw its forces from Korea when serious threats appeared from other quarters (manely the Turks and Tibetans) in the late 670s. This paper examines the successive Chinese invasion plans with an eye to identifying what went wrong and showing how Sui and Tang military planners were able to learn from their mistakes and produce operational plans that reflected an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the special difficulties of waging war in Northeast Asia in the early medieval period. These included the great distance of the battlefronts from the settled areas of China proper, a relatively short campaigning season bracketed by a long winter and inconvenient rainy season, and the scorched-earth policies and many stoutly defended fortresses of the northern Korean kingdom of Koguryo. It was only after the Chinese shifted the focus of their attack to the weaker southwestern kingdom of Paekche and formed an offensive alliance with the third Korean kingdom of Silla that (temporary) success was finally achieved.

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"Overseeing the Japanese Presence in Choson Korea, 1392-1510"
Kenneth R. Robinson (International Christian University, Tokyo)

Seeking to halt the piracy that had been constant since the 1350s and to encourage trade, the Choson Korea government permitted Japanese to reside and to trade inside compounds constructed at three southeastern ports from the early fifteenth century. The resident populations at each compound steadily increased over the next several decades. So too did the frequency of Japanese trade, and thus the numbers of short-term guests. The Korean government set the compounds near navy bases, but later placed major defense installations near each port. The military shadow was an intentional feature of the geography of managing foreign presence, but has not been discussed in Korean- or Japanese-language scholarship.

Having set the broader contexts of Japanese piracy, Japanese trade, and the Korean military defense system in the background, I will outline the Korean government's appointment of county magistrates and examine the appointment of magistrates to the counties in which the compounds were located. County magistrates were typically drawn from among officials who had passed the highest civil service examination, but the government appointed relatively few civil bureaucracy officials to these three counties. Instead, officials who had entered government service through less prestigious avenues, the military service examination and the protective appointment available for sons of the highest-ranking government officials, served there more frequently through 1510. I will suggest that the central government considered these three appointments to be of lesser status because of the need to work closely with military officials and because overseeing the resident and visiting Japanese was an important task of the magistracies.

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"Blocking the Arteries: Pirate Mercenaries in Sixteenth-Century Japan"
Peter D. Shapinsky (University of Illinois, Springfield)

In strife-ridden fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Japan, maritime infrastructure was more developed and more convenient than that on land, but much of this maritime infrastructure also lay in the hands of seafarers who -- although labeled pirates (kaizoku) by land-based authorities -- appropriated land-based discourses of warrior lordship and self-identified as sea lords. As such, part of their legitimacy derived from performing martial services for warlord (daimyo) patrons. Possessing no navies and exercising little direct influence over the waves, warring land-based daimyo accepted and recognized the suzerainty of these sea lords and competed with each other to contract with them for a variety of services from commerce, to escorting shipping, to fighting sea battles. Sea lords thus can be usefully understood as mercenary purveyors of non-state violence (a concept drawn from Janice Thomson, Pirates, Mercenaries, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe, Princeton UP, 1994),

Sea lords dominated the sea-lanes through the fortification of maritime chokepoints where they operated toll barriers and extorted protection. As such, they often fought proxy battles for patrons against other sea-lord bands in these narrow channels. Focusing on a series of late sixteenth-century battles in choke-points in the Seto Inland Sea -- Japan's aortic sea route in the premodern period -- this paper will examine the distinctive ships, fortifications, and tactics devised and used by sea lords to seize control of, blockade, and hold shipping lanes. In doing so, I will demonstrate that the logic that drove nautical development in Japan's early-modern military revolution followed not the directives of land-based daimyo or some abstract technological teleology but was the product of the needs and ambitions of these maritime mercenaries.

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"All Along the Watch-towers: Plans for Bolstering Coastal Defenses in Late Sixteenth-century China"
Kenneth M. Swope (Ball State University)

In 1567, after more than a century of officially imposed isolation from maritime activities, the Ming state lifted the ban on overseas trade. While on one hand the Ming state was in fact only seeking to derive financial benefit from the vast new stores of wealth flowing into Asia from the Americas, the lifting of the ban on maritime trade can also be viewed as a proclamation by the Ming court that the so-called "Japanese pirate" (wokou) troubles of the preceding decades were over once and for all and that the imperial state was now both willing and able to defend its maritime frontiers and interests. This resolve would come to be seriously tested in the 1590s when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, unifier of Japan (and queller of piracy there), launched a massive invasion of Korea, with China as his primary objective. The assault on Korea touched off fears of Japanese invasion up and down the coast of China and central and local officials alike made elaborate plans for the bolstering of coastal defenses. This paper shall look at some of those plans and examine their social, economic and political ramifications within the larger socio-political context of late sixteenth-century East Asia. It will also consider these measures in light of the military revival then being experienced by the Ming state and tie them into the overall strategic goals of the Ming Emperor Wanli (r. 1573-1620), who sought to assert himself vis-a-vis his civil officials and re-establish the  primacy of the Ming empire in East Asia against the upstart

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"China at War, 1937-1945: Remembering and Re-remembering China's War of Resistance"
Parks M. Coble (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)

Six decades have passed since the guns fell silent with Japan's defeat in World War II. In most of the combatant nations the public memory of the war is confined to ceremonies on special holidays when the few remaining veterans are honored. In China, however, the legacy of the war is a volatile, public issue. The irony is that as visible as the issue of the war legacy is today, for much of the history of the People's Republic of China -- the Maoist years -- the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance almost disappeared from public view. Only the resistance led by Chairman Mao was praised, other memories were "forgotten." When the war was mentioned at all during the Maoist years, the "China as victor" approach dominated. Little mention was made of Japanese atrocities even including the famous "Rape of Nanjing [Nanking]."

After the death of Chairman Mao and the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping as China's paramount leader, a new and very public interest in the war and its legacy appeared in China. The volume of publications increased dramatically while the subject matter which they covered began to change. From the 1980s until the present, the legacy of the war of resistance has thus re-surfaced from near total obscurity in China and the focus has shifted to China as the victim.

An enormous volume of publications has appeared particularly on such topics as the Rape of Nanjing. The "new remembering" of the war in China is a politically constructed memory designed to foster a sense of nationalism in today's China. As a consequence, despite the enormous volume of publications which have emerged on the Sino-Japanese War, understanding the experience of those who lived through the event is perhaps as difficult as ever. The goal of this paper is to first examine some of the main themes in the original "memory" of the war as it was created by journalists and war reporters during the war itself. Secondly, the paper will examine how these memories of the war have been recast in the "new remembering" to fit the needs of today's nationalism. Both through reprints of original materials in edited form and in memoir recollections, the memory of the war which is so public in today's China, has recast dramatically the ways in which people thought about the war at the time. The new remembering thus helps us understand the changing face of  nationalism in today's China.

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"Roles and Missions of the U.S. Army in China: From Interwar to Cold War"
Gary Trogdon (U.S. Army Center of Military History)

Athough the U.S. Army has had a relationship with China that goes back more than one hundred years, little is written on the Army's roles and missions within the country during World War II -- and even less on the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) and its role. Even before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Army provided advice and support to China, but it wasn't until late in 1944 that the Army's spy catchers established detachments in non-Japanese occupied portions of China to assist the Chinese in fighting the Japanese. The CIC agents were tasked with providing negative intelligence for U.S. Army units in China (mainly Army Air Force units) and in advising the Nationalist Chinese forces on how to prevent the Japanese from gaining intelligence about military operations.

Selecting soldiers with fluency in the Chinese language and experience living in China, the Army sent in three detachments to assist in developing counterintelligence procedures, screening locals working for the U.S. Army on its bases, and in training Nationalist Chinese soldiers to be counterintelligence agents. The short period of time before the end of the war did not see a major change in China's approach to counterintelligence. A secret mission to place CIC and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) behind Japanese lines to prepare for an American invasion of the East China Coast was only in its planning stages when the war ended. The impact of CIC on China during and after the Second World War was minimal. Too few agents with too little time in country severely limited the actions of these 150 men. Although not an important part of the Army's history in China, they were part of it nonetheless.

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"Of Brush and Sword: Constructions and Deconstructions of Militarism in Tang Poetry"
Mark Francis (Drew University)

Traditional Chinese elite society is typically defined as a bureaucratic class founded on shared education and values, specifically the classic Confucian texts and their ideology. In both official and nonofficial circles this ruling class exercised cultivated literary skills, including the writing and appreciation of poetry, for various important social functions -- thus, their designation as "literati."

My paper examines how the Tang literati expressed and depicted military attitudes, figures and events in the universally prized medium of lyric poetry. It will consider how these expressions reflected, or clashed with, supposed Confucian values, and examine how lyric poetry promoted certain ideas about militarism and notions of military history among the traditional Chinese elite.

I will address these issues by focused attention on pertinent writing by Tang poets such as Du Fu, Li Bo, Gao Shi, and Cen Shen and on their circulation and critical reception. My essay will also seek a larger context by suggesting more general patterns of cultural construction of militarism within additional genres and periods throughout the imperial era.