Session 14: The Sino-Japanese War in the Contexts of Modern Chinese Military History and the History of Modern Warfare

The purpose of this session was to try to extend the significance of the Sino-Japanese conflict beyond the chronological perimeters of 1937-1945 and beyond the geographical boundaries of China in order to attempt some broad conclusions about the nature of the war. Both presentations, being largely works in progress raised more questions than they resolved, but the questions and the discussions that centered on them were among the most valuable of the conference.

The paper by Professor Hans VAN DE VEN's (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge University ) on the war seen in the context of Chinese military history drew on his recent work, War and Nationalism in China , 1925-1945 . His presentation at the conference took note of two contrasting views of modern Chinese military history in general and the course of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 in particular. The first of these perspectives, following the yardstick of nineteenth and twentieth century Western ways of organizing warfare, discusses military prowess in terms of the material culture of war, specifically in terms of technological capability. Viewed in this light, China 's military efforts in the twentieth century have been judged and found wanting.

The other vantage point, essentially Chinese, Van de Ven noted, has been to produce an historical narrative that centers on victimization, a history of foreign exploitation and oppression that limited Chinese military modernization, but that endowed China with an energizing nationalism that could overcome material inferiority.

Professor Van de Ven argued that neither the Western theme of failure nor the Chinese argument of victimization retain much value in extending understanding of China's conduct of the Sino-Japanese War. As alternatives to these viewpoints, Van de Ven proposed that more attention be given to two different issues: the challenge of mobilizing a non-industrial society for modern war and the role played in Chinese history by frontiers.

Van de Ven argued that, in confronting the fact that China was forced to wage war against a modern industrial power while China had no industrial base to speak of, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to develop an accommodation with local realities and with traditional Chinese strategies of military mobilization. Judged in this light, Van de Ven asserted, China 's military performance against Japan was remarkable.

The parallel alternative view, Van de Ven suggested, was to assess China 's military resistance to Japan in light of China 's traditional use of its military frontiers, areas which provided opportunities for forging new alliances, for trapping enemy invaders, for developing new sources of income, and the creation of buffer zones against enemy incursions.

Adopting these two alternative perspectives together, Van de Ven concluded, is to shed the dominant Western way of thinking of the Sino-Japanese conflict of 1937-1941 in terms modern offensive warfare, and to suggest that the war should be interpreted from its own particular local and historical context rather than from the viewpoint of modern warfare as understood and practiced in the West.

Professor Douglas PORCH (U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey ) argued vigorously that these alternative perspectives essentially propose an argument for Chinese exceptionalism. In Porch's assessment of the Van de Ven thesis, the Chinese case, simply by being Chinese, does not deserve to be considered separately from well-established, carefully considered standards of military success or failure just because those standards happen to have been crafted over time by Western scholars on the basis carefully gathered empirical evidence. Van de Ven countered that this was to hold as universal standards that themselves derived from particular local and historical contexts. This disagreement over the issue of whether China's conduct of its war against Japan is to be judged against the background of China's own historical experience or against accepted (Western) norms of military achievement or failure has the potential of being one of the most interesting and noteworthy discussions of this project.

For his part, Douglas Porch provided an oral presentation that used a perspective shaped by his recently published work, The Path to Victory The Mediterranean theater in World War II . Porch began his argument with the assertion that just as the Mediterranean theater was peripheral to the Allied effort in Europe , the China theater was peripheral to the war in the Pacific. This was not to say, he admitted, that peripheral theaters do not matter; indeed they can become pivotal theaters. Nor are they destined to remain peripheral, since advances in military technology, or more likely, by political choice, can change the nature of a conflict and thus transform a peripheral theater into a central front. Moreover, he continued, because of their peripheral nature they can be venues within which experimentation and new warfare initiatives can take place. Peripheral theaters are also likely places for third power intervention and the China theater was certainly emblematic in that regard. Thus, seeing the China theater as peripheral within the larger global struggle, may in fact enhance its historic import, Porch argued.

Yet some participants believed that there were significant disadvantages in viewing China , like the Mediterranean , as a peripheral area in World War II. To begin with, it inevitably sees the China theater only in terms of its place in a range of Allied global priorities, leaving little to be said about the conduct of the war by the two principal combatants themselves. Moreover, if the paper is to be written within the original charge - "The place of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 within the History of Modern Warfare" -- then the use of the Mediterranean theater as analogous to the situation in China seems far too particularistic. Moreover, it neglects important issues and precedents relating to World War II. Three of these can be named. The first - the challenge of conducting coalition warfare -- has relevance for the conduct of war from the eighteenth century to the present day. The second is the problem of strategic bombardment of enemy cities - an issue of major importance in World War II. One can argue that the failure of the Japanese air campaign against Chinese urban populations should have alerted Allied and Axis air forces to the limitations to such strategies. Lastly, the precedent of Communist mobilization of peasant nationalism for a successful guerrilla insurgency was a milestone in the evolution of modern warfare and needs to be identified as such.

In conclusion, the conference was an important occasion first of all because it drew historians from Japan and China together in a joint project to write, with Western historians, a single account of an event that remains of huge significance politically and diplomatically as well as for constructions of the past of each country and of East Asia more generally. Important information was brought together by leading historians that will vastly expand the knowledge available to English-language scholars. The result will enrich histories of World War II and military history more broadly. As Douglas Porch's presentation suggestion, important new comparative work will become possible.

Some of the issues at the conference, including that of Japan 's war guilt, will remain contentious. Yet, important new common ground was reached in many ways as well. If a previous generation of China historians would not have been able to write much about the Nationalist armies, it is now no longer possible to exclude them from any serious analysis of World War II in China , regardless of one's judgments about their effectiveness. The desire to include the Nationalists was behind the detailed information on the Nationalist armies presented in many Chinese papers. From the perspective of military history, the most significant novel issues were the air war in China , the role of guerrilla warfare in the conflict, the Ichigo campaign, and the opportunities and difficulties of coalition warfare. The conference might well provoke new research and monographs on these issues, as well as others, such as the Japanese advance along the Yangzi to Wuhan in 1938. The lack of detailed monographs in English on such individual campaigns, of biographies of the most important generals, and of the social and cultural aspects of the war illustrate that much work still needs to be done before we shall be as well informed about World War II in East Asia as we are about its history in Europe or even the Soviet Union and Southeast Asia.