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In this meticulously researched volume, Vincent Chang resurrects a near forgotten yet pivotal chapter of Dutch-Chinese ties to narrate how World War II, the civil war in China, and Indonesia's decolonization redefined and remade this age-old bilateral relationship. Drawing on a unique range of hitherto unexplored archives, the book explains how China's nascent rise on the global scene and the Netherlands' simultaneous decline as a colonial power shaped events in Dutch-controlled Indonesia (and vice versa) and prompted a recalibration of their mutual ties, culminating in the Netherlands' recognition of the People's Republic and laying the foundations for Dutch and Chinese policies through to the present. Offering insightful analyses of power dynamics and international law at the close of empire, this book is a critical resource for historians and China specialists as well as scholars of international relations

Diplomatic relations during the prewar years : 1927-1936 -- Remission of the Dutch share in China's Boxer Indemnity -- Diplomatic relations during the war years : 1937-1945 -- Abrogation of Dutch extraterritorial rights in China -- Diplomatic relations during the postwar years : 1946-1950 -- Recognition of the People's Republic of China.

There is a common perception that the Chinese state promotes fabricated accounts of the Second World War and the Communist Party's role in that conflict. Despite a growing scholarly interest in the history and collective memory of China's war experience, this perception has rarely been scrutinized, and the field has been slow to recognize recent shifts in China's memoryscape. This study draws on the concept of historical statecraft to compare official accounts with the historical record and explore how the Chinese party-state uses war memory for political purposes. It finds that its desire for national unity and international recognition have led Beijing to espouse a narrative of the Second World War that, despite significant gaps, is more representative and historically accurate than ever before. Simultaneously, the analysis shows that the Chinese leadership, at what it sees as a high-stakes juncture in China's nation-building project, increasingly monopolizes and mobilizes the memory of the war for the purposes of self-legitimation, control and strategic posturing. Although there are signs of China normalizing and globalizing its history, its official war memory reinforces an inwardly-directed form of Chinese nationalism. Analysts should take Chinese war memory seriously and study the implications of Beijing's new historical statecraft.

AbstractThe recent surge in public remembrance of the Second World War in China has been substantially undergirded by a centrally planned and systematically implemented discursive shift which has remained overlooked in the literature. This study examines the revised official narrative by drawing on three cases from China's school curriculum, museums and formal diplomacy. It finds that the once dominant trope of "national victimization" no longer represents the main thrust in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rhetoric on the Second World War. Under Xi Jinping, this has been replaced by a self-assertive and aspirational narrative of "national victory" and "national greatness," designed to enhance Beijing's legitimacy and advance its domestic and foreign policy objectives. By emphasizing national unity and CCP–KMT cooperation, the new narrative offers an inclusive and unifying interpretation of China's war effort in which the victory in 1945 has come to rival the 1949 revolution as the critical turning point towards "national rejuvenation." The increasingly Sino-centric and centrally controlled narrative holds implicit warnings to those challenging Beijing's claim to greatness.

AbstractOutside of the dominant frame depicting World War II as a showdown between the Allied and Axis powers, the war also represented a critical juncture in the global battle between empire and nation. In Asia, the war allowed a "semi‐colonial" China to successfully reclaim its sovereignty from both its allies and enemies and compelled the Dutch to forfeit colonial rule in Indonesia and its prestige as a regional power. Moving beyond conventional dichotomies and great‐power bias, this paper analyses two portentous wartime controversies between China and the Netherlands, whose common goals as allies did not prevent clashes over diametrically opposed national pursuits. In exposing the conflicting nature of their respective nationalisms, these disputes elucidate the interplay of war, nationalism, and imperialism in East Asia as well as China's changing place in the emergent post‐war regional and global orders. The Dutch refusal to accept these shifting realities and underlying notions of national self‐determination presaged the traumatic trajectory of Indonesia's decolonisation.

AbstractThis article examines the historical role and legacy of the foreign establishment in China's temporary capital Chongqing during the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan and the Second World War. This extraordinary episode, lasting from 1938 to 1946, ushered in a new era for China's foreign diplomacy and laid the foundation for its rise to world-power status. Placing Chongqing at the very heart of this epochal chapter in modern Chinese history, this article describes the major events, trends, and actors that directly or indirectly were instrumental to China's wartime transformation from a partitioned, de facto colony to a first-rate global power with a permanent seat among the 'Big Five'. Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, this article presents fresh perspectives on a near-forgotten episode of China's war experience. Moving beyond the traditional typecasting of 'Chungking' as a primitive backwater in China's remote hinterland, this article reappraises wartime Chongqing as a major international centre at the spearhead of global change and as an important cradle of the modern power that China is today.