Living and Working in Wartime China

"Covering the period of Japanese invasion during World War II from 1937 to 1945, this collection of essays tells of Chinese experiences living and working under conditions of war. All of the regimes that ruled a divided China-occupation governments, Chinese Nationalists, and Chinese Communists-demanded and glorified the full commitment of the people and their resources in the prosecution of the war. Through the stories of both everyday people and the mid-level technocrats charged with carrying out the war, this book brings into light the enormous gap between the leadership's demands and the reality of everyday life. Eight long years of war exposed the unrealistic nature of elite demands of unreserved commitment. As the leaders faced numerous obstacles in material mobilization and retreated to a rhetoric of spiritual resistance, the Chinese populace resorted to a variety of localized strategies that ranged from stoic adaptation to cynical profiteering, articulated variously with touches of humor and tragedy. Within these chapters, stories of people at varying classes and levels of involvement in living, working, and trying to work through the war are used to examine these localized experiences under the different regimes of World War II. In less than a decade, millions of Chinese lived and worked in the war as subjects of disciplinary regimes that dictated the celebration of holidays, the availability of films for viewing, the stories told in tea houses, the restrictions that governed the daily operations and participants of businesses, and so forth, impacting the people of China for years to come. This volume looks at the stories of those affected by the war and regimes to understand the perspectives of both sides of the war to understand the total outcomes. Living and Working in Wartime China depicts the brutal micromanaging of ordinary lives, devoid of compelling national purposes, that both undercut the regimes' relationships with their people and helped establish the managerial infrastructure of the authoritarian regimes in the post-war years"--

Brett Sheehan (Editor) Brett Sheehan is professor of history and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California.

Wen-hsin Yeh (Editor) Wen-hsin Yeh is Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Chair Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley.