An Analysis of Translation of War Literature in Journals (1931-1945)

The victory of the China’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression is of great significance to the whole Chinese nation because it is the first time in nearly a century that the Chinese people have won a complete victory against imperialism. A large number of translations of foreign war literature were published in anti-war periodicals. However, domestic scholars have not paid enough attention to the study of war literature translation in Anti-Japanese war periodicals, so the research results are relatively few. This paper researches the translation of war literature in three periodicals of the war period (The Anti-Japanese War Literature and Art, The Weekly Digest and Translation Series: A Comprehensive Translation of English Newspapers and Magazines), including a survey of the sources of the translations, the translators, the main ideas of the translations, the translation techniques and their significance. The study found that the translation introductions of war literature from these periodicals penetrated the readership of the public, enhanced the confidence of the nation in the victory the China’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, promoted the awakening of the whole nation, inspired the people of the nation to join in the Anti-Japanese War, and made a special contribution to the victory of the China’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

How propagames work as a part of digital authoritarianism: an analysis of a popular Chinese propagame

“Propagames,” or games with propagandistic content, have been emerging in the past two decades. They operate as a part of digital authoritarianism, together with other forms of new soft propaganda, to legitimate populist authoritarian states around the world. The contemporary democratic struggle against global authoritarian resurgence will require knowledge on how propagames and other digital propaganda work. But knowledge on propagames is seriously lacking compared to the voluminous scholarship on politically progressive, educational, and serious games. This study fills this research gap by analyzing the most popular propagame in China, Kangzhan Online (War of Resistance against Japan Online), and gamers’ reception of it. We begin with theoretical explorations of how to define propagames, how to demarcate them from other games with political content, and what role they play in digital authoritarianism. We eclectically borrow from four frameworks to analyze Kangzhan Online: the dual-process perspective, imaginary world studies, the sociology of collective memory, and the sociology of emotions. Our data include participant observation in the game for 3 months, formal interviews of 30 gamers, informal interviews with dozens of gamers, and documentary data from the official forum and the Chinese game media. The data were collected in 2009, 2010, and 2019.

Translation Policy, Social System, and Ideology: A Study on the English Translation of Modern Chinese Fiction for America During the CWRAJ

This article explores translation policy on the English translations of modern Chinese fiction to American readers during China’s War of Resistance against Japan (1931–1945). The research findings show that translation policy may not be explicitly stated, but implicitly embodied in some political, diplomatic, and cultural policies made by the American and Chinese governments. Translation policy making as a social system is influenced by the political environment during the war. Different policy makers’ motives and policies change over time in reaction to each other with the course of the war, and the changing socio-political climate in China and the US had great effects on the English translations of Chinese fiction before the entry of the US into the war and after the US government became actively involved in translation projects. Moreover, the ideological preferences and political interests of the various actors shape actual translation practice—the selection of texts and actual choices in wording. This course of events affects the reception of these translations by the US public. In other words, the readership of these books grew after the Chinese government became allies in the war with the American government.

On the Revolutionary Tradition of Shandong and Its Contemporary Value of Ideological and Political Education ——From the Perspective of School Cadre Education in Shandong during the War of Resistance against Japan

Due to the special geographical, historical and cultural environment, Shandong province gave birth to various virtues and good traditions inherited by generations of local people, including the spirit of hard work, creativity and dedication, the character of boldness, Righteousness and fearlessness of violence, the love of the country and bravery in resistance to foreign aggressions. Thus by exploring the connotation and analyzing the revolutionary tradition in Shandong as well as its application and presentation in the cadre education at school during the War of Resistance against Japan, this paper attempts to bring its educational value into full play in doing well in the ideological and political work of the Communist Party of China in the new era.

State, market, and the manufacturing of war memory: China’s television dramas on the war of resistance against Japan

Remembering the War of Resistance against Japan is central to China’s memory and identity politics. By focusing on the production of China’s War of Resistance television dramas, this study analyzes how collective memory is shaped by market actors and their interactions with the state. The first substantive section investigates how commercial media and the state cooperate in the production of War of Resistance television dramas. The second explicates how market actors undermine the state’s ideological imperatives by adding entertainment content to repackage war memory, which then conflicts with the propagandistic task. This study contributes to introducing the market factor to research on the remembering of War of Resistance in China and enriching the political economy of memory approach by examining an authoritarian state-capitalist case, which is centrally characterized by these cooperative and conflictual relations between the state and the market.

KMT Martial Memory

The various war or war-related sites discussed in this chapter—the Zhongshan Hall (中山堂‎), the Armed Forces Museum (國軍歷史文物館‎), Chung-hsing New Village (中興新村‎), Military Dependents Villages (眷村‎), and Kinmen (金門‎)—suggest that blue camp historical memory is very much alive in Taiwan. The case of the Zhongshan Hall shows the difficulty faced by proponents to create a memorial space dedicated to the War of Resistance against Japan. The Armed Forces Museum exemplifies a static form of KMT historical memory that seems like a throwback to Cold War times, whereas the Military Dependents Villages and Kinmen attest to the plasticity of memorial sites and their capacity to take on new meanings in a changing world through state and nongovernmental interventions.

Remembering forgotten heroes and the idealisation of true love: Veteran memorial activism in contemporary China

Recent research on collective memory and war commemoration highlights the ‘conspicuous silence’ of war veterans in Chinese history. Studies of the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945) typically reflect either a state-centred approach, which emphasises the official history constructed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or the alternative narratives constructed by intellectual elites in post-socialist China. In response to these top-down narratives, this essay focuses instead on a historical redress movement led by ex-servicemen of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The former PLA members, the participant volunteers of this movement, devote themselves into seeking and supporting a group of forgotten Kuomintang (KMT) veterans who fought against the Japanese invaders in the Second World War but now struggle with impoverished living conditions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from 2013 to 2015, I will show how the daily interactions between these two groups of veterans embody a more private and internalised sense of commemorative yearning for a lost past, highlighting in the process the value of ethnographic research in breaking through the wall of silence constructed by hegemonic histories around veteran communities and their role in making war history.

An Indian Town’s Entry into the Second World War: Holding Together the Congress Party and Training Chinese Soldiers in Wartime Raj

During the Second World War, Ramgarh, a small town in northeast India, was the site of the 53rd Session of the Indian National Congress and the training centre for the Chinese Expeditionary Force. By uncovering the links between the two events and knitting them into the broader context of the Indian nationalist movement and China’s War of Resistance, this article tries to break down the hegemony of the Eurocentric national narratives of the history of the Second World War in India and China. In doing so, it provides an alternative way of writing an entangled history of India and China during the Second World War.