China at war : triumph and tragedy in the emergence of the new China /

China at war : triumph and tragedy in the emergence of the new China /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Van de Ven, Hans J., author.
Edition:	First Harvard University Press edition.
Imprint:	Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2018.
Description:	1 online resource
Language:	English
Subject:	Nationalism -- China -- History -- 20th century. Communism -- China -- History -- 20th century. Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945. Communism. Nationalism. Politics and government. China -- History -- 1937-1945. China -- History -- Civil War, 1945-1949. China -- History -- 1949-1976. China -- Politics and government -- 20th century. China. History.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12541484
Related Items:	Preceded by (expression): China at war.

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9781782830160 1782830162 9780674919525 0674919521 9780674983502 0674983505 1781251940 9781781251942
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-335) and index. Print version record
Summary:	China's mid-twentieth-century wars pose extraordinary interpretive challenges. The issue is not just that the Chinese fought for such a long time--from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 until the close of the Korean War in 1953--across such vast territory. As Hans van de Ven explains, the greatest puzzles lie in understanding China's simultaneous external and internal wars. Much is at stake, politically, in how this story is told. Today in its official history and public commemorations, the People's Republic asserts Chinese unity against Japan during World War II. But this overwrites the era's stark divisions between Communists and Nationalists, increasingly erasing the civil war from memory. Van de Ven argues that the war with Japan, the civil war, and its aftermath were in fact of a piece--a singular process of conflict and political change. Reintegrating the Communist uprising with the Sino-Japanese War, he shows how the Communists took advantage of wartime to increase their appeal, how fissures between the Nationalists and Communists affected anti-Japanese resistance, and how the fractious coalition fostered conditions for revolution. In the process, the Chinese invented an influential paradigm of war, wherein the Clausewitzian model of total war between well-defined interstate enemies gave way to murky campaigns of national liberation involving diverse domestic and outside belligerents. This history disappears when the realities of China's mid-century conflicts are stripped from public view. China at War recovers them.--
Other form:	Print version: Van de Ven, Hans J. China at war. First Harvard University Press edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2018 9780674983502 0674983505
Standard no.:	YBP14773165

Description
Summary:	China's War of Resistance against Japan, as WWII is known in China, was never about the defeat of Japan alone. China was also at war with itself. Between 1937 and 1949, a vicious revolutionary war between Nationalists and Communists, divided by radically different views about China's future, ravaged the country, killing millions and laying waste to cities and the countryside. The outcomes of these wars have shaped the country and the world since.China at War focuses on this period, examining the complex truth behind the propaganda of both East and West. Cambridge professor Hans van de Ven shows how the results of the fighting ended European imperialism in East Asia, restored China to its traditional position of regional centrality, and gave the USA a decisive role in East Asian politics. In the process, he argues, it also triggered profound changes in warfare, as important as the development of atomic weapons, and gave the countryside a new social, political and military significance.Through fascinating personal accounts and extensive scholarship, China at War casts new light on this crucial period of history, and harnesses contemporary art, culture and ideology to illuminate world-changing events.
Physical Description:	1 online resource
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-335) and index.
ISBN:	9781782830160 1782830162 9780674919525 0674919521 9780674983502 0674983505 1781251940 9781781251942