Rana Mitter is a leading historian whose research focuses on the impact of Japan’s invasion of China during the second world war on the development of Chinese politics, society and culture. He is S.T. Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and previously taught at Oxford University on the politics of modern China. He was also director of Oxford’s China Centre.
World War II is one of the most important factors in the shaping of modern China, but it’s often underestimated, both in China and the West.
This was the greatest political and economic trauma of the 20th century. The invasion of China by Japan led to many millions of deaths. Many Chinese became refugees within their own country.
The infrastructure and the communications built in the 1920s and 1930s were largely smashed into pieces, so that was a huge influence in terms of having to start again after the war.
The war made it more likely that China would have a revolution rather than just reform after it ended, because economic and social conditions became so devastatingly bad that it opened up space for the Chinese Communist Party to really develop the revolution in the countryside.
