By Chang-tai Hung, University of California Press, 1994

This is the first comprehensive study of popular culture in twentieth-century China, and of its political impact during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 (known in China as "The War of Resistance against Japan"). Chang-tai Hung shows in compelling detail how Chinese resisters used a variety of popular cultural forms--especially dramas, cartoons, and newspapers--to reach out to the rural audience and galvanize support for the war cause. While the Nationalists used popular culture as a patriotic tool, the Communists refashioned it into a socialist propaganda instrument, creating lively symbols of peasant heroes and joyful images of village life under their rule. In the end, Hung argues, the Communists' use of popular culture contributed to their victory in revolution.

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Introduction:

The Japanese attack at the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugouqiao) about ten miles west of Beijing on 7 July 1937, which set off full-scale war between China and Japan (the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945; known in China as "The War of Resistance Against Japan" [Kang-Ri zhanzheng]), probably did not surprise many Chinese. After all, the Japanese had been intensifying their aggression in northern China since the Twenty-one Demands of 1915, and in 1931 had seized Manchuria. It was only a matter of time, many believed, before this intermittent, undeclared war between the two countries would erupt into open combat. Yet the idea that China and Japan were actually at war was unsettling and frightening. To the Chinese, war meant that China's sovereignty was being openly and unjustly trampled; it meant that the nation had to confront an enemy whose ambitions knew no bounds and whose superior war machine could bring ruin and suffering to the Chinese people. When the battle shifted to Shanghai in August 1937, it became clear that the conflict would not be easily or quickly resolved. A mixture of shock and anger gripped the entire nation.

The eruption of full-scale war with Japan dealt a devastating blow to the Nationalist (Guomindang; GMD) government's efforts to recentralize its authority and revive the economy.It also ended Jiang Jieshi's (Chiang Kai-shek, 1887–1975) chance of crushing the Communist forces, who were isolated in the barren and sparsely populated Shaanxi province with Yan'an as their capital. The war uprooted the Nationalists from their traditional power base in the urban and industrial centers of east China, especially along the lower Yangzi River, and forced them to move to the interior. At the same time, it afforded an ideal opportunity for the Communists to expand their influence in north China and so become a true contender for national power by the end of the war...

About the Author:

Chang-tai Hung is Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor of Asian Studies at Carleton College, and the author of Going to the People: Chinese Intellectuals and Folk Literature, 1918-1937 (1985).

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