China, Japan and a New Narrative About World War II

World War II narratives, up for grabs

In September, China held a military parade to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Cannon fire, fighter jets, missiles and goose-stepping troops filled Tiananmen Square in a display of military might and expanding global influence.

Also on display was a particular narrative of the war, one that assigns China a central role in the victory against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. In this version, as China’s president, Xi Jinping, put it at the time, Beijing and Moscow were the “main victors.”

Since then, China has repeatedly invoked World War II — in Xi’s phone call with Trump, but also in interactions with European officials. The language always centers on defeating fascism and protecting the outcomes of the war. But the implicit message is that Japan, which recently made clear that it would intervene militarily if Taiwan were attacked, is a historic aggressor that should be regarded warily.

Every country has its own story of the Second World War. But it is largely Western stories about the war — who won, what it was about and what its lessons are — that have shaped the postwar order.

Today, that order is breaking down. And countries like China, as they gain prominence and power, are using some of that power to put forward their versions of this history — with potential implications for whatever world order emerges next.

‘A war like no other’

Why do narratives about World War II still have so much power? As the historian Antony Beevor put it to me, “the Second World War was a war like no other,” and yet for many people, paradoxically, it’s “the definition of war itself.”

Countries around the world all experienced the same event. But they did not experience it the same way. All these individual narratives have never really been reconciled into one, Beevor said. Now that the balance of power in the world is shifting, we’re seeing more competition about whose story takes prominence.

For the countries that defeated Nazi Germany and its allies, including Japan, the war was an epic battle of good against evil. These countries liberally evoke that history in regular commemorations and in school curriculums to rally people to the flag.

The countries defeated in the war have more complicated relationships to that history, but it still defines them. Germany’s postwar identity has been largely about atonement. In Japan, questions of whether the country has apologized enough and should formally abandon the pacifist stance it was forced to adopt after the war are live subjects in contemporary politics.

Germany and Japan have still been an integral part of the West’s prevailing story about World War II, because they became integral to America’s postwar system of alliances. By contrast, the Soviet Union, which lost some 24 million lives in World War II, and China, where about 20 million died, have not always featured as prominently in many Western accounts.

Russia has long made the case that it deserves more credit for its sacrifices on Hitler’s eastern front. China’s latest push to have its role in the war upgraded is reminiscent of this effort, although many historians believe Chinese nationalists, who eventually retreated to Taiwan, played a bigger role in World War II than the communists.

This isn’t just an intellectual exercise. Battles about history are always about shaping the present.

New story, new order

Western countries have often used World War II references that suited them: The Bush administration compared Sept. 11 to Pearl Harbor, and likened Saddam Hussein to Hitler. One pro-Brexit campaigner likened leaving the European Union to evacuating British soldiers from Dunkirk, France.

China is invoking World War II with Western leaders because it’s trying to shift their understanding of Japan to something that looks more like China’s: Japan as a country with a history of aggression that’s a potential threat to its neighbors.

It’s part of a broader push to eventually reclaim Taiwan, justified, in part, by Chinese ideas about what it’s owed for its sacrifices during the war. Russia, which refers to World War II as the Great Patriotic War, deliberately invokes the war when it talks about “denazifying” Ukraine.

The story underpinning the American-led postwar world order, Beevor told me, was one in which America liberated Europe from fascism and gave it liberal democracy and free market capitalism. From that sprang international institutions (and military interventions) that purported to promote democracy and free trade.

But China sees World War II as part of a longer struggle against Japanese imperialism that would end with the reunification of mainland China and Taiwan — a promise that, from China’s perspective, has yet to be fulfilled. From this story springs a whole different set of assumptions about what the world should look like, he said, from what “sovereignty” means to how other countries should respond to a Japan that is rearming.

The stories around World War II are shifting. But 80 years on, the war itself remains central to many national identities. We’re now heading into the post-postwar era. Our arguments about World War II are coming with us.

Related: In an interview at the DealBook Summit, Taiwan’s president warned that China was stepping up its campaign of intimidation against the island.

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