Forgotten voices from the Great War: the Chinese Labour Corps Alex Calvo and Bao Qiaoni December 21, 2015 Volume 13 | Issue 51 | Number 1 Article ID 4411   Cap badge of the Chinese Labour Corps CLC personnel moving sacks of corn at Boulogne, on 12 August 1917 Abstract The one hundredth anniversary of the Great War is prompting a renewed effort at both the popular and academic levels to ensure that the different units and countries involved are not forgotten. While not supplying combat troops, China entered the First World War on the side of the Allies, furnishing much-needed labourers, 140,000 by conservative estimates and possibly more, who played an essential role on the Western Front and other theatres, taking responsibility for a wide range of tasks. Among others, unloading military supplies and handling ammunitions, building barracks and other military facilities, digging trenches, and even agriculture and forest management. While their essential contribution was recognized in British documents, both Paris and London saw them as a temporary expedient, to be ended as soon as the war was over. Furthermore, their deployment gave rise to all sorts of culture and language clashes, in addition to the dangers of travelling to Europe and surviving in close proximity to the battle field. However, beyond these travails, the Chinese Labour Corps left a significant legacy, with members seeing the world, experiencing other nations, and often becoming literate. More widely, despite being on the winning side, China's failure to secure any gains at Versailles prompted the May 4th Movement and can be seen as a key juncture in the long and winding road from empire to nation-state. It is an important reminder of the global nature of the Great War, whose impact extended far from the battle field to all corners of the world. Keywords Tombstone of a CLC member, a physical reminder of their legacy WWI, Great War, CLC, Chinese Labour Corps, Nation-Building, Versailles Introduction: Asia and the Great War The one hundredth anniversary of the Great War has prompted renewed interest in the conflict and a major drive by myriad institutions and individuals to inform the public and assure that the sacrifices made one century ago are never forgotten. While the main theatres of the war were in Europe, there are reasons why it is called the First World War, since its nature and scope were truly global. This includes Asia, which may have seen limited combat operations (other than in South-Western Asia, part of the Middle East) but where a number of countries made key contributions to the Allied cause. They include Japan, whose navy helped secure the Pacific, while her troops took over German territories, and took part in the conquest of Tsingtao; China, which contributed much-needed workers; and India, whose soldiers helped stabilize the Western Front in late 1914 and later played a key role in a wide range of theaters, including Gallipoli, East Africa, and Mesopotamia. While such contributions were recognized by contemporary media and are well documented, with the passage of time there is little public awareness of them. The first centenary of the war is, however, prompting many public and private organizations in countries like Japan,1 India, and China2, and among communities from those nations, to make renewed efforts to make sure that their contribution is duly recognized, both at home and abroad, and in particular among their war-time Allies. This is an aspect of the renewed geopolitical competition in the Asia-Pacific region, which also features countries vying to stress their past roles in world conflicts. China at the outset of the War: Nation Building, Limited Sovereignty, and Collective Security The outbreak of the Great War caught China in the midst of a giant yet incomplete transformation from Empire to Republic, an exercise in nation building that would take decades to complete and see myriad wars and turmoil amid fragmentation and widespread human suffering.3 The Revolutionary Party（中华革命党), renamed Guomindang (国民党) in 1919, had been forced in 1916 to cede the presidency to Yuan Shikai, and warlords ruled much of the country, with significant foreign influence. In 1916 Duan Qirui, a graduate of the Beiyang Military Academy who had furthered his studies in Germany, became prime minister following Yuan's death. One of the dossiers on his table was whether to join the Great War. One of the factors at play was the possibility of recovering the German concessions in Shandong Province, and more generally of improving China's international standing, something which, among others, leading intellectual Liang Qichao hoped for.4 Pressure also came from the United States, at that time moving towards joining the war, and from the Japanese, who had decided on a policy of loans to China and other financial incentives in exchange for recognition of their position in northern regions which Tokyo considered a sphere of influence necessary to protect its Korean colony and shield it from Russian ambitions, following its failed bid to impose the “twenty one demands” on China in 1915.5 These wide-ranging demands were tantamount to turning China into a Japanese protectorate. Among others, Tokyo demanded freedom of movement and the right to purchase land and carry out business for Japanese nationals in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia, a promise “not to cede or lease to any other Power any harbour or bay on or any island along the coast of China”, and the appointment of Japanese advisors.6 In March 1917 Duan convinced Parliament to break diplomatic relations with Germany, and, after a struggle over who had the constitutional power to issue it, a declaration of war by the cabinet followed in August.7 Thus, although her own nation-building process was far from complete, Chinese leaders decided to join a conflict which, while global in nature, had its origin and main focus thousands of miles away. Ideally, being on the winning side would help China consolidate and increase her national stature, but as we shall see later, things would turn out quite differently. What was clear in 1916 was that whereas China had little, if any, expeditionary military capability to offer to the Allies, it had something they desperately needed: manpower. The concept was simple: import Chinese labour, thus freeing British and French young men for combat duties. Although the Chinese and Japanese governments concluded a military agreement whereby Tokyo would provide “aid, advisers and instructors to develop the Chinese War Participation Army to support the Allied cause,” no troops were deployed to Europe, and Japanese aid simply served the purpose of reinforcing Duan’s troops concentrated in North China.8 Germany, on the other hand, provided financial support to Sun Yat-sen's alternative government in Guangzhou, in the hope of pushing China back into neutrality.9 As was the rule in those years, factional interests frequently took precedence over the exercise of national power. The Chinese Labour Corps: China's major contribution to the war effort Logistics is often forgotten, or at least rarely granted a degree of attention commensurate with its true importance, in many military histories. In the case of the Western Front in the Great War the distances involved were not huge, in particular if compared to some theatres in the Second World War, but the industrial nature of the fighting, the dual demands of artillery and fortification, and the sheer number of troops involved, meant a strong and growing demand for labour behind the trenches. Although some machinery and vehicles were available, building and repairing railways and roads, moving supplies, mail, troops, and the injured, laying down and maintaining telephone lines, plus constructing all sorts of military facilities, were tasks mainly undertaken with a mixture of human and animal labour. Many labour units were created. The Royal Engineers, for example, set up eleven labour battalions, and in January 1917 the British Labour Corps was born. By the time of the armistice, it had grown to almost 400,000. Staffed by officers not medically fit for front-line duties (often returned wounded), it regularly operated within range of enemy fire, and some of its units were employed as emergency infantry during the spring 1918 German offensives. The Allies quickly realized that their manpower pool was simply not large enough to feed this ever-growing need for construction and logistics labour. At first arrangements were often ad hoc, but the scale of the fighting, the inadequacy of some earlier approaches, and the realization that this would be no short conflict, soon gave way to a more systematic approach. France was the first to tap into China's huge labour force. Great Britain followed, with both countries already in negotiations with China in the summer of 1916.10 According to the Official History: '…although some labour units were raised and eventually labourers from various parts of the Empire and China were brought to France, the numbers were never at any period sufficient for the demands of a great army operating in a friendly country'. Despite this, it is clear that Chinese workers played a crucial role in sustaining the Allied armies in the field. Precise numbers are not available, with some sources mentioning that in August 1918, 96,000 were enrolled in the British Labour Corps, with a further thirty thousand working for France,11 but Chinese sources stress that the specific number is disputable and that 140,000 in total for both France and Britain is a conservative estimate.12 Guoqi Xu notes the “sizable discrepancy among the figures provided by different sources” and provides a range from several authors.13 Among others, he mentions the Dictionary of the First World War by Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheale, eds. (320,000)14, Arthur Philip Jones (150,000 Chinese workers in France, Mesopotamia, and Russia)15, Chen Sanjing (between 175,000 and 200,000 adding those recruited by France and Great Britain)16, and CLC interpreter Gu Xinqqing (175,000 again as a joint figure)17. He also quotes a US War Department telegram (97,000 recruited by London, 40,000 plus 1,500 specialists by Paris)18. We could add that, although Paris was first to tap China's vast labour pool, there were precedents in Great Britain for the employment of Chinese at times of war to free military and naval personnel from other duties. This includes the Napoleonic Wars, during which 'Chinese men who worked in merchant ships were then used by the Royal Navy in support roles to provide cover for the British men who were away fighting, such as ships’ porters'.19 London also used colonial workers in the Indian, Egyptian, and South African Native Labour Corps. The Individual Experience of Chinese Workers: Tasks, Dangers, and Opportunities Even before China had formally declared war, a processing plan was set up in Shandong Province, with the purpose of screening and hiring labourers. Located near the Royal Navy's base at Weihaiwei, it was followed by a second facility in the port of Qingdao. Recruitment was not difficult, given the region's poverty and instability and the high wages offered. These consisted of twenty Chinese dollars as a starting bonus, food and clothing, and ten dollars per month partly payable to their families. The medical examination was focused on tuberculosis, trachoma (a viral disease of the eye, then prevalent in Shandong), and venereal diseases.20 Some 100,000 were selected, issued a serial number in a dog tag around their wrists,21 and sprayed prior to embarkation. Many still donned a queue and were urged to cut it. Travel to Europe was not without its dangers. Already in 1916 a ship carrying Chinese workers to France22 had been sunk by a German submarine in the Mediterranean, with the loss of 543,23 prompting the use of an alternative trans-Pacific route across Canada by train.24 Once in the Old Continent, although their contracts said they would not be deployed in or near the front, they often found themselves under enemy fire or dealing with other dangers, such as unexploded ammunitions.25 Illness was an additional hazard (including the Spanish Flu from 1918), together with the harsh climate and unfamiliar food, despite which in December 2018 “Colonel Wetherall said that the Chinese suffered very little from ill-health; out of a total strength of some 93,000 Chinese in France, there were only about 1,500 in hospital.” 26 In addition to those lost at sea, more than 2,000 died. Their tombs can be found in France, Flanders, and England, some in special cemeteries. Members of the Chinese Labour Corps were distributed in 500-strong companies, under British officers and Chinese foremen. The language barrier was a significant problem, for example when an American soldier said “let’s go,” which sounds like “GOU” in Chinese (meaning “dog”) it nearly caused a rebellion among Chinese labourers.27 Many translators were hired, while efforts were conducted to recruit Chinese-speaking British officers. The latter's number was small, not only because there were not that many Britons resident in China who had mastered the language but because most of those able and willing to serve sought to join a combat unit. British officers never saw their Chinese Labour Corps counterparts as true equals.28 A typical schedule was ten working hours per day, seven days per week.29 Although under military discipline and severe restrictions on their movement, to a certain extent resulting in segregation, authorities made efforts to accommodate some of their customs. An example was the free days they got during Chinese festivals.30 An effort was made to facilitate postal communication with their families, despite censorship and the fact that many were illiterate. The resulting letters (up to fifty thousand per month) are a very useful source to learn about their roles, thoughts, and living conditions. The YMCA played a key role in their welfare, organizing recreational activities and literacy classes. Hong Kong- and US-educated James Yen created a 1,000-character vocabulary and the Chinese Workers' Weekly, also writing many letters for illiterate labourers.31 As a result of various literacy drives, it is estimated that some two thirds of the members of the Chinese Labour Corps returned being able to read and write, albeit to a limited extent, whereas originally more than eighty percent were illiterate.32 Classes were so popular that they ran out of materials.33 Their work was varied and ranged from unloading military supplies and handling ammunition to building barracks, digging trenches, and constructing fortifications. It even extended to agriculture and forest management.34 The minutes of a meeting on “Chinese Labour in France,” held on January 18, 1918 at 10 Downing Street with the prime minister in the chair (and following a War Cabinet meeting on the same subject the day before), reveal that at first labour tended to be allocated to the different services from a central pool, but this gave way to the view that it was better to second at least a minimum to each department, so that, among others, the members of the Corps could specialize and achieve greater proficiency at a given kind of work, and their supervisors become more familiar with them. That was the position defended by Sir Eric Geddes, who explained that it was the system employed with the first seven thousand Chinese workers brought to France by the British Department of Transportation. General Travers Clarke supported the “desirability of keeping the same men at the same job,” adding that “it was done now at a considerable extent.” He spoke in favour of retaining a central pool, which, while compatible with the described specialization, allowed a measure of flexibility. Eric Geddes said that labour was “nobody's child” and defended the permanent allocation of “a minimum number of men” to departments, so that “they could put in their interpreters and N.C.O.s and control would increase rather than diminish.” Sir Joseph MacLay and Sir Guy Granet concurred in these views of Eric Geddes.35 Handling ammunition was one of the many tasks the CLC performed Building roads was a very important task for the CLC, given the need to sustain industrial warfare on a grand scale in the Western Front While labouring long hours in uncomfortable and often hazardous jobs, their stay in Europe was for many their first opportunity to experience life not only outside China but beyond their village or province. As often happens, contact with a different reality prompted more than a few to question their country's place in the world and to wonder how it could be changed. Contact with fellow citizens and with nationals from other Allied nations may have helped the members of the Chinese Labour Corps to develop a sense of national identity and of their country's place in the world.36 It should also be emphasized that, while originally intended to carry out unskilled tasks, members of the Chinese Labour Corps often ended up being responsible for much more complex tasks, even tank maintenance, overcoming the extensive prejudice that saw them as hard working but incapable of performing technologically-demanding jobs.37 The British Government View: A Commodity? Yet a Valuable One A look at British official documents reveals a dual view of the Chinese Labour Corps. On the one hand, its members often appear as little more than objects. They are referred to in terse terms, as if one was talking about a piece of equipment. On the other, the vital nature of their contribution to the war effort often appears openly, without any attempt to disguise it. This is clear even in the immediate post-war period, once the hostilities were over but the need for labour remained high. For example, the minutes of the December 4, 1918 meeting of the War Cabinet included an item devoted to the “Repatriation of Chinese coolies.” Faced with a proposal from the Ministry of Shipping to repatriate a number of workers, taking advantage of available space in two passenger ships, “the Adjutant-General said that he had taken this matter up with G.H.Q. in France, who were averse from the idea of repatriating Chinese coolies at the present time. There was a great deal of work to be done, e.g., handling cargo at the ports, upkeep of roads, filling up the shell-holes, and rolling up the barbed wire, for which civilian labour would have to be engaged if the Chinese were withdrawn.”38 At the meeting, the British prime minister pointed out that while there was a shortage of labour in France, “the amount of work requiring this class of labour must have greatly diminished since the cessation of hostilities,” and it was decided to arrange the repatriation of five thousand Chinese workers, with a further five thousand to follow.39 Thus, while essential, and openly recognized as such in official documents, the decision was made that Chinese workers, viewed as a temporary asset, were to be returned to their native country as soon as possible. Direct Hiring and the End of the Comprador System: a Precedent for General Stilwell's Training Drive? At the same January 18, 1918 meeting referred to earlier, Colonel MacLaren Brown said that during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, with which he was familiar, “the recruiting and control of the Chinese was kept in the hands of the Compradors. The Railway Company dealt only with and through the Compradors.” While conceding that in that case “the Chinese understood the system and it worked well”, Colonel Brown explained that “in the case of the Chinese in Northern France they have been recruited on a different basis and under special conditions,” a reference to the system of individual contracts outlined earlier.40 We can thus see how the Great War led to a change in the way Chinese labour was employed, dispensing with middlemen. During the Second World War, a similar change would take place to some extent in the military sphere. When training Chinese soldiers at Ramgarh (British India) from 1942, in an attempt to develop a number of modern, capable divisions, US General Joseph Stilwell accepted the recruits sent by the government of the Republic of China but insisted that they be paid individually, in a bid to prevent corruption by officers pocketing their men's pay.41 Considering, and Rejecting, the Use of Chinese Troops France did not just initiate the recruitment of Chinese workers. It also endeavoured to secure the deployment in the Western Front of Chinese troops,42 although the move was ultimately rejected by London and never took place. Even before the Chinese declaration of war, General Ferdinand Foch had argued for the need to get China to raise “pioneer battalions,” between 1,200 and 1,500 strong. In an August 11, 1917 secret report, he pointed out that, “given the population of China, the number of battalions which can be raised is theoretically limitless.” Foch asked Paris to press China to dispatch between seventy and eighty battalions. Such units, mostly officered by the Chinese themselves, would have undertaken construction and logistical work near and at the front, making it unnecessary to individually hire further Chinese workers.43 France did not manage to persuade the United Kingdom, with the War Cabinet noting at its February 4, 1918 that “the Supreme War Council do not accept Joint Note No. 11 of the Permanent Military Representatives on the subject of Chinese battalions.”44 Logistics did not seem to be the reason behind British opposition despite the shortage of Allied shipping and the unsuitability of Chinese vessels for oceanic voyages described in the same missive.45 While not the focus of the paper, it should also be mentioned that a small number of Canadian citizens of Chinese origin volunteered and managed to be accepted for service, despite the refusal to enrol them in, for example, British Columbia. While sources estimate them at, at most, three hundred, 'Those of Chinese origin who are known to have volunteered included Frederick Lee and Wee Hong Louie (enlisted in Kamloops), William Thomas Louie (Calgary), Tung On Hong (Sudbury), and Victor Fong (Quebec).'46 CLC recruits in Weihaiwei doing physical training before leaving for Europe The Ultimate Impact of China's Contribution to the War Effort: Logistics, Frustration and Revolution As explained, life was not easy for the members of the Chinese Labour Corps, and a number made the ultimate sacrifice. On the positive side, however, they could acquire some savings, widen their horizons, and some gained a measure of literacy. Many went back home with the desire and ability to play a more meaningful role in the future of their country. The presence of Chinese in France did not end with the Great War, and included some key figures in Chinese communism who took part in the Work-Study Program, including Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai. Deng lived in France from 1920 to 1925, where he became active in politics for the first time and joined the Chinese Communist Party.47 Zhou was in the country from 1920 to 1924, playing a leading role among Chinese work-study students.48 At the international level, the outcome of the First World War was frustrating for China. Despite being on the winning side and a participant in the Versailles Peace negotiations, China was unable to secure any significant gains. Japan, a more powerful and cohesive state which had entered the war earlier, pre-empted Chinese moves and succeeded Germany in securing rights in China and a number of Pacific Ocean islands. The 62-strong Chinese delegation was attacked following revelations of Japan's confidential agreements with France, Great Britain and Italy, on the one hand, and Duan Qirui on the other. US President Wilson, originally sympathetic to China, agreed on April 30, 1919 with French PM Georges Clemenceau and British PM David Lloyd George to the transfer of all German rights in Shandong Province to Japan. This “flagrant denial of the new Wilsonian principles of open diplomacy and self-determination,” inflamed Chinese public opinion and prompted many protests.49 Enraged, Chinese students in Paris surrounded the hotel where the Chinese delegation was staying in order to prevent it from signing the Peace Treaty as decided by the government in Beijing, which sent a telegram to that effect.50 Mass demonstrations in Beijing on 4 May would give a name to a movement which sought to renew China and raise her to the position of equal among international powers. One of its immediate consequences was the emergence of a new standard for the written language, based on the modern Beijing dialect, which would replace classical Chinese..51 It would also lead to the creation of the Chinese Communist Party. China's intervention in the First World War, while contributing to the Allied victory, failed to secure for Beijing any significant geopolitical gains. Indeed, by boosting Japan and weakening the British Empire, it could even be argued that the war facilitated the later clash between the two Asian giants. In its wake, London put an end to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, sided with the United States, and started work on a new naval base in Singapore, designed to provide a measure of deterrence. The Great War, however, transformed the lives of many Chinese, both members of the Labour Corps and students and intellectuals at home, and helped reinforce the conviction that the country needed to become stronger and renew itself in order to be treated as an equal in the international sphere.52 It was yet another reminder, following less than a generation after the First Sino-Japanese War, that unlike Japan, China had not yet transformed itself into a modern nation state and gained a measure of recognition as an equal by the leading Western powers of the time. Geopolitics, Public Diplomacy, and Soft Power: Competing Narratives. The importance of commemorating the First World War and of highlighting their national contribution to the allied victory has not gone unnoticed in Beijing, New Delhi, or Tokyo. The fact that these three major Asian powers, competitors and often party to border disputes on land or at sea, fought on the same side in the Great War is a two-edged sword. It could have led to coordinated efforts and even have provided, in the case of China and Japan, a counter to other historical episodes, very much alive in popular memory, which act as major obstacles to a lasting peace. However, this does not seem to have been the case. China tends to see the Great War mainly in terms of having capped Japan's successful move from colonialism target to colonial power, with Tokyo not just replacing Berlin in China and the Pacific, but decisively moving towards a paramount position in much of China. The lack of public recognition of the CLC in the UK prompted the birth of the “Ensuring We Remember”, a “National Campaign for a Permanent Memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps of the First World War” Efforts at remembrance are also being made in the United Kingdom, where “The National Campaign for a Permanent Memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps of the First World War” was launched in August 201453, while initiatives in China include a documentary series by CCTV, introduced with a reminder that “An estimated 145,000 Chinese workers stood shoulder to shoulder with British and French soldiers during the conflict from 1914 to 1918. More than 20,000 of them were killed.”54 A challenge as we commemorate the centenary of the Great War is to ensure it includes greater awareness of the contributions of the Chinese Labour Corps. Alex Calvo is a guest professor at Nagoya University (Japan) and the author of ‘The Second World War in Central Asia: Events, Identity, and Memory’, in S. Akyildiz and R. Carlson eds., Social and cultural Change in Central Asia: The Soviet Legacy (London: Routledge, 2013). Bao Qiaoni is an ECUPL (East China University of Political Science & Law) law undergraduate and exchange student (NUPACE Program) at Nagoya University (Japan) School of Law. Recommended citation: Alex Calvo and Bao Qiaoni, "Forgotten voices from the Great War: the Chinese Labor Corps", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 51, No. 1, December 21, 2015. References Archival Materials NA National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, UK. SHAT Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, Service historique de la défense, Château de Vincennes, Avenue de Paris, 94306 Vincennes cedex USNA US National Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20408-0001, USA Other Primary Sources Huimin hetong zhaogonghetong惠民合同招工合同, Article 9. 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Schwartz, Benjamin I. 1983. “Themes in Intellectual History: May Fourth and After.” In John King Fairbank, ed. The Cambridge History of China: Volume 12, Republican China 1912-1949, Part I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sheridan, James E. 1983. “The warlord era: politics and militarism under the Peking government , 1916-1928.” In John King Fairbank, ed. The Cambridge History of China: Volume 12, Republican China 1912-1949, Part I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Song Enrong宋恩荣. 1989, 528. "Yanyangchu quanji"晏阳初全集[Complete works of Y.C. James Yen]. Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe湖南教育出版社　[Hunan education press]. Vol.2. As seen in XuGuoqi徐国琦. 2007, "Wenming de jiaorong---diyici shijie dazhan qijian de zaifa huagong"文明的交融---第一次世界大战期间的在法华工[Cultural fusion--Chinese laborers in France during the first World War]. Wuzhou chuanbo chubanshe五洲传播出版社. Spence, Jonathan D. 1990. The Search for Modern China. New York: W W Norton and Company. Stilwell, Joseph Warren. 1948. The Stilwell Papers. New York: William Sloane Associates Inc “The Labour Corps of 1917-1918.” In The Long, Long Trail: the British Army in the Great War, undated, available here. The National Campaign for a Permanent Memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps of the First World War, undated, available here. Vancouver Public Library. 2012. “Chinese-Canadians in World War I (1914-1918).” In Chinese-Canadian Genealogy, available here. Walker, James W. St. G. “Race and Recruitment in World War I: Enlistment of Visible Minorities in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.” Canadian Historical Review LXX I (1989) Wang Jiading王家鼎. December 15, 1997. “Diyici shijie dazhan qijian huagong fufa”第一次世界大战期间华工赴法 [Chinese laborers who went to France during the first World War], Mingguochunqiu民国春秋. No.6. Wang Jian王建. 2014, 33-36.“Diyici shijie dazhan qijian Shandong diquhuagong zhaomu” 第一次世界大战期间山东地区的华工招募 [Recruitment of Chinese laborers in Shandong Area during the First World War]. Anhui daxue shuoshi lunwen [安徽大学硕士论文]. Xu Guoqi徐国琦. 2007, 56--60. "Wenming de jiaorong---diyici shijie dazhan qijian dezai fahuagong"文明的交融---第一次世界大战期间的在法华工[Cultural fusion--Chinese laborers in France during the first World War]. Wuzhou chuanbo chubanshe五洲传播出版社. Xu, Guoqi. 2011. Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Xu, Guoqi. 2011. China and the Great War: China's Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yang, Jichen杨机臣. September 8, 2007. "Beiyi wangde 15wan zhongguo yizhanhuagong"被遗忘的中国一战华工[The forgotten Chinese laborers in the first World War]. Zhongguo zuojia中国作家Chinese writers. Yao Na姚娜. September, 2011.”Yizhan qijian zhongguo zhengfu paiqian huagong fuou dongyinxi” . 一战期间中国政府派遣华工赴欧动因析. [Causes of Chinese government’s sending laborers to Europe during World War I]. Anhui ligong daxue xuebao (shehuikexueban) 安徽理工大学学报（社会科学版）[Journal of Anhui University of Science and Technology(Social Science)], Vol. 13. No. 3. Yong, C. F. 1987. “The 1911 Revolution and the Kuomintang Movement in Malaya and Singapore, 1912-1925.” In Lee, L. T. ed. The 1911 Revolution: the Chinese in British and Dutch Southeast Asia. Singapore: Heinemann Asia, 1987, 100. Notes 1 A. Calvo, "Japan and the Century Since World War I", Shingetsu News Agency, 20 June 2014, available here. 2 International academic conference of Chinese laborers during World War I, 2008. CCTV, 2009; CCTV, 2014. Deng Xiaojun 邓小军. February 15, 2009. 3 Yao Na 姚娜. September, 2011. 4 Sheridan 1983, 308. 5 These demands alarmed Western powers bent on keeping the balance of power in China. They also prompted a rift between the Kuomintang, radically opposed to the Yuan Shikai regime, and those organizations stressing unity in the face of Japanese expansionism. For the latter see Yong 1987, 100. Yao Na姚娜. September, 2011. 6 Text of the demands, 7 May 1915 ultimatum, and Chinese reply, reproduced in Michael Duffy, “Primary Documents - '21 Demands' Made by Japan to China, 18 January 1915”, FirstWorldWar.Com, 22 August 2009, available here. 7 Spence 1990, 289-290. Li Zhancai 李占才. October 3, 2011. 8 Sheridan 1983, 304. 9 Anthony B. Chan, Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920-28, (Vancouver-Toronto: UBCPress, 2010), p. 18. 10 Huang Yinghu 黄英湖. December, 2011. 11 The Long, Long Trail. Undated. 12 Xu Guoqi 徐国琦. 2007, 56--60. 13 Xu Guoqi 徐国琦. 2007, 56. 14 Pope et al. 1995. 15 Jones 1986, 108-09. 16 Chen Sanjing 陈三井.1986, 34---35. 17 Gu Xingqin 顾杏卿. 1937, 50. 18 RG165M1444 Roll 2, documents 2055-12, USNA. 19 Ermito and Liu 2013. 20 Huang Yinghu 黄英湖. December, 2011. 21 Yangjichen 杨机臣. September 8, 2007. Domonique Maillard.2009. 22 They had been hired by the French and thus did not belong to the Chinese Labour Corps, which was a British organization. 23 Deng Xiaojun 邓小军. February 15,2009. 24 Li Zhancai 李占才. October 3, 2011. 25 Peng Zhiguo 彭志国.April 1, 2014. 26 CAB 23/8, NA. 27 Song Enrong 宋恩荣. 1989, 528. 28 Ermito and Liu 2013. Li Zhancai 李占才. October 3, 2011. 29 Huiminhetongzhaogonghetong 惠民合同招工合同, Article 9.　Yingguozhaogonghetong(Renjihetong) 英国招工合同（仁记合同）[The contract of British Recruitment], Article 12. 30 Xu Guoqi 徐国琦. 2007. 31 Spence 1990, 291-292. 32 Wang Jiading 王家鼎. December15, 1997. 33 Xu 2011 A, 191-192. 34 CAB 24/39, NA. 35 CAB 24/39, NA. 36 Xu 2011 A, 3. 37 Xu Guoqi 徐国琦. 2007. 38 CAB 23/8, NA. 39 CAB 23/8, NA. 40 CAB 24/39, NA. 41 “The U.S. Army insisted that the soldiers at Ramgarh be paid individually and by public roll call. The Chinese constantly agitated that the soldiers' pay be turned over in a lump sum to the commanding officer of the units involved. This was the traditional channel of theft in the Chinese Army, and the U.S. Army refused.” Stilwell 1948, 213. 42 Xu 2011 B, 185. 43 16N2450, GQG, 6498, SHAT. 44 CAB/23/5, NA. 45 CAB/24/31, NA. 46 Vancouver Public Library 2012. Walker 1989. 47 Nora Wang, “Deng Xiaoping: The Years in France”, The China Quarterly, Volume 92, 1982, pp. 698-705. 48 Paul Bailey, “The Chinese Work—Study Movement in France”, The China Quarterly, Volume 115, 1988, pp. 441-461, p. 442. 49 Schwartz 1983, 407. 50 A copy of the telegram from the delegation reporting on the failure to secure German rights in Shandong is available in National Palace Museum 2011, 134-135. On the other hand, China signed the Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Austria (Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Layle) and the Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Hungary (Treaty of Trianon) National Palace Museum 2011, 136-139. 51 De Francis 1984, 243-245. 52 Deng Xiaojun 邓小军. February 15,2009；　Wang Jian 王建. 2014, 33-36. 53 The National Campaign, undated. 54 CCTV 2009.

李立三 November 18, 1899 – June 22, 1967

 

Li remained an advocate of independence for the trade unions, which brought him into conflict with Mao. He was the Vice Chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions until 1958 and the first president of China Institute of Industrial Relations.

Though I Am Gone (Director Hu Jie)

The Chinese Cultural RevolutionRemembering Mao's Victims

As a documentary filmmaker honors the first victim of China's Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party leadership remains silent over this bloody chapter in its history.

Von Andreas Lorenz

15.05.2007, 16.49 Uhr 

"What is your name?" the Great Helmsman asked a young student as she pinned a Red Guard armband on him in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. "Song Binbin," she responded enthusiastically. The name her parents chose meant "properly raised" and "polite," qualities that Mao Zedong found unappealing. "Be violent!" he ordered the girl. A short time later she changed her first name to Yaowu, or "Be Violent."

It was Aug. 18, 1966 and the 72-year-old Chinese leader had called male and female students to assemble on Beijing's Square of Heavenly Peace to launch his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Hundreds of thousands waved Mao's little red book and cheered the old man.

Mao's call to violence fell on willing ears among many young people. Thirteen days earlier Song, 19 at the time, was presumably present when the female students at her school, which was part of the Beijing Teachers University, killed their teacher, Bian Zhongyun. The girls brutally beat the 50-year-old woman to death using wooden sticks spiked with nails. On the day before the killing, members of the Red Guard had already maltreated the teacher, who was the party leader at the school -- they suddenly viewed her as a "counter-revolutionary revisionist" who they believed had gambled away her life.

Bian went down in history as the first victim of the Cultural Revolution -- the bloody mass movement Mao used to eliminate his enemies within the party. The teacher's murder was followed by the killings of millions of Chinese people. The ten-year campaign destroyed entire families, irreplaceable cultural treasures and centuries-old traditions. In August 1966 alone, about 100 teachers were murdered by their own students in the western section of Beijing.

'She Believed that She Was Innocent'

Independent filmmaker   has now traced the grim events at Bian's school in great detail in a new documentary entitled: "Though I Am Gone."

One of the main characters in Hu's film is the murdered woman's husband, 85-year-old Wang Qingyao. "She sacrificed herself as if she were refusing to lose her dignity," the old man explains. Shortly before his wife died, says Wang, he tried to convince her to flee, but she refused. "She believed that she was innocent," says Wang.

Most Chinese people will never get to see Hu's historical work. The Chinese Communist Party has continued to keep silent about this chapter of its history. In 2006, the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, it instructed academics, artists and journalists to simply ignore the topic.

This was probably the reason the authorities recently cancelled the Multiculture Visual Festival in the southern province of Yunnan, an event where director Hu had planned to screen his documentary. Despite the cancellation, the film is available on YouTube, where it is cut into 10 segments -- although late last week the film was banned in China. Hu, a military painter by trade, is used to these kinds of difficulties. When he filmed an earlier documentary about another Mao victim ("In Search of the Soul of Lin Zhao"), he lost his job with Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

But what is a people without memory? Hu asks. "If politicians deny their own history, we simple Chinese should remember. We must continue to make many films about the Cultural Revolution and its massacres."

One of the reasons the Communist Party reacted with such sensitivity to his most recent work is that many of the former members of the Red Guard who attended Bian's middle school were members of the families of high-ranking officials who are still revered today. "Some were daughters, nieces or granddaughters of members of the Politburo," says Wang, the widower featured in the film. "It was essentially a royal school." Yaowu, for example, was the daughter of a senior Communist Party official. The students also included Deng Rong, daughter of the later Communist Party patriarch and economic reformer Deng Xiaoping, as well as Liu Tingting, a daughter of former President Liu Shaoqi.

The families of most members of the Red Guard later became victims of the Cultural Revolution themselves. Radical comrades drove Deng out of office, and his song Pufang was forced to jump from a window and has been paraplegic ever since. Liu died a miserable death in prison in 1969.

Their daughters, former Red Guard members Deng and Liu, are businesswomen today, while Song Binbin, a.k.a. Yaowu, now works as an environmental researcher in Boston. In a US documentary about the Cultural Revolution, she denied any involvement in the murder of her teacher. "I was always opposed to violence," she said, adding that the People's Daily, the Communist Party paper, had forced the name Yaowu upon her.

The Cultural Revolution has never been dealt with officially, nor has there been any debate over culpability and collaboration. With the exception of the "Gang of Four," which included Mao's widow, Jiang Qing, no high-ranking politicians were ever put on trial.

Bian's husband has never quite got over his wife's murder. He has even saved her bloody clothing and shows them in the film, but he is likely to be left alone with his memories. The authorities have turned down his request to have a memorial plaque installed in the schoolyard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBfGc3-InrA

China - 2500 Jahre Entdeckungsreise vom Altertum bis ins 20. Jahrhundert

China - 2500 Jahre Entdeckungsreise vom Altertum bis ins 20. Jahrhundert Copyright: Frederking & Thaler Verlag Das sagenhafte Reich der Mitte zog seit der Antike viele Reisende magisch an. Griechische Kaufleute kamen wegen der berühmten Seide, irische Mönche drangen bis in die Weiten der Mongolei vor, portugiesische Seefahrer schufen die ersten westlichen Handelsniederlassungen und Entdecker wie Sven Hedin begeistern bis heute ihre Leser mit abenteuerlichen Berichten von einer faszinierenden Kultur. Illustriert ausschließlich durch zeitgenössische Stiche, Zeichnungen und Malerei erzählt dieser opulente Band die wechselvolle und spannende Geschichte von 2500 Jahren Begegnung zwischen Ost und West. 2500 Jahre Begegnung mit dem Reich der Mitte: Pilger, Kaufleute, Missionare, Eroberer und Diplomaten - sie alle zogen aus, das ferne Land im Osten zu erkunden, um das sich bis heute viele Legenden ranken. Dennoch blieb China dem Abendland auch in den drei Jahrhunderten fremd, die auf die ersten Handelskontakte der Portugiesen im 16. Jahrhundert folgten. Doch die Neugierde der westlichen Welt konnte besonders durch die Missionare des Jesuitenordens geweckt werden, chinesisches Porzellan und Malerei fanden viele Bewunderer, und China wurde an den europäischen Höfen salonfähig. Im 19. Jahrhundert bedingten Industrielle Revolution und die politischen Interessen der Großmächte eine neue Form der Begegnung zwischen West und Ost. Die Briten zwangen das Reich der Mitte, seine Häfen für den Handel und den Opiumimport zu öffnen. 1860 hatten die Europäer faktisch die Macht in China übernommen und blieben dort bis zum Fall der Mandschu-Dynastie zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts und dem Ende des Himmlischen Kaiserreiches. Der vorliegende Band beruht auf zahlreichen, bislang unveröffentlichten historischen Dokumenten und faszinierenden Bildern unterschiedlicher Epochen. Er beschreibt die schwierige Kontaktaufnahme Europas mit China von den ersten vorsichtigen Handelsverbindungen in der Antike über das Zeitalter des Kolonialismus bis hin zum Fall des Reiches und den Anfangen der maoistischen Revolution in China. Das Buch zollt der Geschichte Tribut, zugleich und vor allem aber auch der Kunst und Kreativität der Chinesen, deren einzigartige Kultur und unverwechselbarer Stil in vielen der hier abgebildeten Meisterwerke zutage tritt. Gianni Guadalupi China 336 Seiten / 600 Farbfotos 25,5 x 35,5 cm ISBN 3-89405-475-1

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations

As China emerges as a great power, much attention has been devoted to understanding China’s present and prospective foreign affairs. With the rise of nationalism in China, policymakers have begun to worry about whether the Chinese leadership will adopt a more assertive nationalistic posture in foreign affairs. Zheng Wang uses recollections and representations of past historical events shared by the Chinese to emphasize that the understanding of the past impacts the present and the future. This book is less about Bwhat actually happened^ in history, but about Bwhat the Chinese remember and what they choose to forget^ in a recounting of the country’s past. It seeks to explain China’s political transition and foreign policy behavior in the post-Tiananmen era through the lens of historical memory. This study makes a valuable contribution to examining the function of historical memory and consciousness in Chinese politics and foreign relations. In this book, historical memory is identified as a powerful force in the formation of a country’s national identity and worldview. National identity is viewed as a key determinant for national interests, which in turn are considered as a driving force behind foreign policy and state action. As indicated in the title, this book primarily focuses on the Chinese people’s collective historical memory about the so-called Bainian guochi (century of national humiliation) beginning with the First Opium War (1839–1842) through the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1945. The Chinese people remember this period as a time when their country was attacked and bullied by foreign powers. Wang examines how the Chinese historical memory about the country’s past humiliation, combined with the Communist leaders’ political use of the past to reshape national identity, influenced China’s political transformation and international behavior. To conduct this research, the author applies an in-depth qualitative and historical approach, using evidence gathered from historical textbooks, official documents, memoirs, and interviews. Based on the existing literature on historical memory and theories of identity and beliefs, the first chapter of the book develops two analytical frameworks that help to categorize and measure the effects of historical memory. Adopting the Harvard Identity Project model and social identity theory, the first analytical framework provides a method to measure the content of historical memory as a collective identity. The second one provides a set of questions categorizing causal pathways in which collective identity serves to influence political actions. Based on the analytical frameworks, the next five chapters explore the role of historical memory in the construction of national identity and nation building, with each chapter dealing with a different aspect of historical memory issues. Starting with an overview of China’s century of national humiliation in Chapter 2, the following chapters examine how the discourse of China’s humiliating modern history has been revised and institutionalized in the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to construct the rules and norms of the ruling party. In particular, they provide a detailed account of how the Chinese government has used the content of historical memory to conduct ideological education as a central component of its patriotic education campaign that started in 1991. Wang argues that the state-led campaign of patriotic education contributed to the rise of nationalism in China which helped the Communist government to regain its legitimacy in the post-Tiananmen era. In Chapter 6, the author uses the historical memory variable to explain Chinese behavior during the Olympic Games and the Sichuan earthquake relief effort in 2008. Chapter 7 and 8 present case studies examining the impact of China’s institutionalized historical consciousness on its foreign relations, especially in relations with the United States and Japan. Based on these case studies, the author claims that historical memory often serves as a major driving force leading to international conflict, especially when the confrontation is perceived by the Chinese as an assault on the country’s national dignity (or face). Ideational factors including historical memory have been underestimated in the study of politics and international relations due to the difficulties in incorporating cognitive variables into empirical research. This book makes a significant contribution to providing researchers with analytical frameworks and methodological approaches for a systemic examination concerning the use of historical memory as a variable to explain political action. Therefore, I believe a wide range of readers with interests in China’s historical memory, national identity, nationalism and foreign relations will gain useful insights from this intriguing book 

Su-Jeong Kang

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations

 Scholars studying China are quite familiar with themes like national humiliation, nationalism as a new source of regime legitimacy vis-à-vis communism, and China’s anti-US and anti-Japan polemic. Zheng Wang’s book Never Forget National Humiliation captures the interrelated nature of these themes in a skilful manner and is a valuable addition to the study of Chinese nationalism. Wang analyses the commonly shared thinking of the Chinese about their place in the world and their view of how the world sees them (p. xii). His analysis attempts to explain the ultimate aim and implications of China’s rise. He underscores that China’s ‘historical consciousness’ revolves around ‘myth’ and ‘trauma’—the dominant features of China’s contemporary national thinking shaping its national identity. The ‘historical consciousness’ defines its national interests and tunes its motivations behind its international interactions, and is necessary to understand China’s present foreign policy. Thus, the author discusses two variables in this context: historical consciousness and national identity in China’s contemporary foreign policy. The central question of the book is how the Chinese, particularly the youth, have come to be ranked ‘among the most patriotic’ and ‘establishment supporting’, from the earlier Mao’s Red Guards and later ‘the anti-dictatorship Tiananmen Generation’ of the 1980s (pp. 1–2). Answering the question, the book discusses the communist regime’s cultivation of a new national identity from 1991 onwards, based on ethnic patriotism. This would be done by constructing a new historical consciousness, through government interventions, that strengthens the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s legitimacy. The book describes the Chinese government’s selective but systematic usage of memories to fulfil its legitimacy requirements and create the kind of nation it wants (pp. 6–7). Wang points out that the Chosenness-Myths-Trauma (CMT) complex, which the regime has carefully created over the past two decades, constitutes China’s contemporary mainstream historical consciousness. The CMT contains belief in the ancient glory of China—belief in divine chosenness, cultural superiority and a civilisation boundless (best expressed in the concept of 天下 Tianxia, ‘the realm under heaven’) (pp. 42–43)—and memories of China’s defeat at the hands of foreign powers after the first Opium War (1839–42) until 1945, when the Japanese withdrew from China after a prolonged Sino-Japanese war. In the CMT complex, China’s earlier defeats are ignored as the invaders at that time, the barbarians, became civilised by assimilating with the Chinese culture. The invaders, the devils, after the first Opium War, knockeddown Tianxia. Similarly, other tragedies—those pertaining to the civil war or the catastrophic famine in the late 1950s or the political tragedy of the Cultural Revolution—are ignored by the CCP. Thus, only the selective simulation of the defeats and consequent unequal treaties during the said period make up the traumas in CMT. While the remembrance of the ancient mythical or historical glories boosts Chinese society’s self-esteem, the selective traumas seek to ‘mourn and/or reverse’ national humiliation and contribute to forming a strong national identity (p. 68). Wang describes the contemporary patriotic surge in China’s textbooks and entertainment industry as the post-Tiananmen development. He reminds us that in spite of occasional sharing of political slogans in their joint fight against the warlords and the Japanese invasion, the CCP generally used class-oriented language describing China’s humiliation as part of a global trend, unlike its narrative today. Conversely, the Kuomintang (KMT) spoke essentially a Confucian nationalist language. Later, the communists produced a ‘victor discourse’ and the narrative of history full of socialist idioms after 1949 in which, as Wang underscores, ethnic patriotism was absent (pp. 82–91). The class distinction defined the political identity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as representing only the workers and peasants, discarding ethnicity during the Maoist era. Ethnic patriotism found no sympathy in Mao’s internationalism and ‘progressive’ China. For them, the Chinese civil war and the Japanese and other foreign aggressions were class wars. Moreover, the communists’ ‘victor’ sense after 1949 and their claim of liberating China from the hands of oppressors—their source of legitimacy—had no place for stories on national humiliation. Besides, the CCP was not in a position to ratchet up their claims about the victory over the Japanese beyond a certain point, as the hard fact was that it was the KMT, whom the communists shunned, that essentially fought the war against the Japanese (pp. 86–88). Consequently, the National Library of China had ‘no books on the subject of “national humiliation” published in China between 1947–90’. The Maoist era ‘consciously suppressed’ the ‘historiography of the Nanjing Massacre’ (p. 86). The 1989 Tiananmen episode symbolised the culmination of the ideological crisis of the official socialist ideology losing sync with the changing economic orientation of China. The crisis had been building up since the late 1970s. Deng Xioping accepted that ‘[t]he biggest mistake for the CCP in the 1980s was that the party did not focus enough attention on ideological education … we did not tell them about what China was like in the old days and what kind of a country it was to become’ (p. 96). China needed a new ideology. In the light of Deng’s guiding directive, Jiang Zemin undertook a massive project to rewrite the textbooks of history, to create a new historical narrative and to introduce a new curriculum in order to overhaul China’s political and ideological education (pp. 100–104). Wang argues that Jiang, who is mainly known for his successes on the economic and foreign policy fronts, implemented a silent revolution in the educational arena, which is his most enduring legacy (p. 136). Jiang transformed Mao’s ‘victor’ China into ‘the victim’ China. The old narrative of the Sino-Japanese war being a class war was changed to an international ethnic conflict with ‘considerable credit to the KMT’s military resistance’ (p. 102). Now the claim of legitimacy for the CCP is that it ended the era of national humiliation and unequal treaty, not the liberation. The Chinese state has employed various instruments such as rewriting the textbooks, making history a compulsory subject for students in various ways, subsidising and promoting movies and television serials based on war themes and building monuments for war heroes to sell its version of history. Evoking memories of the Sino-Japanese war by the leaders has become fashionable. According to Wang, the aim of all this is to ‘rejuvenate China’, which for many Chinese means reclaiming ancient glory, not aspiring to anything new. This massive exercise has not only established nationalism as a new source of legitimacy but has redefined the role of the CCP too. Jiang’s ‘Three Represents’ principle (‘advanced productive forces, advanced Chinese culture and the fundamental interests of the majority’) signifies the end of the class character of the Chinese state for many. The author points out that the success of the project was witnessed during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 when the patriotic demonstrations by the overseas Chinese, particularly by students abroad, overwhelmed and outperformed pro-Tibet and other pro-human rights demonstrations in the backdrop of the Olympic Torch relay to Beijing. Wang identified the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia and the EP-3 incident in 2001 as the three major incidents after the end of the Cold War in which China’s reaction had direct links with the nationalism project it had undertaken in the 1990s. He argues that in view of the US’s conciliatory approach, China’s reaction was disproportionate and not normal during these episodes. He is of the view that China exploited these incidents to ‘activate’ the memories of past injustice by foreigners. His core argument is that ‘emergency (accident or unexpected events) incidents that cause Chinese suffering and a dispute with a country that historically has had troubles with China’ provide an opportunity to ‘activate Chinese historical memory’ (p. 200). China’s insistence on seeking apology—for example in the case of the EP-3 incident from the US and from Japan about the atrocities committed on the Chinese during its invasion of China and about the Japanese history textbooks—serves its victim righteousness and satisfies the moral superiority as part of its nationalism project. Wang cautions that the kind of anti-foreign nationalist path China has chosen to tread is quite dangerous. It does help the regime to keep its authority legitimate and stable by avoiding internal political animosity, but it can also create complications in policy making. Sometimes, mass hysteria about past injustices may not recognise its limits and may build a momentum of its own, beyond CCP control (p. 191). In conclusion, the book is illuminating, engrossing and highly recommendable. It is a high-quality scholarly work that very lucidly unravels many entwined themes and does full justice to the subject it discusses.

Prashant Kumar Singh

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations.

 Why did the Chinese government escalate some international crises, such as the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and not others, like the 1998 attacks on ethnic Chinese in Indonesia? Why did Chinese youth go from standing in front of tanks in 1989 to becoming the country’s staunchest patriots defending the 2008 Olympic flame in capital cities around the world? Zheng Wang’s book, Never Forget National Humiliation, looks at a particular dimension of China’s socio-political culturehistorical memory, to solve a number of puzzles about the country’s international and domestic politics that the mainstream, realist tradition of International Relations theory has a hard time explaining. Combining insights from the liberal and constructivist traditions, Wang examines Chinese foreign and domestic policies since Jiang Zemin’s ‘patriotic turn’ in the 1990s. Employing historical memory as the main explanatory variable, Wang’s analysis identifies the causal relationship between China’s official historical narrative, the country’s collective identity construction and its foreign policy. The stated aim of the book is to delineate with precision the extent to which ideational factors bring about conflict behaviours. Wang’s original theoretical framework directly links identity to political outcomes, locating three causal pathways in which ideational factors influence policy behaviour: as road maps, as focal points and as institutions. Although this framework heavily draws on insights that most constructivist and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) approaches have already incorporated, namely how cognitive constraints and biases can affect foreign policy-makers, Wang distinguishes himself by giving pride of place to memory. Examining the impact of historical memory and identity on cognition allows him to make sense of some otherwise puzzling instances of Chinese foreign behaviour like the ones mentioned above. Wang’s analysis of how China chooses to remember its past has great relevance for the present. It sheds light on topical questions about the political implications of national historiography, and the role that history education plays in a country’s domestic and foreign relations. Wang offers a map of the meanderings of Chinese historical memory, illustrating the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological evolution from communism to nationalism over the course of the last three decades. This transformation is set against a broader background of the change in China’s self-image during its millenary history.

The book details China’s Patriotic Education Campaign since the early 1990s and through to its latest developments in the twenty-first century, focusing on the content and objectives of the history curriculum. Wang sees historical memory both as a trigger of the country’s nationalistic education and as its product, placing it at the heart of China’s search for identity as a nation-state. His approach to the study of nationalism has both advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, Wang accounts for several of the dimensions of Chinese nationalism and avoids the classic top-down bottom-up dichotomy, by describing it not only instrumentally as a state-led ideology or political technique but also as a sentiment pervading civil society and originating from shared memories. Regrettably, the discussion occasionally suffers from a rather muddled understanding of the main terms used in nationalism studies. This severely undermines Wang’s attempt to redefine Chinese nationalism in the last chapter. Nonetheless, overall the discussion remains pertinent, empirically accurate and illuminating. The book benefits from research in primary sources ranging from educational texts and official documents to cultural and popular material, introducing new material to the English-speaking academic debate. Cases are cogently argued and empirically substantiated. An instance of this is the discussion of the change in the description of well-known historical figures reflecting an official change in historical perspectives: General Zuo Zongtang of the Qing dynasty went from being a peasant-suppressing devil in the old textbooks to being a foreign-defeating hero in the new ones. Never Forget National Humiliation appeals to a broad readership, ranging from scholars and students of international relations, nationalism and history, to policymakers and anyone interested in the internal workings of China’s worldview. Accessible to non-specialists thanks to its clarity, Wang’s book does at the same time provide a rigorous contribution to the theoretical debate about the role of national identity in shaping political outcomes. Finally, the book takes on an advocacy position in the controversial debate of textbook writing in East Asia. Describing China’s ‘deep culture’ of national humiliation as articulated in a narrative of chosen myths and traumas, Wang’s book explores the genesis of a self-victimising historical narrative. Far from endorsing it, the book promotes changes in the intellectual discourse on history so that the power of collective memory can foster reconciliation and understanding between China and other countries, especially Japan and the US, rather than conflict. This element of idealism rests on Wang’s solid background in conflict resolution, which lends credence to the book’s proposed ways to deflate the nationalistic animosities currently destabilising China, its region and the world.

Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, by Zheng Wang

 Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, by Zheng Wang

 It focuses on the teaching of modern history in schools, which emphasizes China as the victim of foreign imperialist bullying during the so-called “one hundred years of humiliation” from the Opium War (1839–42) to the Communist victory in 1949. The primary aim of this manipulated historical consciousness is to glorify the Chinese Communists, who drove out the imperialists, but whose image was badly damaged by their crackdown on student protests on 4 June 1989. The secondary aim is to promote anti-Western nationalism, hoping to consolidate national identity and justify one-Party rule. Zheng Wang finds that this manipulated historical  consciousness now directs political discourse at home and foreign policy abroad, laying the foundations for China’s rise.

The book puts its case in nine chapters. The first reviews the existing studies on the concepts of historical memory, identity and politics. In Chapter 2, “Chosen Glory, Chosen Trauma”, the Opium War heralds the Century of Humiliation, while Chapter 3 traces China’s mighty fall from its self-perceived status as the Centre of the World to its resurgence during the Mao era. The fourth chapter describes China’s need to resort to a patriotic education campaign to hold the nation together; Chapter 5 discusses the attempt to salvage a Communist Party badly tarnished by the events in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. Chapter 6 dwells on the use of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake as a new trauma and the Beijing Olympics as a new glory to bind the nation together. Chapter 7 turns to the utilization of national[ist] history in China’s relations with foreign countries; Chapter 8 discusses relations with Japan; and Chapter 9 concludes with an overview of  the use of nationalism, based on selected memory, to foster the so-called China’s Rise. Such a narrative raises more questions than it can provide answers. With regard to foreign policy, the manipulation of historical memory to produce a mentality of victimhood does indeed distract from problems at hand, but can equally generate misunderstandings between China and other nations, with unpredictable consequences. Wang believes that the 1989 protests were about resisting CCP dictatorship, but concludes that manipulation of historical consciousness has succeeded in consolidating one-Party rule, and in fact has intensified Party dictatorship! The students had another major complaint—official corruption—and this has gone from bad to worse, as even the CCP leaders acknowledge. In short, the CCP has only suppressed the symptoms, but not cured the illness. My own research reveals a different dimension to this all-out attempt to suppress the symptoms, and that is that it has encouraged people, first, to further their own interests, and second, not to care about the interests of others (and by implication public interest, so exacerbating problems such as rampant corruption and to many episodes of gross, indeed sometimes grotesque, selfishness recounted by the Chinese media in recent years). If the object of manipulating historical memory has been, as Wang suggests, to build social cohesion, this effort seems to have been remarkably unsuccessful. Indeed, social cohesion and stability are jeopardized by the Chinese authorities’ use of this same manipulated historical consciousness as leverage in both their domestic politics and foreign relations. Once started, however, mass reactions such as street protests often take their own course. In short, the Chinese authorities are sitting on a volcano of their own making. So, where is China going? This is what the powers-that-be care about the least—most of them have sent their children to live overseas, pockets bulging with money. How long that money will last, in the hands of these spoilt princelings, is something that the leaders have not considered. The measures pursued to date in the name of stability may ultimately prove massively counter-productive.

Spelt out in this way, this review is bound to paint a far less rosy picture of the CCP’s future than does the book itself. John Y. Wong University of Sydney

陳雲 13 June 1905 – 10 April 1995

In May 1949, Chen Yun was named head of the new national Central Finance and Economic Commission. In early 1952, Zhou Enlai led a team to draft the first Five-Year Plan which included Chen, Bo Yibo, Li Fuchun and General Nie Rongzhen. Zhou, Chen and Li presented the draft to Soviet experts in Moscow, who rejected it. In early 1953, Gao Gang and the State Planning Commission began work on what would eventually become the final version. After Gao's fall, Chen Yun, Bo Yibo, Li Fuchuan and (later) Li Xiannian would manage the Chinese economy for the next 30+ years.

Chen Yun was elected Party Vice Chairman in 1956.

Throughout the 1950s, Chen was the official who did the most to moderate Mao's radical economic reforms. Looking back, Chen would later believe that it was the Chairman's errors that most kept China from achieving its Five-Year Plans

Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?

Idiomuri chinezesti Chinese idioms

 

1.一丝不苟 (Yīsībùgǒu)

The meaning of this idiomatic expression is to be meticulous and to attend to every detail. This phrase is particularly useful when you want to paint the character in your composition as a highly detailed oriented person. It is a sweet and concise way to describe such a person. A literal translation is: “一丝” referring to a little bit and “不苟” referring to not careless at all. Thus, explaining its meaning.

2. 一窍不通 (Yīqiàobùtōng)

This idiom essentially means that a person is completely unaware and ignorant about something. 一窍不通 (yīqiàobùtōng) literal meaning is “passing not even one hole” (as “一窍” translates to one hole/opening and “不通” is blocked/impassable).

It is also somewhat like the English expression of “It’s Greek to me”. Students can use this phrase in their Chinese composition when they want to describe characters not understanding how to use computers or just being unable to make any sense of the current situation.

3.哪壶不开提哪壶 (Nǎ Hú Bù Kāi Tí Nǎ Hú)

This idiomatic expression is an uncommon one and probably a good one to impress the examiner. This idiom means to touch a soft spot in someone. It can be used when someone said or did something which caused others to suddenly remember an unfortunate past or something unpleasant. It’s literal translation to English is “to pick a kettle that is not boiling”.

4.民以食为天 (Mín Yǐ Shí Wéi Tiān)

This is also yet another idiomatic expression that does not follow the typical 4 characters idiom. This is a great and refreshing idiom for students to use in their composition relating to food, health and fitness! Since Singapore is a food haven, it is highly appropriate to use it to discuss the importance of food in this little red dot. The literal translation of this idiomatic expression is that people view food as their heaven, this highlighting that people place a high priority on food.

5.鹤立鸡群 (Hèlìjīqún)

This Chinese idiomatic expression suggests that the person which we are referring to is outstanding and excels in whatever he/she is doing. It is useful for students as they can use this idiom to describe a person who is talented in a certain skill. The literal meaning of this meaning in English is translated to this “A crane standing in a flock of chicken”, thus implying that the person is a high achiever and stands out from the rest.

6. 豁然开朗 (Huò Rán Kāi Lǎng)

This idiom is used to describe the eureka moment that you have. It means that the person has gained enlightenment to a difficult problem or situation, and he/she suddenly saw the light. It is really helpful when you want to express that the character suddenly thought of a great brilliant idea, this idiom is as commonly used by students, so utilising this in essay would impress your examiner!

7. 爱不释手 (Àibùshìshǒu)

This is a rather common idiom which students use, so it is best to know it! This means to love something so much that you are unwilling to let go of it. That is the literal translated meaning as “释手” essentially means to let go, hence the idiom when translated means unwilling to part with the object. This idiom can be used when you would like to describe a child in the toy store being unwilling to put down the toy he saw.

8. 不可兼得 (Bù Kě Jiān Dé)

This idiom means that one cannot get both things at the same time, or rather you cannot have the best of both worlds. It came from a longer Chinese idiom “鱼与熊掌不可兼得”, meaning, you are not able to always get everything you want.

9.塞翁失马 (Sàiwēngshīmǎ)

This Chinese idiom was derived from the ancient Chinese story of when an old man who lost his horse and yet it brought about good things when the horse came back with another fine horse, giving them good fortune. However, this idiom also depicts that happiness may also bring about misfortune, thus it is a dual meaning proverb.

Essentially, it implies that setbacks are oftentimes a blessing in disguise and not all happiness is long lasting, as it can slowly turn to misfortune. Therefore, it is useful for students to use this to depict events where a misfortune actually has a silver lining!

10. 心血来潮 (Xīn Xuè Lái Cháo)

This idiom is suitable to be used in the beginning of the sentence to signal an impulse or doing certain things on a whim. This phrase is directly translated to “heart blood which comes suddenly” in English. It is used to describe the feeling of desiring to do something on an impulse. Therefore, it is very suitable for students to use this expression to describe somebody’s actions that were prompted by an impulse and the spur of a moment.

11.全力以赴 (Quán Lì Yǐ Fù)

This idiom literally translates into giving it your all. It is a highly versatile idiom that can be used in writing or in oral conversations. Possessing a positive connotation which signals a person’s determination to achieve a goal, it is used to describe the actions during the process and not those that have already been completed.

12.不可思议 (Bù Kě Sī Yì)

Breaking down this 4 character idiom, we will have “不可” which means cannot and “思议” which means imagine or believe. Hence, this phrase means that something (can be a place, thing or an event) is unbelievable and unimaginable. It can have both positive and negative connotations to indicate that something is noteworthy or marvellous in an unexpected way.

13.理所当然(Lǐ Suǒ Dāng Rán)

The meaning of this phrase is that “it goes without saying”. It is used to refer to the inevitability of things and it is reasonable should something happen. It is an excellent connector and phrase to start the sentence, replacing the mediocre “当然”.

14. 纸上谈兵(Zhǐshàngtánbīng)

The literal meaning of this idiom means to talk about the military on paper, which is deemed useless and impractical unless one combines experience and practical skills with it.

This idiomatic phrase originated from a story narrating how the general Zhao Kuo of Zhao Dynasty only studied military strategies and tactics on paper but never practiced it on a battlefield. As such, the lack of practical exercises led to his defeat and failure during the Campaign of Changping.

15. 自相矛盾 (Zìxiāngmáodùn)

This idiom explains the meaning of contradicting oneself. “自相” means self and “矛盾” means to contradict. This idiom came about when a man boasted that the spear could penetrate anything, yet he also sold a shield which he claimed that no spear could pierce through it, thus an obvious contradiction. As such, this idiom is suitable for describing paradoxical situations or people who have contradictory opinions.

16.有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎(Yǒupéng Zì Yuǎnfāng Lái, Bù Yì Lè Hū)

Now, this string of characters is definitely not the norm. It has more than four characters, but it is still considered an idiomatic expression just that it is a quote from Confucius. This can be a little tough to memorise, so knowing its context and meaning might help a little. Essentially, this is the more complex version of “好久不见”  which means “long time no see” in English. This is especially suitable for context when you reunite with your old friends and you would like to express more happiness and positive vibes.

17. 一鸣惊人 (Yī Míng Jīng Rén)

This idiom means to wonder and amaze the world with a brilliant act. It can be used positively to show that the character has surprised people with his success or carry out astounding acts such as displaying one’s dancing or singing talents.

18. 多多益善 (Duo Duo Yi Shan)

This idiom means the more the better. It can be used in situations when you would like to depict the greater the help, the better the situation. For example, it can be used in compositions where you are describing charity work or to garner support and cooperation, basically a call to action since the more the merrier.

19. 学富五车 (Xue Fu Wu Che)

In literal translation from Chinese to English, this idiom means that the person possesses more knowledge than the knowledge combined in 5 books, therefore he or she is steeped in knowledge. It can be used to describe someone noble, or in a high position such as the school’s principal or a famous person in history.

20. 挑拨离间(Tiǎobō Líjiàn)

This idiom means to stir trouble or to drive a wedge between people. It is usually used to describe a third party who spread rumors or did something to cause trouble and sow dissension between two people who have established a good relationship.

Learning idioms is by no means an easy task. However, it can be fun and interesting through storytelling and constant revision of the phrases! It is definitely the number one tip to impress your examiners and display your proficiency in Chinese.