China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy

5. Victors or Victims?

c h a p t e r 5 Victors or Victims? War is at once the graveyard of peoples and the birthplace of nations. No true nation is born without war; indeed, nations define themselves through conflict with other nations.1 Modern China is no exception. The 1931/1937–1945 “War of Resistance against Japan” (KangRi zhanzheng) was the birthplace of the People’s Republic of China. By mobilizing and leading the peasantry in nationalist resistance against the invading Japanese, the Communist Party gained the mass following it later used to defeat the Nationalist Party during the Civil War of the late 1940s.2 For over half a century now, “defeating the Japanese and saving the nation” has been a dual legacy at the heart of Chinese Communist claims to nationalist legitimacy. Stories about the Sino-Japanese Jiawu War of 1894–1895 and the Second World War continue to drive Chinese views of Japan and—more to the point—of themselves. China’s wars with Japan have been and continue to be a hot topic. For the first three decades of the People’s Republic 69 “The Chinese people cannot be bullied; the Chinese race cannot be insulted!” under Mao, the “War of Resistance” was a “chosen glory.”3 China’s selfimage , aggressively projected to the world, was that of a “victor.” Today, however, many Chinese have come to think about the war in less glorious terms. A self-image of “China as victim” is increasingly vying with “China as victor” in the stories Chinese today tell about past wars with Japan. The debates reveal a great deal about recent changes to Chinese national identity. An “Extraordinary Humiliation” Although the atrocities of the Sino-Japanese Jiawu War of 1894–1895 are not mentioned as frequently as World War II atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre, Chinese feelings that the Japanese have been unjust and untrustworthy go back to 1895, not to the 1930s and 1940s. The Jiawu War, named for the year 1894 in the Chinese calendar, turned the world of China’s elite upside down. For a millennium, China’s leaders had looked down on Japan, treating it either benevolently, as a student or younger brother, or malevolently, as a nation of “Jap pirates” (wokou). China’s supremacy was abruptly challenged, however, with its loss to Japan in 1895. Earlier losses in wars with “Western barbarians” (yang guizi) were one thing, but losing to an inferior within the realm of Sinocentric civilization fundamentally destabilized Chinese worldviews.4 Many Chinese today see the 1895 loss to Japan and the ensuing Treaty of Shimonoseki as the darkest hour in the “Century of Humiliation.” In Chinese accounts, the shock of 1895 is often represented by the encounter between the Qing Court’s Li Hongzhang and Japan’s Ito Hirobumi during the postwar treaty negotiations at Shimonoseki.5 A 1991 history of the JiawuWar, written as part of the multivolume “Do Not Forget the National Humiliation Historical Series,” references this encounter both in its title, The Extraordinary Humiliation at Shimonoseki, and its first chapter, “Humiliation After Defeat.” Strikingly, the authors chose to begin their story at the “humiliating” moment of war’s end, only afterward presenting a chronology of the war itself. Their account of the negotiations at Shimonoseki combines anger at Ito and sympathy for Li with anger at Li and the Manchu court. Authors Qiao Haitian and Ma Zongping express outrage at the Japanese assassination attempt on Li that preceded the treaty signing. They declare it “scandalous,” and, significantly, justify their outrage by asserting that “international opinion” ( guoji yulun ) was likewise outraged. Qiao and Ma also declare the Japanese de70 VICTORS OR VICTIMS? mands at Shimonoseki “unreasonable”—“a milestone in evil.” Ito and the Japanese side, they insist, “took pleasure in making China lose face.”6 It is the public nature of China’s loss of face before the world that infuriates Qiao and Ma almost a century later. The authors blame Li and the Manchu court for the humiliation, seeking to save face for Han Chinese like themselves. More recent popular accounts also evince anger at Ito and Japan. The preface to 1997’s Blood Debt, which focuses on World War II and postwar reparations claims, actually begins with a two-page fictional account of an exchange between Li and Ito in 1895. China is depicted as a “baby lamb” and Japan as an “avaricious...