Deconstructing Chinese Nationalism: Nanyang Chinese Volunteers and the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1941

Leander Seah, Stetson University

Scholars such as Rana Mitter, Sarah Paine, and Franco David Macri have emphasized the importance of the war between Kuomintang China and Imperial Japan, and the years before 1941 as fundamental to understanding World War II. In moving away from a Western-centric perspective of the global conflict, the Second Sino-Japanese War was more than just an unimportant prelude to the Pacific War because China was a “forgotten” member of the Allies (Mitter) and Japan’s stalemate in China led to “the Pearl Harbor solution to the China quagmire” (Paine). Chinese narratives have historically portrayed the Sino-Japanese War as the “War of Resistance against Japan,” and the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping has more recently shaped such narratives in the service of a resurgent Chinese nationalism (Mitter). Yet these narratives remain mainland-centric, often overlooking “Overseas Chinese” (Huaqiao) contributions to the war effort like those made by Nanyang (Southeast Asia) Chinese volunteers. And while Ernest Koh has studied these Nanyang Chinese contributions, he has depicted them as a fragment of a “China diaspora” centered on the mainland. The historical reality was more complex, and this paper goes beyond the stories of the Nanyang Chinese men highlighted by Koh and others, focusing instead on a small group of Chinese women and men not of Chinese race or ethnicity who were nevertheless part of the Nanyang Chinese volunteers. Most of these volunteers served as drivers and mechanics along the Burma Road from 1939 to 1942, but some also contributed to the fight against Japan in China proper and elsewhere. By deconstructing Chinese nationalism during the Second Sino-Japanese War, this paper aims to complicate narratives of the regional conflict and World War II in Asia through ways that are neither Western-centric nor mainland China-centric.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 208. Contested Belonging in the Shadow of World War II: Gender, Nation, and Empire in East and Southeast Asia, 1937-1952