Newcastle University

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As China’s leadership changes, Beijing’s policies continue to dominate the news. Will China and Japan clash in the seas of East Asia? Will China be able to implement social welfare policies that will calm dissent and social unrest? Why did it take so long for China to become such a major power? One unexpected, but crucial story, that helps answer these questions is that of the China’s experience during World War II, in the war with Japan from 1937 to 1945. Over 14 million Chinese died and some 80 million became refugees during those years. In this lecture, Rana Mitter will explore how the battered China of wartime became today’s superpower in the making – and why.

Rana Mitter is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford. He has been fascinated by China since childhood, studying Chinese at Cambridge University and going on to develop a particular interest in the connections between Chinese nationalism and experience of war and occupation in the twentieth century. He has written and edited several books and articles on the subject, including A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (OUP), for which he was named Young Academic Author of the Year in 2005 by the Times Higher Education. His latest book, China’s War with Japan, 1947­–1945: The Struggle for Survival (Penguin), will be published in June 2013. A regular presenter of Night Waves, Radio 3’s arts and ideas magazine, Rana recently presented China’s New Iron Rice Bowl, a documentary on social welfare in China for Radio 4.