Characteristics of and changes in wartime mobilization in China: A comparison of the Second Sino–Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War

Abstract

The Second Sino–Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Chinese Civil War that followed it (1946–1949) were the first total wars China experienced. Large-scale, long-term wartime mobilization and the reorganization of society are necessary to wage total war. This article will examine the characteristics of and changes in wartime mobilization under the Republican Chinese government, focusing on the above two wartime periods. It will compare China with the example of contemporary Japan and will carefully observe the process of changes in the methods of mobilization, as well as the social contradictions brought out by mobilization. Eventually, the Nationalist government could not overcome these contradictions and collapsed after its defeat in the Chinese Civil war. While groping for strategies to stave off defeat, the Nationalist government created elements that continued after 1949 in the People’s Republic of China. That is to say, the experience of wartime mobilization during total war had a great influence on China’s future historical path.