Old Ghosts, New Memories: China's Changing War History in the Era of Post-Mao Politics

Abstract

Although the 1989 protests in China did not lead to a regime-changing revolution as did the protests in Eastern Europe, the influence of a changing global order had a profound impact on the country throughout the 1980s and beyond. In particular, the politics of transition fuelled a new fascination with the past in China, marking a deep ambivalence about the effects of globalization and foreign influence on China in the era since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The historical myths which sustained China during the Cold War have undergone a radical shift for reasons rooted largely in the present day.1 This is not unprecedented. In the late nineteenth century, too, the ambiguity of reform provoked by the impact of western-driven globalization marked a serious problem for the Chinese imperial state. Mostly resentful of the West, partly admiring it, China remained unsure of its status in the world until the communist victory in 1949. Even today, the keenly-remembered 'national shame' of humiliation by foreigners is a rhetorical constant everywhere from top leaders' speeches to the ranting monologues of taxi drivers.2 Now once again, during another era of globalization, China is ruled by half-willing, halfresentful reformers who are unsure how much of the outside world to let in. The era of reform in contemporary China, broadly considered to have started in 1978 with the ascendancy of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, has seen a multitude of new interpretations of Chinese history. These stretch from the ancient (the revival of Confucianism after the condemnation of Confucius as 'feudal' for much of the twentieth century) to the very recent past (the presentation of Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution not as socialist triumphs but as chaotic disasters).3 However, in this article, I shall