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Back to the 1950s? Weibo and the Patriotic Journalist
Huanqiu Shibao returns to the 1950s: Reprinting Korean War posters, March 26, 2012 Back to the 1950s? Weibo and the Patriotic Journalist by Adam Cathcart, with Franz Bleeker Had Chinese journalists...
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Anti-Japanese Protests in Beijing, and the History of Diaoyu Protests
Three suitably breathless Global Times articles and photo galleries are linked below, but for a sane appraisal of at least part of what is going on, I recommend MIT professor M. Taylor Fravel’s...
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15 Questions re: Jeff Kingston’s Japan Focus Essay (2008) Regarding the...
Statue of author and journalist Iris Chang at the Nanking Massacre Memorial in Nanjing, China | Image via Behind the Curtain Dr. Jeff Kingston is a historian of contemporary Japan who occupies a number...
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New Koguryo Research in Pyongyang, or, How to Revive a Historical Dispute on...
It doesn’t take much skill at reading tea-leaves in Chinese or English to recognize that Kim Jong-un’s letter of congratulations to Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, and Zhang Dejiang on the PRC’s National Day...
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The Nanking Massacre Anniversary and the CCP’s Politics of History
Since 1949, the Chinese government’s interpretation of the history of World War II seems to be continuously changing in order to adapt to local circumstances and contemporary political needs. If it’s...
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Hong Kong in Anglo-Chinese Relations, 1945-, Recommended Reading
James T. H. Tang, “From Empire Defence to Imperial Retreat: Britain’s Postwar China Policy and the Decolonization of Hong Kong,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 317-337. Chi-kwan...
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Chinese Journalists and the U.S. Occupation of Japan
At the conclusion of eight years of Japanese occupation of nearly every major city in the Republic of China, Chinese journalists were prepared not just to celebrate victory but to join the Allied...
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Atrocities, Insults, and “Jeep Girls”: Depictions of the U.S. Military in...
Controversy continues to surround various military occupations in East Asia in the 20th century. Specifically, the connection between military occupation and sex work carried out by women the occupied...
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Will China Disintegrate? A British Assessment in 1947
On either side of an energizing North Korea public event I did this past Friday in London, I make two treks out to the UK’s National Archives in Kew Gardens. My goal was explore Foreign Office papers...
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On the ‘Cairo Declaration’ Fiasco
While the tendency of the CCP to insert itself at the main junctures of Chinese history in the 20th century is anything but new, there has been an increasing alignment with the earlier Republic of...
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Reading and Writing Chinese-North Korean Cold War History
Tian Wuxiong, a Ph.D. candidate in modern history at Peking University, has produced a nicely nuanced view of the withdrawal of the Chinese People’s Volunteers from the North. Tian has a good grasp of...
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Writing the Early Postwar: White and Jacoby’s _Thunder Out of China_
Foreign correspondents are crucial conduits for insights into contemporary East Asia. As I’ve learned from my conversations with various bureau chiefs, stringers, and greybeards in the region, there...
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Wartime History and Beijing’s Response to the New Defence Minister in Tokyo
In the wake of the Upper House elections in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has completed a reshuffling of his cabinet. As described by Japan hand Michael Cucek, it was not a particularly inspiring...
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New Book Reviews: Espionage in Republican China, and Britain’s Role in the...
My two new book reviews engage with the intelligence history of two chaotic decades in China, and the British role in the Korean War, respectively. Review of Panagiotis Dimitrakis, The Secret War for...
View ArticleWalls as Multivalent Icons in Early People’s Republican Cartoons, 1946-1951
The rise and ultimate victory of the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese civil war, and Mao’s galvanizing intervention into the Korean War, was accompanied and supported by a wave of cultural...
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