War Memorials put the Party Front and Center for 80th Anniversary

Executive Summary:

• The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War to promote a distorted version of history in order to  stoke patriotism among the Chinese people.
• Official remembering of the war has changed over the last 80 years, with the contributions of the Nationalist and American forces highlighted only when the Party seeks warmer relations with Taiwan and the United States.
• The Party relies on places such as the Songhu Memorial in Shanghai to weave local history into its preferred national war narrative.
• This year’s commemorations will be promoted as part of a “red tourism” agenda, under which the CCP has poured resources into tourist locations to integrate them with sites related to Party history.

In September 2024, local officials hosted an event honoring those who served in the Second Sino-Japanese War in Baoshan district on the outskirts of Shanghai. The occasion was the upcoming 80th anniversary of the end of the conflict. As a seventh grade student from a local school reportedly put it: “It is the heroic struggle and fearlessness of sacrifice of the revolutionary predecessors that have brought us our peaceful life now” (正是革命先辈的英勇奋斗和不畏牺牲换得了我们现在和平的生活。我们要努力学习，坚持奋斗，继承革命先辈的优良传统，为祖国建设贡献自己的一份力量) (Shanghai Baoshan District, September 9, 2024). Her comment captures three priorities war memory serves for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) today. First, Chinese people should internalize ideas about struggle on behalf of the nation; second, the CCP is the only historical actor of consequence; and third, the patriotic education campaigns that seek to inculcate these values are aimed at the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) youth.

The September event was just the start of the 80th anniversary festivities in Baoshan district, which is home to the Shanghai Songhu Memorial Hall for the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. The Songhu Memorial integrates the local history of the district—where Chinese soldiers fought and lost a battle against the invading Japanese army—into the national war narrative. It complements other major war memorials that have oscillated between painting a heroic portrait of Chinese resistance on the one hand and tragic loss at the hands of Japanese aggressors on the other. Official portrayals of China as simultaneous victor and victim allows the Party to portray itself as strong and defiant in the face of imperial invasion while provoking the urgent nationalism that devastating history is uniquely qualified to incite.

The Songhu Memorial is indicative of the ways in which the Party wants the war to be remembered today—which may be drifting further from the historical facts. Recent commemoration events marking the January 28 anniversary of the Battle of Baoshan skipped any mention of the Nationalist Party (KMT), which led China at the time under Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and whose forces faced the brunt of the invading Japanese army. The 80th anniversary celebrations are an opportunity for the CCP to deliver the not-so-subtle message that the most pro-CCP version of history is conveniently both the most patriotic and the most correct.

History is Always Changing

The anniversary fanfare might seem oddly thorough considering the eight decades between the end of the war and today, not to mention the domestic upheaval China has endured in the interim. However, meticulous celebrations serve the purpose of conjuring a sense of national unity and, as a result, pride. Increasingly, the Party’s aim appears to be identifying China’s sacrifice, valor, and victory during the Second Sino-Japanese War with that of the Party itself. This fits with broader patriotic education imperatives that seek to elide the distinction between party and state (China Brief, December 15, 2023). Last month, for example, the Songhu Memorial announced a new collection of war artifacts. These focused on reflecting the CCP’s “pivotal role” (中流砥柱作用) in the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and, also crucially, portraying a clear enemy through “important physical evidence of the crimes of aggression committed by the Japanese army” (侵华日军侵略罪行的重要实物佐证) (WeChat/Shanghai Baoshan, January 27).

Minimizing the KMT’s role in the conflict has long been the norm in memorials created under the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In 2019, the exhibit largely skipped over wartime tensions between the Nationalists and Communists and downplayed the KMT’s dominant role in defending China (author visit, 2019). Chiang Kai-shek was mentioned, but only as a secondary figure to Mao Zedong. (At the time, Mao made use of patriotic sentiment stirred up by the Japanese invasion while exploiting the KMT’s weakened state to boost support for the nascent CCP).

The KMT is similarly absent from this year’s remembrances. Nationalist soldiers are not included among “all the revolutionary martyrs and compatriots who sacrificed their lives” (所有为中国人民抗日战争胜利献出生命的革命先烈和同胞) that the Memorial venerates, as reference to them is omitted completely (Shanghai Observer, January 26). This omission is indicative of the current war narrative, which highlights “Chinese” efforts and does not parse between parties. A narrative centered on national identity allows the CCP to center itself in retellings of the nation’s history, to the exclusion of all others.

The distortions in today’s historical memory are partly a call back to the Mao-era depiction of the conflict. In the early years of the PRC, the need to erase the KMT from recent history was compelled by the civil war between the two political parties that broke out immediately following the end of the War of Resistance. As the scholar Parks M. Coble has written, in the aftermath of the Communist victory in 1949, “the Party mandated a historical narrative which privileged the revolution and the leadership of the Communist Party and consigned other players and memories to historical oblivion” (The China Quarterly, June 2007).

A period of “new remembering” of the war, which emerged in the early-to-mid-1990s and has evolved since, is the exception to this rule. After nearly half a century of denial, the Party decided to allow more room for recognizing KMT contributions to the war. This shift was informed by the political priorities of the day, which included activities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait aimed at improving relations, as well as a post-Tiananmen imperative to bolster national pride—a mandate that also inspired the patriotic education campaign (Modern Asian Studies, October 1996). The “new remembering” continued into the early Xi Jinping era. For instance, cultural products increasingly referred to Nationalist contributions to the war effort and, in 2013, remaining Nationalist veterans were finally given state pensions. However, this change was in part engineered to support the PRC’s burgeoning claims to increased power in the region and simultaneously foment tensions with Japan (Index on Censorship, March 2014).

Patriotism Meets A Securitizing State

The 80th anniversary of the Allied victory this year presents officials with an opportunity to pull citizens into the CCP-centered, new “new remembering.” The updated narrative complements other annual observations that also serve to improve popular awareness of the Party’s national security priorities. These include National Security Day on April 15, which is oriented toward making national security a more embedded fixture of daily life, particularly for students, and “national defense education” (国防教育), which was a feature of the original patriotic education campaign. In 2019, the core features of patriotic education were updated to reflect Xi Jinping’s contributions, and in September 2024, further amendments were made to the National Defense Education Law (国防教育法) by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress (China Brief, December 15, 2023; April 26, 2024). As an explainer on the recent revision to that law makes clear, the update requires that national defense education in schools “be integrated with the publicity and education of military service so as to enhance students’ awareness of performing military service in accordance with the law” (China Justice Observer, October 31, 2024).

Regulatory and other changes likely are timed to align with significant anniversaries. Mirroring the National Defense Education Law’s amendment ahead of this year’s anniversary, the central government passed the National Security Law on the 70th anniversary in 2015—the same year that the PRC held its first Victory Day celebrating the defeat of Japan, which took place that September. It was the first major military parade celebrating an event other than National Day (YouTube/CGTN, September 4, 2015).

Fostering public consciousness of national security—and tying the concept to patriotism—also encourages defense against the PRC’s critics. These critics, according to depictions in state media, either want to suppress and contain the PRC or seek to instigate revolution and bring about regime change. Notably, wartime assistance provided by Allied powers—particularly the United States, which played a critical role in Japan’s ultimate defeat—are rarely mentioned in official narratives of the war. The only exceptions to this are when the Party attempts to appeal to U.S. audiences, for example when Xi chooses to invoke the so-called “flying tigers,” the American volunteer fighter pilots who provided assistance in the China Burma India theater (PRC Embassy to the United States, January 8). This is usually done when Beijing seeks to cultivate warmer ties with the United States.

Officials hope the combination of defensiveness and patriotism will imbue the public with confidence at a time of tension. National defense education, especially as it manifests in schools, is part of a broader effort to militarize Chinese society as CCP leadership seeks to brace citizens for an extended geopolitical contest with the U.S. and its allies (China Brief, February 17, 2023).

In Baoshan, Local History Absorbed Into Daily Life

The Party under Xi has sought to militarize the PRC populus through propaganda, culture, and education (China Brief, November 1, 2024). At the local level, the grand national narrative of Chinese wartime victory manifests through sites of “local resistance” (局部抗战) (The Paper, January 27).

One way for schools to step up their patriotic education game appears to be building closer, if historically tenuous, bridges between their local districts and national historical narratives. Baoshan’s public school district has started featuring interactive lessons highlighting the area’s wartime history through “immersive performances and debates” (沉浸演绎、现场辩论). These are intended to get students invested in wartime history, which they have previously shown only an obligatory interest in, according to the vice principal of Baoshan Experimental School (Xinmin Evening News, March 3, 2024).

In January, a lecture series called “Remembering the Anti-Japanese War on Both Sides of the Suzhou River,” (苏河两岸忆抗战) featuring academics from ten universities in Shanghai, kicked off as part of the city’s anniversary commemorations. The series similarly taps into local history to further the narrative of national unity. For instance, the first event highlighted Shanghai as the birthplace of Chinese Communism and that among its many “red resources” (红色资源) is its wartime history (Shanghai Observer, January 25). Obscured in this telling is that Shanghai spent most of the war under Japanese occupation. Nevertheless, it is portrayed both as a Communist stronghold and as at the frontlines when national sovereignty was challenged by a foreign invader.

These events are part of an attempt to weave the war into the fabric of people’s daily lives. Part of that mission means altering the physical environment to integrate memorial sites into China’s broader tourism infrastructure. For example, the Songhu Memorial is suggested as a stop during a fun day out in the district, as it is located by a river, next to a park, and surrounded by the old city. Tourists can enjoy all this as part of the recently renovated Baoshan Citywalk (Shanghai Observer, January 27).

The PRC has poured resources into “red tourism” (红色旅游) in recent years as part of pervasive attempts to engineer public consciousness. The Songhu Memorial is a beneficiary of this and has partnered with state-owned telecoms giant China Mobile (中国移动) to provide its space for “red culture” education and party-building work for local companies (Baoshan District Media Center, September 4, 2024). Red tourism’s rise has been achieved in part by tying it to wider economic incentives. As the 2023 Red Tourism Development Report explains, red tourism “is not only an important channel for transmitting national memory and enhancing social identity, but also increasingly an important force driving local economic development” (不仅是传承国家记忆、增强社会认同的重要渠道，也日益成为带动地方经济发展的重要力量). Authorities also encourage its integration with both rural revitalization and urban development (Economic Daily, October 28, 2024).

Conclusion

At a December meeting on PRC-Japan relations marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) remarked: “History, if not forgotten, can serve as a guide for the future” (FMPRC, December 25). From his perspective, that future should ostensibly feature a public that absorbs official dispositions on national security, patriotic education, and the Party’s self-aggrandizing narrative of the Second Sino-Japanese War. How history is understood and, ideally, felt by the public, and above all by the youth, is directly linked to its success in achieving national strategic objectives.

Baoshan’s Songhu Memorial is currently undergoing a partial upgrading to “conform with the opening of commemoration activities” (为配合纪念活动的开展) and is set to open later this year (Baoshan People’s Government, December 2, 2024). It is apparently yet to open, but when it does, the exhibits likely will continue to reinforce the Party’s pervasive narratives about its own centrality in the history of the war, as well as the centrality of militaristic values in the Party’s conception of the PRC today.