This dissdertation concerns the evolution of the collective remembrance of the Fifteen-year War (1931-1945) in China between 1945 and 1982. Exploring how the Fifteen-year War has been remembered in mainland China is an essential step in understanding the origin of the currently explosive Si no-Japanese History Problem. Moreover, remembrance of the war has been entangled with Chinese international relations and various domestic affairs in the postwar era. However, despite its importance, research on the evolution of mainland China's Fifteen-year War remembrance is a relatively new genre. Most of this research argues that the Fifteen-year War remembrance was discouraged in China before 1982, and the current problematic aspects of the Chinese Fifteen-year War remembrance should be attributed to the patriotic campaigns sponsored by the CCP regime since around the 1982 Textbook Incident, which was considered as the first large-scale diplomatic conflict between China and Japan over the Fifteen-year War history. Nevertheless, two major shortcomings of this research's examination on the pre-1982 period - a lack of thorough firsthand study and a strong government-centred view - render its above argument oversimplified and partial. This thesis aims to overcome these shortcomings and present a new picture as to the situation of the Fifteen-year War remembrance in mainland China before 1982. The thesis's first chapter examines pre-1982 Sino-Japanese relations to find out what the correlation was between the Fifteen-year War remembrance and China's relationship with Japan. Chapter 2 explores the manoeuvre of glorifying the Fifteen-year War Martyrs before 1982. Chapter 3 examines the realms of the Fifteen-year War remembrance constructed by the state as an agent: the national anthem, the school history textbooks and history museums; and pays attention to the central-local dimension of the Chinese war remembrance. Chapter 4 examines the realms of the war memory constructed by unofficial agents - the Fifteen-year War themed arts, scholarly works and grassroots memories -and emphasises the interaction between the state and unofficial agents in constructing the PRC war remembrance. The thesis's Conclusion consists of two parts. Firstly, I argue that the Fifteen-year War was well remembered in China before 1982, although not on a scale as large as today. Central as well as local authorities and various unofficial agents of the war memory interacted with each other to shape a relatively unified remembrance of the Fifteen-year War in China. The core part of the national memory promoted by the central CCP regime, as reflected in school history textbooks and national history museums, was the series of heroic and tragic wartime events which could justify the CCP's wartime leadership. On the top of that were various memories that thrived in the local areas and were remembered privately by individuals. Further, this thesis' empirical research has provided evidence to invalidate the three explanations which are given in the existing literature to support the pre-1982 'Chinese generous amnesia' argument. Secondly, I argue that, as in China, the Fifteen-year War remembrance was also an integrated part of postwar Japanese society. However, unlike its Chinese counterpart, the Japanese war remembrance was highly contested. Still, there was one thing which was shared by almost all groups in postwar Japanese society - the victim mentality. Moreover, both the PRC and Japan's war remembrance after 1982 is a natural continuation of that of before 1982; the origin of the current problematic war remembrance in China and Japan comes from this period as well.

China’s social, political and economic modernisation in the first decades of the 20th century has been attributed to Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), who countered dynastic despotism and foreign imperialism, and to his political philosophy best defined as emancipatory communication. Sun’s exposure to Western influence such as Christianity, Western language and medical science inspired him modern rationality, which, he believed, was the key to the nation’s modernisation. However, rather than blindly adopting Western advancements, Sun endeavoured to reconcile Chinese and Western values and systems. As a physician, Sun formed a detailed diagnosis of China’s ailments, concluding that a revolution was unavoidable in order to save the nation. Sun advocated national unity, which catalysed the 1911 revolution and, eventually, the establishment of the first Chinese republic. The tenets of “Three Principles of the People”, Sun’s core emancipatory communication, comprise nationalism, democracy and the people’s livelihood. Firstly, the minzu principle (nationalism) emphasised national unity to preserve Chinese race and its territory. The second principle of the discourse is minquan principle (democracy), wherein Sun stressed the imperative for balance between citizens’ rights and the powers required of the state, proposed a supporting constitution as the essential framework. Thirdly, the minsheng principle (people’s livelihood) argued for the equalisation of land to protect tenant farmers’ economic rights. In propagating his agenda, Sun focused on the role of print media, public speech and pledging allegiance in order to raise the people’s political awareness. Furthermore, Sun’s Tongbao inclusion, conceived by reconciling Confucian fraternal love and Christian universal love, helped the overseas Chinese overcome their geographical distance and psychological liminality in building transnational patriotism. On the other hand, Sun argued that the absence of national unity was due to the culturally rooted Chinese loyalty to the emperor and family, and he tried to transfer the people’s loyalty to the nation by invoking anti-imperialism and anti-Manchuism. In the process, the racially defined nationalism of Sun’s minzu principle supported the ethnic majority of Han race, ignoring the rights of ethnic minorities. Moreover, in the minquan principle, Sun’s proposal of a three-stage national reconstruction plan imposed military operation and political tutelage to be administrated by elites, compromising individual freedom and equal citizenship. Sun’s land equalisation plan in the minsheng principle created tension with the landlords due to his morally charged assertion that economic harmony was attainable through cooperation in dealing with material conflict concerning landownership. Sun’s emancipatory communication brought forth a modern Chinese nation-state, but Sun’s struggle in modernising China represented his inner conflict with relinquishing his pedagogical paternalism to the autonomy of Chinese people.

This thesis analyses the development of Wu Zhihui's ideas and their social and political application until 1927. Through this biographical approach the intention is to also reach out and achieve an understanding of his contemporaries and so come to broader conclusions about the period of rapid and fundamental intellectual change in which he lived. After establishing Wu's philosophical basis, his Darwinism, Kropotkinite anarchist communism and his materialist lifeview, there follows an analysis of his utopian goals and his view of the mechanics of social revolution. Then these theoretical positions are related to his political practice between 1890 and 1927 with special attention being paid to the degree of fidelity of transmission of these ideas to the Chinese context. His development from conservative reformer to nationalist revolutionary and then to anarchist supporter of the Revolution of 1911 is traced with special reference to his New Century magazine in Paris. His activities in the early years of the Republic are examined with analysis of his role within the Nationalist Party after 1924 and the origins of his fierce anti-communism. Finally two sections are devoted to Wu's contribution to education in China. The main problematic presented is the relationship in Wu Zhihui's thought between nationalism, the key ideological element in modern China, and anarchism. How could a patriotic Chinese genuinely embrace European anarchism without in some way distorting or adapting it? Adaptation of anarchism to the needs of nation building proved impossible and fundamental revisions which occurred in its introduction by Wu to China negated its essential intellectual attraction; opposition to all government. Beyond being a case study of the impact of foreign ideas on China, this thesis offers a general critique of the theoretical weaknesses of anarchism.

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The expression ‘New Culture Movement’ was born in summer 1919, in the intersections of academic debate, political activism, media coverage and intellectual marketing strategies. I have traced the emergence of the phrase and the discourses around it, using sources like journals, newspapers, student essays, advertisements and conference protocols. The New Culture Movement was a buzzword, deployed by practically-minded but lesser-known intellectuals to promote agendas they had held long before its invention. Many notions we associate with the Movement until today already surrounded it in 1919: for example, that it was connected to the political protests of ‘May Fourth,’ and driven by star intellectuals such as Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu. But closer scrutiny reveals that the New Culture Movement and its network of associations were a construct, an amalgam of newspaper stories and intellectual marketing ploys: the connection to May Fourth was created by newspapers; the intellectuals at the periphery drew upon Hu Shi’s and Chen Duxiu’s prestige to add glamour to their own agendas. Nevertheless, the New Culture Movement shaped China’s 20th century. As only some agendas could credibly be sold as the Movement, it catalysed the plethora of competing agendas that had emerged since the 19th century to tackle the challenges of a changed world order. The New Culture Movement later became a founding myth of ‘Modern China’ and was regarded as the obvious result of global trends towards ‘modernisation,’ which visionary intellectuals recognised. But more recent literature has decentred the Movement, noted a longer history of its ideas and the careerism of its participants. I drive this point further by showing that, at the Movement’s very core, were practically-minded business and marketing strategies, deployed by numerous, lesser-known actors. It was in this way that the course for 20th-century China and one of its founding myths was set.

“Contested Childhoods” links together three major areas of historical inquiry: war and criminality, law and social change, and the law as it relates to children, in the first half of twentieth-century China. The founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 has eclipsed the historical significance of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government and the importance of its role during the wartime period. This study examines how the outbreak of China’s War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945) served as a crucial catalyst to the construction of ideas of criminality and its relation to children during the wartime period. It examines the different measures by which Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government (1928-1949) attempted to handle the rise in levels of criminality involving juveniles. The study analyses how an increase in criminality during the wartime period challenged how ideas on and about children and childhood were in understood within Chinese society. Moreover, it argues that wartime conditions served as a crucial catalyst prompted the construction of a new judicial and legal framework that was aimed at delineating the boundaries between childhood and adulthood during this period.