Raising the "Masters of the Nation": Engendering Child-Citizens in China's Wartime Children's Homes, 1937–45

This paper will examine efforts to transform China’s war orphans from perceived social and political risks to treasured national assets during the war against Japan. A highly visible network of children’s homes was created under the leadership of Chinese women elites in response to the immense social dislocation and trauma that accompanied the onset of all-out war.  Though one may assume children would occupy a high priority in wartime relief projects, the rescue and care of displaced and orphaned children was not a given and was carried out via carefully crafted propaganda that shaped the “warphan” as a treasure worthy of national investment.  This paper will introduce the wartime discourses of the warphan as idealized child-citizen, and will argue that, although the discourse of the generic warphan appeared gender-neutral, child-citizens were rescued and trained for the future in gender specific ways.  This paper will explore the gendered ways in which orphans were rendered vulnerable to wartime suffering and appropriation by state and local interests.  It will also explore how the pressures of the war and conditions within wartime children’s homes challenged prevailing gender ideologies of citizenship.