This panel will investigate the socio-military history of China with an integrated perspective upon the period between 1931 and 1949 as a continuum which embodied the “long World War II” of China. The accomplishments and challenges of this period were put to the test with the outbreak of total war with Japan in 1937 and extended into the subsequent Civil War. The experience of total war in China was not confined to military engagements but encompassed extensive state-building efforts, economic mobilization, displacement and social upheavals. The panel focuses on two central themes: prewar mobilization for war and the continued militarization of wartime legacies during the Civil War and the early People's Republic. These studies highlight how ceaseless violence and resilience efforts shaped the modern Chinese capacity-making state, often at the expense of those who contributed to its making and unmaking. This panel also examines wartime China's integration into global processes of knowledge production, migration, and technological transfer, while deprovincialization at the national level unfolded.

The papers in this panel will be presented chronologically. The first theme, prewar mobilization, reveals how China’s national and regional authorities began preparing for a protracted conflict even before full-scale war erupted in 1937. Yan’s paper examines how war economists in the Nanjing Nationalist regime developed strategies for grain security, integrating inspirations from international trade regulations with domestic agricultural policies. Their efforts to secure grain supply had contributed to the formation of a command economy that persisted in later decades. Li’s paper investigates how the warlord regime in Yunnan introduced international tobacco varieties as part of a broader strategy to stabilize wartime production. Together, these papers illustrate how economic and agricultural policies were shaped by the anticipation of war, forming a foundation for China’s economy. The second theme focuses on the diffusion and perpetuation of micro-level violence, a result of social militarization, an enduring wartime legacy after Japan’s surrender. Dai’s paper explores the plight of Nationalist wounded soldiers, whose displacement and lack of state support led to their perceived transformation from decorated “war heroes” to security threats for the civilian dwellers of “recovered” China after 1945. Their struggle for reintegration into urban spaces highlights the broader issue of postwar social precarity. Lam’s paper focuses on transnational communist networks, analyzing how the legacies of wartime collaboration between Chinese and Japanese communists unraveled during the Cultural Revolution. The violent conflict at Beijing Airport in the late 1960s serves as a striking example of how unresolved wartime tensions continued to shape East Asian geopolitics.

By integrating these diverse perspectives, these four papers collectively show how wartime institutions and legacies permeated Chinese society well beyond the battlefield. The economic policies of war economists and rural planners laid the groundwork for the postwar command economy, just as the upheaval as triggered by displaced soldiers and fractured inter-party fraternity underscored the lingering instability of wartime legacies. Together, these studies provide a nuanced understanding of the war not as a discrete event but as an extended process that shaped generations beyond the battlefield.